It’s grey and drizzly out again! When will the madness end?!
School was strange today. I sat with Stefanie all last week, and now that she’s done her 2-week stint, I felt a little lost without my Swiss buddy. Michele the Canadian opera singer, sat next to me instead. After frantically getting all of her supplies out for class, complaining about the size of the desk, and asking me a bunch of questions, then reiterating them to the teacher, she apologized for not calling me Friday night. Before I started feeling sick again, I had been planning to go out with her and a few other Canadians that night. She explained that she didn’t go out either otherwise she would have called. It really wasn’t a big deal, but she felt it necessary to apologize a few times for the error. I don’t know how I’m feeling about the Canadians… They’re pretty anti-social with other people from the group. Even Philly pointed out that they only move about the hallways in a large group and speak English.
After class I had some time to kill before Internetting and heading back home. I did homework/studied for a few hours, which I know will pay off in class tomorrow. I also read for an hour. There are so many new ideas being proposed right now in the The New Revelations- so many new ways to look and think about things. It’s a lot to swallow all in one reading, so I’ve had to pace myself. It makes me think about what I want my future to look like. The kind of career I might like to pursue. I wish I had more guidance to help me compile my ideas and move forward.
I left Vasilesvkiy Island feeling grey and strange. I could feel myself starting to get homesick again, but wasn’t/am still not sure how to reconnect with St. Petersburg and work through it. I knew getting better weather would help, but I can’t personally control that. Then the least helpful thing happened.
Patti told me this was a regular occurrence in Russia. I saw a dead person when I was walking home today. He was lying on the steps leading out of the underpass that connects both sides of the street. There were two small wooden blockades on the sides of him where the steps were-probably to keep people from mindlessly stepping on him. That was is though. There were no police cleaning up. No body bags. No crowds. Nothing. Just him.
I walked by him slowly. I couldn’t stop staring. Was he actually dead? Was this really happening? Why wasn’t anyone doing anything or taking him away? Why was his body still lying there? I got off the steps and walked around the corner. Thoughts about his body, his final position, the blood on his face and the ground, the police officers slouched in their seats, nonchalantly smoking cigarettes, how that death might be handled differently in the U.S… all of it kept rushing and clouding my mind, making it impossible to really assess anything. I could feel a really concerned look fall over my face. I walked faster. Really? Had I just seen a dead person? How should I feel right now?
I went straight to my room when I got back to the house. I looked in the mirror to see what my face was doing… to see if it was sad or confused or indifferent. The only thing close to a conclusion I could come up with was “what the fuck?”
I haven’t felt this detached from Russia since I first arrived. I feel like such a foreigner, so uncomfortable and out of place.
I haven’t really cried since I first got here and felt so incredibly alone. My feeling of loneliness has hit me like a wall and again I cry. Am I the only one who feels so confused and drawn in by this event? Am I the only one who even considers this an “event”? I feel like I am. I know the people here aren’t heartless, so them appearing to be indifferent isn’t because they don’t give a shit. So what is it? What has effected so many generations, that a dead person on the street doesn’t outwardly faze the young or old?
On a brighter note for me and my music sharing friends, “Sweden's Pirate Party, which wants to legalise internet file sharing, won 7% of the national vote and one of the country's 18 seats in the European Parliament”
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