Girl leaves happiness and status quo for adventure; adventure challenges girl in unpleasant ways; girl unexpectedly learns thing about self and grows up a bit.

“I’m bored.”
- Bootsy Collins, in “Volunteers”

In Russia, I felt as if I were under a heavy cloak, scarcely able to breathe. Tense. Paranoid. Furtive. Desperate.

Three weeks after my plane touched down at JFK, I’m sitting in the auditorium of Hostos Community College on the Grand Concourse in the boogie down, delighting in the Bronx Symphony Orchestra’s rendition of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade.

(Idea: girl drives around tri-state area in order to experience Scheherazade in all its incarnations, as performed by oboist-packing musicians from the Eastern Connecticut Orchestra to the Fairfield Middle School Band…)

Just as in February 2005 at Avery Fisher Music Hall, tears trace lines down my face, testing the waterproof powers of my Great Lash mascara.

(“You look great.” – woman who smells like urine sitting near me.)

During the intermission, I reflect on the intense color explosion that Rimsky-Korsakov’s piece creates in my head. (Are my brother’s seizures like this?) And the eight dimensions that Notes from Underground (even as translated by a blind gasbag) builds so effectively.

Is there a correlation between the import of Russian cultural contributions and the fact that it’s just plain depressing to be there?

I have often felt more creative when I am depressed, as if a little bit of weight on my shoulders is just what I need to kick start a cauldron of colorful output.

(To some extent, of course; as Augusten Burroughs remarked in Bryant Park one Wednesday afternoon in May, too much anxiety creates an impenetrable mental state that makes communication impossible. The noise volume is such that the author’s ideas make sense only to her – and even then, perhaps only for a short while. Who can make sense of adolescent angst scribbled furtively into journals? Something something something, mom is such a mega-bitch, something something Brent. What?)

And upon returning to the States, I’ve felt intensely attuned to my artistic center. Okay, yes, I got dumped, this always adds an element of intrigue into the art mix, but these days I feel expansive and abundantly creative. I enrolled in a writing class at the New School, bought a painting from an artist whose work I discovered during the SONYA art stroll, even bust out the drawing board and Berol Prismacolors and 2Bs and 4Hs and kneaded eraser.

Did my trip to Russia CTRL ALT DEL my unconscious in some way such that all of this fertility was possible? Does Russia’s “famous capacity to bear suffering most intimately” (phrase from a review in The Brooklyn Rail by Alexander Nazaryan of “Voices from Chernobyl”) explain its literature’s intense richness? Are we Americankas doomed to be fat and complacent with our mediocre TV shows, chick lit, and friendly, service-based economy? Would you like a predictable ending and some primary colors with that?

About 10 years ago, I was sitting in a grimy, smoke-filled café in St. Petersburg, Russia, when a young woman with long, overbleached hair and too many wrinkles for someone in her twenties took a drag of her cigarette and, slowly blowing the smoke in my face, said, “You Americans. You expect to feel good all the time. We Russians expect to feel bad all the time.”

– Elle Magazine June 2004 Editor’s Page

My trip was challenging and difficult and forced me to grow in ways I did not expect. I’m deeply appreciative of my Russia experience, and even happier to be back in the States. I’ve a newfound appreciation for much that prior was simply white noise, lost in the banal anxiety of what I previously had assumed to be BAU living.

Administrative details:

• Book your flight. I use travel aggregator Mobissimo for all my comparison shopping. Mobissimo found me a $797 flight (plus $30 processing) through Cheaptickets on Russian airline Aeroflot.
• Get your Visa. Use Russia-Visa.com. The services I needed (I needed an invitation, for example) came to around $150. I FedExed photos and my passport on Tuesday, April 4th; they FedExed everything back on Friday, April 14th. Marc does not recommend using services such as Zeirer, as “everything in Russia is quasi-legal” and legitimate, respected Visa agencies are likely to botch the navigation through The Castle.
• Brush up on po-Russki. Dr. Pimsleur, iTunes, $13. The lessons are clearly geared towards American men trying to score some poontang abroad, but the accents are great and it will train your ear. And if you don’t already know Cyrillic, print out a guide from the web and memorize. Now. In Moscow, there is much transliteration going on, but it will be so much easier to find that pectopah, pectopah if you know that it’s a restoran …
• Get housing. I would seriously consider renting a Soviet flat through Moscow Rick. High speed internet, TV, a CD player, and you don’t need to worry about cleaning staff rifling through your shit. Plus, you can take care of a ride to and from the airport if you go this route. (And Visa registration and the migration card, too.)
• Tell your banks you’re going to be in Russia. If you don’t warn them that you will be withdrawing money from ATMs in Russia, or making charges in Russia, they are going to cock block you. Man, I had bad experiences with phones in Russia, I do not wish the same fate on you, and don’t wish for you to have to figure out how the hell to reach your bank to tell them to get you cash so the shady guy chain-smoking cigarettes can rape you on the cost of a taxi ride from the airport.
• Get back and expect to get a call from Citi Cards regarding the credit card you used once while in Russia (to purchase two nice dresses in Moscow from a company out of the United Kingdom). There has just been an unauthorized micro-charge to this card that usually signifies that a larger, fraudulent transaction is about to take place.
• Exchange rate was about 28 rubles to one dollar when I was there.

Damage:

This trip cost me:

• Around two grand
• One love interest

This post edited on 6/16/2006 to include a ‘learn Russian’ bullet, about which I was reminded when I read my friend Bomee’s blog post about learning Portuguese.