Glory to Gagarin

Image: Boris Kaufman (copyright: RIA Novosti)
Image: Boris Kaufman (copyright: RIA Novosti)

🙂

Odd to think that my grandfather apparently met him, once upon a time. Or maybe not so odd, all things considered. I realized this while going through some of my grandfather’s old pictures just a few years ago. There, among faces I didn’t know, or else faces that seemed slightly familiar, shots of one unmistakable smiling face, glowing predictably at the heart of what appeared to be yet another Soviet military function.

Among other, slightly more important stuff, Gagarin is probably directly responsible for my eventual falling in love with “Star Trek.”

So this Planned Parenthood thing

I was glad to read this morning that at the very least “a GOP push to strip $317 million in federal funding from Planned Parenthood failed.” But at times like these, you have to wonder why, really, do people go after Planned Parenthood. Why is it always in the cross sights? Why is it so easy to convince so many people, at the drop of a hat, that it needs to be the first to go? You can say “because of abortion”, and leave it at that, but most Americans are so vague on abortion to begin with. It’s a word that’s used so much, with so much zeal, that it’s begun to grow more and more abstract to the national conscience. “Well, I’m opposed to it! No need to kill babies! Those women are irresponsible to begin with!” It takes longer to heat up a frozen pizza than to make this standard sort of argument. The argument itself is virtually meaningless. A lot of people have abortions – and the sheer numbers tell us that even among those who make this sort of argument, there will be people who’ll have an abortion at one point or another, or else someone close to the person making this argument just had one last year, or will have one next year.

Maybe all of this is happening because “I’m opposed to abortions” is a whole lot easier to roll off your tongue than “I’m in favour of poor people dying.” Because that’s what such spending cuts are really aimed at doing – they make sure that some poor people simply won’t be around anymore to offend the honest, hardworking, responsible middle-class. Of course, considering the state of the economy, the complete joke of a social net, and the amount of debt so many people are in – being middle-class in the U.S. can largely be an illusion. Trust me, I’ve been there. Supposedly middle-class, and wondering what the hell I’ll eat for the next week. Not being able to afford basic medical care – having to wait until a tooth infection got so bad that I literally could have died from it to finally get it treated at one of the few places in my area where they could at least offer me a discount. And I was one of the genuinely lucky ones, that year. Millions of people have it so much worse. Shit – having a baby this year may mean that I will not be able to pay my student loans on time. I’ve got plans, but if they fall through, my only comfort may be living in Russia. And that’s just how it goes. Uninformed people say, “But Russia! Scary place!” And I say, “for God’s sake, at least I can afford a minimum of healthcare around here!”

So few of us generally want to admit that the system itself is broken, because it means that our place in the system is suddenly under question. Social anxiety trumps the need to be honest – for now. Better to just pretend that it’s “irresponsible poor people” who are dragging everybody down with them.

Remember that old Beatles lyric? “And oh that magic feeling – nowhere to go.” It was when I really felt what that lyric was all about that I began to let go of the idea that I had to appear as though things were fine. Things are not freaking fine, they haven’t been fine for a while. The people who are asking us, Americans, to tighten our collective belts will not be tightening those belts themselves. This thing about Planned Parenthood being a satanic abortion mill is simply there to divide us all. Believe what you want to believe. But don’t tell me that everything’s going to be OK and society will magically be fixed if poor women who can’t afford decent medical care will bleed to death from botched abortions, or else die from cancers that could have been caught early had they had access to affordable screening. These women aren’t the problem.

For more discussion, see Feministe.

Fear and loathing on the red line

I love the Moscow metro and have written many a paean to it. It’s the perfect place to people-watch, deep in the belly of the city (or on its shallow ends, on the way towards the suburbs), among the marble. The metro goes on and on – it’s the pale, long arms of Moscow, stretching out into the region, wanting to grab more and more.

It can also be pretty fucking annoying, and most of my annoyance as of late has concentrated on the Sokolnicheskaya line, otherwise known as the red line. It’s not entirely fair – Sokolnicheskaya was suicide-bombed in two places a little over a year ago, and expecting this particular metro line to radiate positive energy may be bit a much to ask. But ever since the Park Kultury station serving the brown, or Circle line, shut down for repairs, much of the excess traffic trying to reach Park Kulury has to go through Sokolnicheskaya. And if this particular line was busy before – now it’s ridiculously busy, and the trains move slowly between stations, groaning along, and every once in a while they screech to a halt inside the dark tunnels, and you fight down panic, because panicking won’t help.

But in general – Sokolnicheskaya at this time appears to have the biggest concentration of douchebags. Visibly pregnant woman steps onto the train, and the douchebags all busy themselves with their iPhones and iPads, trying very hard to pretend they don’t see her. When people do give up their seats, they’re more often than not middle-aged women, who probably know how hard it is to keep your balance while pregnant and riding the metro and are ashamed to be surrounded by the douchebag hordes. Of course, the second you go to sit down, the brakes are slammed, so you have to keep very hard from going flying into the lap of some napping granny. That’s just how it goes.

The stations along Sokolnicheskaya hardly make any of it up – since they are not beautiful (Lubyanka in particular is like a tomb of the ancients – but not in a cool way). I mean sure, Sokolnicheskaya still looks good when compared to the horrors of urban metro networks in various other world capitals – and Kropotkinskaya station in particular has an air of understated grandeur about it – but still. The two Moscow metro lines I consider “mine” – green Zamoskvoretskaya and yellow Kalininskaya – are way, way cooler by comparison (Zamoskvoretskaya does easily beat the competition because it contains Mayakovskaya, which is pretty much an artwork in functional form, and stepping on its shiny platform fills me with joy – but short little Kalininskaya does have its gems, Aviamotornaya and its 1980s club-look in particular). For all of the hassle Sokolnicheskaya entails, it just doesn’t feel like it’s worth it.

The scary thing is, I know I’ll miss the red line once I go on maternity leave. I’ll miss it, and then I’ll return to it, and it will start pissing me off all over again – in the spirit of a true dysfunctional relationship.

I’ve got your Russian documentary theater right here

Moved apartments. Very tired. Very broke. Very glad to not face the kind of harassment I had to face at my old place, though. Living a 20-minute walk away from the Kremlin is so totally not worth constant crazy-making. Don’t let any well-meaning real estate agent tell you otherwise.

Was also recently on Voice of Russia with John Freedman. Reflecting on it later, I realized just how much my life has changed since I walked down the basement steps of Teatr.doc to see a closed performance of “An Hour and Eighteen Minutes” (John refers to this play as “One Hour Eighteen” – most other people just call it “that Magnitsky play”). One of the men in the play has, as per my disclaimer while on Voice of Russia, knocked me up and summarily put a ring on my finger. I’ve been collared into family life, ya’ll. People who don’t read news in the English language (i.e. the majority) known me as “that dude’s wife.” He introduces me as such at parties.

We were at Grzegorz Jarzyna’s “T.E.O.R.E.M.A.T.” last night (I still don’t have anything coherent to say about it besides, “I was terrified! I was amazed!”) when he introduced me to an ex-girlfriend, who’s an actress. She freaked out. This was the first time this has happened (it’s not as if I’ve never met an ex of his before). I wasn’t expecting it, because I’d heard a lot about her, and knew that she’s been married for a while herself, and has a young daughter. So I don’t know what that was about, exactly. It did make me feel oddly powerful, though. Here I am, a little pregnant lady with a big round belly, and I still have the power to make someone uncomfortable.

My husband did his bit as an awful judge in “An Hour and Eighteen Minutes” on our wedding day. We got ready, went to the civil registry office, did the whole officially registering our marriage thing (complete with much improv), had din-dins at an Uzbek art-cafe, then I had dessert with some friends while everyone else went across the street for the show. People said it was one of his best performances yet. I had some feelings about combining a play about a lawyer who was essentially tortured to death via neglect with our wedding day, but we really had no choice. My husband always does what he has to do. It’s one of those things that terrifies me and attracts me in equal measure.

After the performance, we quickly transformed the funereal atmosphere inside Teatr.doc as to something more befitting a wedding reception on a shoestring. People came with gifts and flowers. Playwright and journalist Sasha Denisova came bearing a little baby hoodie, decorated with images of Snoopy. Actor Alexey Yudnikov (who used to grin at me from an advertisement at my local pharmacy, before we moved) climbed a step-ladder and lectured us about the sanctity of marriage in the manner of an aging Soviet bureaucrat. All of this took place on the stage, because there wasn’t any room for it elsewhere.

A little over a month later, on the same stage, we quietly commemorated playwright Anna Yablonskaya, who was killed in the January 24 bombing at Domodedovo airport. Her husband and I shared details of how our respective children were conceived. There was caviar, something we couldn’t afford for the wedding.

Death to life to death. To life.