January 10, 2004
I'm back from my (second) trip to Russia-- my first one was about a decade ago. That particular country is a very harsh place to live. It was great to get a chance to visit my brother, though.
I got a chance to see almost all the historical sights I intended to see-- the best part was the Hermitage (one can spend 7 years in there by merely browsing). That museum is extremely ecclectic and its collection is surprisingly poorly organized-- yet it includes some wonderful impressionist masterworks which I couldn't resist seeing. Also in St. Pete, I managed to visit St. Isaac's cathedral, (the world's third largest basilica), the Peter and Paul fortress and Tsarskoye Tselo. St. Pete has over 400 bridges and canals, but one has to brush one's teeth in bottled water because the city was built on a swamp. (The water-quality involves the possibility of intestinal parasites.)
I took a 4-day trip to Moscow during which I saw the Kremlin, Red Square and the State Historical museum. I spent a whole day at the Tretyakov gallery enjoying their collections of Surikov, Briullov and mideval Orthodox icons. The Bolshoi was sold-out and I was too late to see their production of Boris Godunov, God-dammit.
Finally, I managed to take a day trip to a little place called Uglich north of Moscow where I was excited to see the historic church of St. Dmitri. As every blithering buffoon knows, this church was built on the site of a key event in Russian history-- the death (and possible murder) of Ivan the Terrible's only heir, Prince Dmitri, in 1591. Naturally, I was so overcome by the excitement of Uglich I almost came from the sheer orgasmic ecstacy. (Yes, I'm sure you'd all be equally thrilled, too.)
I also found-out exactly how my Russian language skills are nowadays: quite poor.
It was a hard trip, as expected. I think I had a fulfilling time-- but I could hardly call it a vacation. It was quite tiring-- in hindsight, maybe I should've taken a more relaxing trip. The weather was sometimes -13 degrees, but most of the time it was a little above or below zero.
For my next trip, I'm definitely planning to go somewhere warmer and less tiring. There was one observation that I had about St. Petersburg and Moscow-- the plethora of colorful, glitzy advertising which seemed oddly out of place in cities which looked as if they were in bad need of restoration and jobs. There's a lot of signs of social and physical decay in Russia and the adverts just seemed totally incongruous. Like an ad for Ikea located right next to an amputee who lives under a scrap of folded cardboard. An ad for liquor alongside a passed-out drunk. That sort of thing.
I remember reading that during the Great Depression in the 1930s, there were a number of American photographers who helped spark the genre of advertising satire (Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange and others). They captured street scenes which depicted cheery luxury billboards juxtaposed over the grim reality of unemployment lines and soup kitchens. Bitter juxtapositions of this type are powerful visual metaphors about the utter disconnection between reality and the artificially happy-faced world presented to us by commercials. Ironies of this type tend to leap-out at you from every direction in many parts of Moscow and St. Petersburg. Kind of what you'd expect to see in a dystopian parody.
Well, that is not to say that there aren't any people who are well-off (there were quite a few people driving expensive cars). It's just that the contrast between real life and advertisement was too huge to not notice. Perhaps I'm merely dwelling on the negative and not enough on the positive. There were many fine restraunts and shops and museums... but I got the impression that these cities would require some massive rebuilding in order to be more pleasant.
But anyway-- when I came back to Japan, my girlfriend was waiting for me in my apartment. (Before I left, she'd asked me for my key.) She had dinner ready for me and she cleaned-up, too. As all my readers know, I am an extreme male chauvinist pig. That's right. Like all men, I just love to exploit women. I'm a real oppressor. Didn't you know that? Oh yeah, that's me. So when I noticed my girlfriend had cleaned my apartment, I acted exactly as an oppressive male pig should.
"Haruna!" I exclaimed. "It's not your job to clean-up after me! Please don't do this." I sighed and sadly looked-around. She'd folded my laundry, scrubbed my shower, vacuumed every nook and cranny. (And my apartment has got a lot of crannies.)
"I thought you'd be happy." She replied, standing at the stove and stirring a pot. "Did I do a good job?"
"Um, you really did." I looked-around. Not a speck of lint to be found. "But, honey... you really shouldn't clean-up after me. I clean my own messes."
"But I wanted to do something nice for you." She put her arms around my waist and rested her head upon my upper-arm.
"Haruna, I don't like it when you clean-up after me. Please don't do it again?"
"But what if I enjoy doing good things for you?" She asked.
"Well, making dinner for me is very sweet. I appreciate that very much, even though I'd like to help you cook. But um... I don't want you to wash my socks or scrub my sink. It just makes me feel as if I'm causing messes for you. How about I clean-up your room next weekend?" I offered.
"Eii... I'll think about it." She didn't sound too enthusiastic about it.
I don't really like having my girlfriend clean-up after me. It makes me feel guilty.
For all the American females who drop-by (and I know you exist...) I'll say it very clearly: contrary to what you might believe right down to your bones, I was never socialized to think that I have an inherent right to exploit women as maids or servants. Indeed, most of my male friends don't think or act that way either. But on the other hand, I've noticed that an enormous number of American women are socialized to think that they have an inherent right to exploit men as income sources or emotional punching bags.
And this is one of the many reasons why you suck.
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