RUDMENTS, pt. 1,227
(Soviet Life)
It never became easy for
me to formulate any precise
measurements or 'yardsticks,'
so to speak, by which to
measure the life around me.
I was just a kid, the same
sort of person who would
have been me if I lived in
Nebraska or out on the plains
of anywhere. The localness
of where I was never seemed
to account for anything.
-
When I was 11, in my upstairs
room, I can remember doing a
hugely detailed report, for
for whatever school-class it
may have been, on St. Basil's
Cathedral, in Moscow. It was
the first time I realized how
all-consuming I often made
things. (I think now that's
called obsessive?). But, in
any case, I got a subscription
as well, to a Soviet Magazine,
'Russian Life.' It was a large
magazine, in the same vein
as Life Magazine in the USA,
but it was not on glossy, slick
paper as Life Magazine used.
Rather it was a much cheaper,
grubbier, paper, more to the
'newsprint' end of things. The
photos would look rather
muddy because the cheap
paper sopped up all the ink.
Nothing was crisp, and the
stories were all booster-type
stories extolling Soviet things;
not even 'Russian' things, since
the entire idea of 'Soviet' was
to supplant the old, Slavic and
Russian consciousness and make
only the 'NEW' man of the new
Soviet State (which of course,
and they never said, included
killing off the Kulaks, wiping
out all vestiges of the old and
parochial ways, forming a
robotic police state, and hen
shuttering churches (one thing)
and balancing that by also
shuttering all free thought).
What in the world, then, was
I doing being consumed by
St. Basil's Cathedral - in the
heart of old downtown Russia,
onion-domed and colorful, with
all that weird architecture and
history from the past but with
all the patriarchs stabbed dead
in the heart?
-
Stalin was dead. Beria was dead.
Malenkov was dead. Bulganin
was dead. Names I read about,
and there was Khrushchev. A few
years later, when I was in the
seminary, I remember coming
out onto one of the sports fields,
at a group of guys were there
talking about the removal of
Khrushchev! Big surprise; he'd
been ousted and replaced by
Brezhnev and (at first) some
other guy, name forgotten now.
All my imagism about the
Soviet Union had coalesced
around this goofball-oddball,
orotund, grandfather the clown
type figure (Khrushchev) and
now he too was gone. By
contrast, Brezhnev seemed
funereal, dour, and morose.
Stalin's daughter lived in
Princeton! More surprise!
-
Deep in my head, with this
St. Basil's thing, the bells
were ringing - art, color,
(all those colorful spires),
old and ancient ideas of
worship and belief. I turned
in my report, which was
more like a 12 page booklet
than a report, and that's the
last thing I remember about
it. I don't remember a grade,
any comments, or where it
ever did end up. Yet, the
detail-roster of all that I did
and went through in putting
that curious report together
has always stayed with me.
It's funny, the stuff we put
ourselves through in the
thinking of getting to another
place. I have an entire sort
of log-book of imagined
travels and studies I've gone
through and experienced, and
I find (somehow?) that each
of them can be erected as a
ready-kit, to be built and
experienced from the
vantage point in actuality
of wherever I am at that
moment. My standings
change, (one moment the
Biker dude, another moment
the young, religious kid,
another moment the normal,
married father, house, wife,
home and kid...etc.), but the
essences of all those places
into which I've entered still
remain, regardless of my
personal history at any
moment. The entirety of
my own life has become a
museum and library - of
ever-expanding proportions
and with expandable rooms
of all sorts, that can widen
ad open out to fit the new
and add the newest!
-
By 1967, when I entered
New York City for real, it
was as if, immediately, my
museum and library needs
expanded greatly, and urgent
construction of new and wider
rooms and shelves were being
constantly called for. My own
wrecking-crew little knew that
it was about to be drafted as a
construction-crew instead.
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