The voyage out

Compared to the last time we went abroad for a long time -- four years ago, with our little six-month old in tow -- this time leaving the States was not very dramatic. Last time, I remember going through those last few days at home taking mental notes of all the things I did, hoping to be able to remember them through the months away that lie ahead.

This time, I mostly only noticed how busy and tiring it all is. How many loose ends kept popping up, how I almost willfully tried to avoid thinking about what it means to leave home for a long time. So far, this trip has given me little chance to ruminate on the metaphysics of what we're up to. It has been a very immediate experience.

To give ourselves plenty of time to make our flight, we stayed the night before at the Days Inn near the airport. It is one of those airport hotels that is a lowest common denominator space. Everything felt small and cramped, cheap and plastic, easy to clean and yet somehow still filthy.

Our flight out was on Transaero, one of the newish Russian airlines that has recently begun the New York-Moscow route. We knew little about them, but the tickets, bought months ago, were priced alright. In our usual fashion, we made it to the gate at the last moment, and was surprised to see that the plane was a Boeing 747. Imagine the jumbo jet that took you on your first trip to London, way back in the 1980s or so... this was the exact airplane that the company must have bought from BA on eBay. The paint was cracked, the lights were dirty, the upholstery was threadbare. The only difference was that the seats were painfully close to one another. Now, this is a common refrain among air travellers, who have been slowly squeezed through the years. But this wasn't the case here: I was unable to put the tray down all the way, the seats were that close together.

But what was weirder was how Transaero chose to divide their space. As we walked onto the plane, we walked through a completely empty Business Class section. Empty. The company has a weird strategy for making money that seems a bit too rigid to make much money or to make customers happy. Apparently, according to the inflight magazine, the First Class sections in the front and on the upper deck are given over to full-blown elitny bullsh*t. Which explains the better dressed, friendlier, prettier stewardesses we caught brief glimpses of on the way in and out. They boast dining tables, beds, meeting rooms. But lord, when Mila accidentally walked close to that empty section, the stewards freaked out.

The usual finding our way around Russia process went as would be expected, with a predictable mix of new and various annoyances. First, there was the visa registration process. It is in some ways easier now -- you can do it at post offices. Trouble is, in actuality we had to visit three different post offices to find someone competent to do this, and then had to account for lunch hours, computer breakdowns, and half-assed attempts to fish for bribes. That took two days.

Then I came down with a massive bout of food poisoning that sent me off the earth for many days. Then there was a big editing project that needed my attention, and so since we arrived, I haven't gotten out much.

At the moment, my wife is on a business trip, Mila is at the dacha with her grandparents, and I find myself with time on my hands. I'm amazed at how quiet things can be. I'm still getting adjusted, thinking about what's next.

A poem for heading off

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.


Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open road.


The earth, that is sufficient,
I do not want the constellations any nearer,
I know they are very well where they are,
I know they suffice for those who belong to them.


(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens,
I carry them, men and women, I carry them with me wherever I go,
I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them,
I am fill'd with them, and I will fill them in return.)


-- Walt Whitman, from "Song of the Open Road."

Woody Allen chugs along to Paris

I always like say that my Russophilia killed my Francophilia. I grew up a young man with a Romantic streak, a fascination with Europe and travel, and all kinds of cultural aspirations. But after long experience with Russia, somehow Paris has become very quaint and safe, a bourgeois fantasyland.

So I started to tune out of Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris sometime during the first real scene of dialogue, as Owen Wilson mooned to Rachel McAdams about how inspiring and perfect the whole damn place is. Especially how breathtaking it is in the rain. The rain, for some reason.

A few quick points:

-- Woody Allen, more or less, has been functionally retired to me since 1997. I think a great number of the fans of his early work would draw that line at different points. But at the very least, the guy has got to slow down. There might have been an interesting movie in here, which with some patience and teamwork and at least another year in the oven, it could have emerged into something really valuable.

-- There's really nothing wrong with rehearsal. Allen's way of having actors interact has become a mannered charade of how late 20th century New Yorkers interrupt each other, say "Really?" in a forced way, and awkwardly try to purposefully look at one another when they aren't yapping. Loved it all when Diane Keaton did it, but man, every new generation that tries it out just looks dumb.

-- Woody needs to have a drink with an actual conservative every now and then. I love making fun of wingers as much as anyone, but even I cringe at the caricatures Woody routinely trots out to get a few cheap laughs from the Upper West Side crowd.

-- I love the "Lost Generation" -- far more than most do. So I enjoyed all the imitations of Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Dali. But I realize they were cartoons, and I think I was kinda laughing at them, not with them.

-- "Prufrock is like my mantra!" ... Really? this line got through a rewrite?

-- I know everyone thinks it when they see it... so I'll say, *SPOILER ALERT* that you should do the math and figure out the age difference between the last two characters on the screen. (okay, I checked IMDB, it's 17 years). It's just gotten creepy already. Is he really so surrounded by yes men that he doesn't realize this? If this movie had any emotional honesty, Carla Bruni (one year older) should have appeared at the end.

-- So, New York, London, Barcelona, Paris... someone wake me up when he gets to St. Petersburg.

For the Fourth...

"Bunyan's Greeting"

It is the spring morning without benefit of young persons.

It is the sky that has never registered weeping or

    rebellion.

It is the forest full of innocent beasts. There are none who

blush at the memory of an ancient folly, none who hide

beneath dyed fabrics a malicious heart.

It is America, but not yet.

Wanted. Disturbers of public order, men without foresight

    or fear.

Wanted. Energetic madmen. Those who have thought

    themselves a body large enough to devour their

    dreams.

Wanted. The lost. Those indestructibles whom defeat can 

    never change. Poets of the bottle. Clergymen of a 

    ridiculous gospel, actors who should have been

    engineers and lawyers who should have been sea

    captains. Saints of circumstance, desperados,

    unsuccessful wanderers, all who can hear the 

    invitation of the earth. America, youngest of her

    daughters, awaits the barbarians of marriage.

-- W.H. Auden, from the libretto of Benjamin Britten's opera Paul Bunyan.