When boys and girls come of age in modern Russia (at six and eight, respectively), their journey into adulthood is marked by a unique and fascinating ritual. The children are sealed inside small plastic globes and set adrift in the middle of the nearest lake or river. Hot, thirsty and tossed by the waves like winecorks in a thunderstorm at sea, walking or crawling – hamsterlike – they must reach the distant shore. If they are successful, they take their rightful place in the community, fully-fledged adults ready to begin work in the kiosks and factories. If they are unsuccessful… well, tradition demands that they go un-mourned.
In the old days, the days of Stakhanovite “shock workers” and annual bear wrestling tournaments, when the Soviets were in power and even more emphasis was placed on growing up strong in order to better serve the State, these treks lasted for days – sometimes weeks – across the most brutal, scarifying bodies of water available. Lake Baikal, the Bering Straight, the White Sea. NATO scientists, who found dozens of plastic spheres washed up on the beach or bobbing off the coasts of Finland, Sweden and West Germany – each containing a tiny, bleached, perfectly preserved skeleton – assumed they were part of a secret military project, most likely the testing of some sort of doomsday device, and a great deal of time and money (not to mention the lives of several top operatives) was spent on a series of fruitless investigations.
These days, people use whatever creek,
puddle or medium-sized fast-flowing river available, the kids gets chocolate
and tea afterward, and the survival rate is almost one hundred percent. Times
change.
Okay, so it’s actually some sort of
carnivalesque amusement run by immigrants from the Caucasus, part of the
surprising Coney Island atmosphere that has materialized around the Novgorod
Kremlin with the advent of warm weather. I saw pony rides, carousels,
inflatable jumping castles and a dozen pairs of bionic super legs called “jolly
jumpers” for rent. (Please excuse the Sasquatch-level photography on this one).
I’m still a little bit in shock, actually – this is the first time I’ve been in Russia while the weather has even approached what could be generously termed “ pretty nice.” The fall was tolerable, the spring has been pleasant. The winter in Moscow wasn’t nearly as bad as the winter I spent in Petersburg. But for the past week or so here in Novgorod it’s been absolutely gorgeous outside, and I’m not really sure how to handle it.
I think I’ll start by spending every day at
the beach.
Let’s see, where were we? That’s right, I had just missed all the ooo-rah military glitz and glory, but I was in time to catch the rag-tag commie march. Not knowing exactly what was going on, I fell in behind a bunch of people carrying big red banners and text-saturated placards.
Another May in Russia; another riotous, street-choking, tank-and-missile filled Victory Day. The Victory in question, of course, is the Soviet Union’s defeat of Nazi Germany near the close of World War II. Ask any American or European who won the war, and you’ll probably hear “We did” or “The Allies.” But tell a Russian that the Allies won the war and they’ll smile politely at your naivety and change the subject. Every Russian knows who really beat the Germans – Russia, the Soviet Union. There’s a reason Russians call it the ‘Great Patriotic War.’
And in a sense they’re right; Operation Overlord and the whole Normandy invasion was in many ways just an attempt to catch up to the Red Army before the Soviets overran Europe. By the end of 1945, the Soviet Union had transformed a largely leaderless, ineffectual and under-equipped (though enormous) military into a fire-and-iron behemoth of industrial production, spitting out tanks practically as fast as Germany could produce rifles. But it came at a terrible cost, the dark polarity of victory –millions upon millions dead, Leningrad besieged, starved, bombed and virtually obliterated, the countryside burned down to the bone. Victory, in that war for Russia, was more significant, more transcendent and transformative, than America can every really know. Even now, 64 years later, it’s a big hairy deal.
This year I had unusually thorough, albeit mostly accidental, exposure to the holiday. As a consequence of traveling with Lisa’s mom Katy from Moscow to St. Petersburg and back again – with a pit stop in Veliky Novgorod – I got to see the whole thing, from build-up to climax.
It starts a few weeks before the 9th, when the first orange and black ribbons start to appear on lapels and coat sleeves, belt loops, hats and messenger bags, like early spring flowers.
Then of course, it’s time for the big event, which a few years ago returned to its grandiose weaponry-saturated roots, complete with Parades are among my favorite things to photograph – the streets are exploding with activity, there’s something wild and new to photograph every second, and nobody notices when you stick a camera in their face. It was the perfect opportunity to put my new Canon EOS 40D and my through the paces. With just a single-focus Sigma 30/1.4 lens, I was forced to get really close to everything, which meant a lot of scrambling up on top of bus shelters, newspaper stands and post boxes.
Luckily, I was in good company.
That will have to wait, however, because I am OUT OF INTERNET. Until next time...
I would actually watch teevee news if it sounded like this:
And potentially even more excellent:
I lost my camera.
Lenses, flash cards, batteries, everything. It’s not the saddest thing, but it’s still utterly depressing and thoroughly demoralizing. I left it on the seat when I stepped off the bloody Metro at one o’clock this morning. Granted, I was carrying a lot of bags, wearing a pair of unwieldy DJ headphones with a three-mile cord, listening to Death from Above 1979 and reading Dracula on my iPod. I may also have been slightly inebriated. I was what you might call a little distracted. Still ¬– so, so stupid. I only misplaced it for thirty seconds, but as I turned around to jump back onboard, the doors sluiced shut and that creaking metal bastard поезд roared off.
I might as well have kicked my camera off a cliff. At least that would have been sort of entertaining.
In terms of probability-of-recovery, I would have been better off tying the thing to the tail of a rampaging bull in the midst of a 10,000-head stampede, or hurling it into the dreadful jaws of a horrible, man-eating whale.
It’s an ignoble end to a camera I carried with me through seven states, 14 countries, mountain climbing trips, sea voyages on small, unstable watercraft, a zombie pub crawl, four relationships, and bloody Chernobyl.
I feel terrible. I’ve basically spent the morning fantasizing about sticking my head into a comically oversized pencil sharpener. If you find that image amusing, keep it to yourself, because I am in a murderin’ mood.
Actually, if you want something really funny, viddy some of the pathetic “silver linings” that my fevered brain has been desperately conjuring:
a) Less to pack! More room for tchotchkies!
b) If I ever have money again, I can upgrade to the Canon 40D SLR. This is actually something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time, because the XT is apparently designed for people with tiny elf hands (or possibly for actual elves), and the 40D has actual knobs and dials like real film SLR, which should save me from rooting through three idiotic sub-menus every time I want to change the ISO.
c) My enormously heavy camera-less tripod now serves as a handy metaphor for both impotence and decapitation.
d) I’ve had another tremendous opportunity to practice my anger-management skills, as I have essentially been a ball of searing, white-hot rage since the moment the train doors closed. I may also one day wow assorted men of science with my ability to maintain an intense state of fury even while unconscious.
e) Since I probably won’t be able to replace my nice zoom and wide-angle lenses for a while, I’ll have to buy one high-quality, single-perspective lens (probably a 35mm or a 50mm). This could theoretically make me a better photographer, as I’ll have to think more carefully about how to approach compositions, and won’t be able to rely on my telephoto lens to secretly take pictures of people from far away.
f) I like making lists. This is a list.
Hilarious, right? Ugh.
The real upswing to this mess, if there is one, is that I was once again reminded that I’m blessed with some truly amazing friends. After losing the camera, I swung by my old apartment to pick up a check card and a scarf I had forgotten when I moved out a week ago, thinking that Bob was still in Vladimir (um, it’s a city) and that I could just pop in and out without disturbing anything.
I ended up accidentally waking both Bob and his girlfriend, Lena. Not only were they unfazed by this incredibly inconsiderate intrusion, they let me crash on the couch – and when I woke Lena up with my furtive rustlings at 6 a.m., she actually got out of bed and volunteered to accompany me on my quixotic quest to recover my camera.
Not that she should have bothered. I suppose that’s the nature of tilting at windmills – half the time they knock you on your ass. We went down to the station where I lost the camera, and had to actually knock on the closed, locked door of the in-station militizia post. The bored-looking milizia guy basically just laughed in our faces, except for the laughing part. He said it was pretty naïve (or something to that effect, anyway) to expect the camera to turn up – apparently thieves will comb the last train every night, looking for dropped items and pick-pocketing passed-out drunks.
I both desperately do and do not want to see Watchmen.
I went through the same mix of breathless excitement and deep dread when The Fellowship of the Ring debuted – despite the stunning dailies and pitch-perfect trailer, I was utterly unconvinced anyone could possibly do it justice, but I sat awed and breathless through the entire three hours. Peter Jackson managed the nearly impossible and delivered a masterpiece. A flawed masterpiece, but a masterpiece nonetheless (I’ll be happy to get into what, exactly, Jackson did very wrong indeed – if you ever have a spare two hours or so you want to cash in and never get back).
Both experiences are actually comparable in a lot of ways. Firstly, Watchmen and The Lord of the Rings are two of my absolute favorite works of fiction, and they both have a lot of personal significance. The Lord of the Rings essentially introduced me to the manifold splendors of literature at the age of 8 (thanks, mom and dad!), while Watchmen introduced me to the world of adult, intelligent comics long after I had grown bored with the increasingly convoluted storylines of X-Men and Spider-Man.
More than that, though, both stories are Important Works, the kind people like to write doctoral dissertations about and apply capital letters to.
J.R.R. Tolkien played a defining role in modern fantasy, taking it out of the realm of the fairy tale and into the darkness of the 20th century. Fantasy stories weren’t just for kids anymore, one of the most powerful and enduring metaphors for evil and corruption was created, and even the traditional denizens of fairytale realms were given new life and new nuance. Elfs were no longer mischievous sprites arbitrarily making hundreds of shoes in the night on behalf of an impoverished cobbler, they were a wise, ancient race on the brink of extinction. Hell, they weren’t even called ‘Elfs’ anymore – he even changed their pluralization to the nobler (and more linguistically logical) ‘Elves.’
Alan Moore did the same thing for comic-book superheroes, stripping away the bright charade of men in tights and plunging the whole costumed panoply into the paranoid uncertainty of Nixon’s America (and a fifth-term Nixon to boot). By adding morally ambiguous and deeply flawed people to the ranks of the super-heroic (as well as more than a few psychopaths and sociopaths), he made them more human. But more importantly, he brought super-heroes down to earth. Few of the Watchmen have anything resembling a supernatural power, and those who do find that it drives an insurmountable wedge between them and the rest of humanity. Most of all, Moore’s work is one of restraint; he never gives in to the temptation to create big action set-pieces when a simple allusion will do.
So when I found out that Zack Snyder, the bombastic helmsman of the seizure-inducing nightmare 300, would be directing Watchmen, my heart sank. Snyder was actually a good choice to direct 300, because the comic it was based on was written and drawn by Frank Miller, a thoroughly obnoxious writer and utterly unsubtle artist who never uses a scalpel when a sledgehammer will do (Miller has a lively mind, however, and has produced a number of fantastic comics, including Batman Year One and The Dark Knight Returns, two of the best Batman books ever written).
Anyway, the film reviews that have been coming in are decidedly mixed, including those from friends whose taste in movies I have near-complete faith in. I am currently marooned in the English-language cinema void that is the Russian Federation, and I refuse to completely ruin my chances of enjoying Watchmen by seeing it dubbed in Russian.
My friend Kevin McClean, on the other hand, has a fairly brilliant take on the film that has somehow managed to simultaneously raise my hopes and confirm my deepest fears.
Kevin’s take (spoiler alert, for what it’s worth):
It's not bad. In fact, if you force me to use a simple binary judgment of it, I'd say 1. I want you to remember that, because what follows is going to be a litany of issues I had with the film.
You mentioned that you'd be unsurprised to find out that it is unsubtle. Well, then prepare to not have your socks blown off, because if anything this is less subtle than 300. Part of that may be because 300, in it's original inception, if exactly what you'd expect from 90's Frank Miller: over the top, excessively violent, and spends most of the reading time running around with it's dick out, trying to prove it's the biggest kid on the block (you can thank me later for merging those two particular clichés into that specific image). So while 300 may be even more unsubtle than Watchmen (and I'm certainly not going back to check), the latter feels more unsubtle. An example from the end of the movie: Dr. Manhattan of course, blows Rorschach apart. But because Snyder can't leave well enough alone, Rorschach is blown apart into a Rorschach blot. In fact, most of the changes made to the movie are poor, at best. First, the vulnerability of the characters is removed. Remember in the comic how it's stressed that these characters are or start out as completely human? There's none of that in the movie. One of my favorite ideas contained in the Ubermensch theory is that the Ubermensch eliminates the existence of a normal man. That's one of the fundamental truths of superhero comics (the all powerful beings matter more than the average Joe) and one of the inversions in Watchmen; the Nite Owls and Silks Spectres and most of the rest of the vigilantes are just regular people, which is what makes Dr. Manhattan, Ozymandias, Rorschach, and flashback Comedian so dynamic. Of course, in Snyder's world, all this goes out the window. Instead of Laurie and Dan fending off 4 or 5 thugs in an alley, they finish off 10-12 guys, killing at least two. Which, of course, makes things more uncomfortable as the movie goes on, because you have more and more extreme violence in the film. The effect of this is to rob the end of the film of its horror. Oh, and he changes the end of the film. Instead of the destruction of New York being exposition, it's actually the climax of the film. And he changes the event, to make it both more reasonable in story terms and stupider overall. Oh, and here's some changes to the film, in no particular order: the fat dude killed off outside Rorschach's cell has his arms chopped off; Ozymandias versus Comedian is a 5 minute fight complete with knife throwing, wall tossing, and Blake being punched through a marble end table; slow-motion Matrix fights with Nite Owl and Silk Spectre; an Emo Vader moment for Nite Owl when Dr. Manhattan kills Rorscharch; Dan Dreiberg actually having a spine in the first half of the movie; and keeping Bubastis in the film despite having no mention of genetic engineering anywhere.
Now, there a couple of points to highlight. First, the story was definitely put through the Zach Snyder system; blood is bloodier, fights are slow, and pain is pornographic. As I mentioned before, the main characters are also a lot more violent. And as you mentioned, Watchmen is a remarkably actionless comic. And to his credit, Snyder doesn't add in extra fight scenes. However, he does extend the ones that exist. The most memorable example is Rorschach leaps out of second story window, hits the ground, and beats the crap out of four police officers in hand to hand combat before being taken down. Oh, and instead of wandering the deserted halls of a damaged Sing-Sing, Nite Owl and Silk Spectre fight their way through using the latest in wire-fu techniques.
Snyder also streamlines the story, which is inevitable. He removes all the text bits (obviously), and all except a single scene with the old Nite Owl. Everything having to do with the average people is omitted. The cops are gone too. Even with that the movie feels like it's playing in fast-forward, which is an odd thing to say about an almost 3 hour movie. Part of that is, in the film, it takes place of 3 days. Because of that it feels like things are rushed, and it doesn't make the rest of the events make much sense. For example, why bother to set-up Rorscharch? He's probably going to be wiped out in the New York explosion, and even if he's not and figures out the plan, there's no way he's going to get to an Antarctic base in 72 hours. It's makes zero sense of Ozymandias to expose himself like that.
Now, this movie pretty much crystallized my problem with Zach Snyder. He doesn't create art; he creates artifice. This movie looks and sounds like Watchmen, but it doesn't think or feel like it. There are exceptions to this, most notably the Comedian and Dr. Manhattan, but by and large it feels like Shakespeare with the metre ripped out of it. By because of his lack of subtlety, all of the depth of the story is removed, and you just have the straightforward tale of a group of heroes failing to stop a madman from blowing up New York. For example, the smiley motif doesn't appear as often, and because of it, it lacks the punch that it has otherwise. Also, the final shot of the film isn't a bloody smiley like in the comic, but rather of Rorscharch's journal waiting to be opened. Gone is all subtext of fetishism and sexuality (Silhoutte and Ozymandias are still gay, though neither of them are in the closet as we see in the comic). Oh, and Dr. Manhattan actually says "Edward Blake...was your father" in the film, in case we missed the five preceding minutes. It was almost a post-modern experience, watching a film that tells you what every symbol means as you're watching (I'm overstating it a bit, but it's still kind of ridiculous).
The best example of the failed subtlety is, in fact, when he confronts the child killer. Instead of chaining him up and setting him on fire, he beats him up, shackles him, tells him how disgusted his is by the man, and then meat cleavers his head. Finally, he goes outside and watches the place burn. I was a bit saddened by this, since the movie eliminated most of the voiceover that the scene so effective. In fact, Synder leaves out my two favorite lines of the novel: "I watched the fire for an hour. No one got out" and "Yes, he killed Blake and half of New York. Excuse me, Rorscharch, I'm informing Laurie 90 seconds ago" are nowhere to be found in the movie. Very, very disappointing. Also, the Nixon scenes take place in the Dr. Strangelove bunker. Don't get me wrong, if I was going to destroy the world in nuclear fire it's exactly where I would do it, but you can't watch the scene and not expect Kissinger to roll up in a wheelchair or Liddy to be flying around like a bomber. It's not the best way to show your serious intent.
My favorite bit of weirdness is when Laurie is poking around Archie, and sets the storage room on fire. Instead of being Laurie bored and looking for a light for the cigarette, she instead is just poking buttons in the ship, and thinks the one with the massive flame icon would be a good one to press. The most annoying bit, though, is that all the shots and music around Veidt scream "Villain!" "Villian!," while Matthew Goode is actually being fairly understated about things.
Now, the strangest part of the movie is the sex scene between Nite Owl and Silk Spectre. Instead of being a single page that ends with the superhero version of a train going through a tunnel, instead we get a 3 minute long aerobic exercise set to Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah". I wish to God I was making that up. Before this happens, I'm more or less going along with the film, and accepting of the occasional misstep, but I and everyone I was with laughed our way through that scene, and it absolutely broke the drive of the movie. If you look around at reviews of the film, it's usually mentioned as one of the worst sex scenes in film, and considering it's 1) a near unanimous appraisal, and 2) coming in the initial wave of reviews, it's safe to say that it qualifies as gross error at best.
So having spent the last screen worth of space discussing the flaws, I'll now go over the merits of the movie. You'll notice that these are shorter, but it's worth mentioning that except for the subtlety issues, everything above technically qualifies as nitpicking. First off, the performances are almost all good to excellent. Laurie is portrayed poorly, as if she knows how she's supposed to act but not how to act like that. It's like Dr. Manhattan, but unintentional. Speaking of the Doctor, he is an exemplary bit in the film. The special effects for the Doctor are very good, and Billy Cudrup is an effective nascent god. His scenes on Mars and the story of his past are among the best parts of the film. Right next to him in the quality performances is Jackie Earl Haley as Rorscharch. If you don't know the name, he's actually Kelly Leak from the Bad News Bears (honestly. Not making that up at all). He looks, sounds, and feels exactly like Rorscharch. Either Haley is a hell of a method actor, or he's the latest example in how child stars fall from grace. Also joining the troika of quality is Jeffery Dean Morgan as the Comedian. He feels exactly like he should for the part. These three obviously understood their characters in the comic down to the smallest subtleties, and played them exactly as they should. Coming in a close second is Nite Owl and Ozymandias. Both of them, I feel, are portrayed correctly by their actors, but they both fail for reasons beyond their control. First, Patrick Wilson does not look as schlubby as Dan Dreiberg should. When he's in a suit and walking around he looks like, but he well built and muscular in the scenes where he's naked. It's like they had him a fat suit for the clothes, but couldn't be bothered to put prosthetics on him when he's naked. As for Ozymandias, Matthew Goode does a very good job with him, but for some reason they decided to make him look like he's in his early thirties. And again, the camera angles and music couldn't be more indicative of villainous intent. Finally, there is the crucial scene where the group organizes in the late sixties, and is blown apart by the Comedian. Instead of being brought together by Captain Metropolis, they're brought in by Ozymandias, and the result of that (along with some minor tweaks to the dialogue later) makes it seem like he's actually pushing against the Comedian's philosophy. And while he claims to be doing that in the novel, if you notice there is the very subtle idea that what he's doing is actually agreeing with the Comedian, except he's actually doing something about it instead of going along for the ride. Special mentions go the old Silk Spectre for looking 5 years old than her daughter, to the original Nite Owl for looking like Paul Newman, and Richard Nixon for wearing a rubber Richard Nixon mask.
Finally, a very notable high point of the film is the opening credits. It's a montage that's set to 'The Times They Are A Changin'" by Dylan. It's the whole version of the song, and neatly encapsulates the entire history of masked heroes in the world, starting with the Nite Owl's first appearance all the way to the Keene Act. It covers the life and death of the Silhoutte, and the loss of Mothman, the rise of the next generation, and all the back story you need to the film. It's an excellent bit of filmmaking to which Watchmen does not live up. Now, if was up to me, I would have used Desolation Row in the film, as it's actually mentioned in the comic, and is the perfect music to accompany the novel. Snyder has said that he intended the credits sequence to by about 10 minutes long, which would imply use of Row was originally planned. However (and for the next section you'll need a bag for barfing), it can no longer be used in the film, because the end credits use Desolation Row by...My Chemical Romance. Imitating the Sex Pistols. It's a horrible way to the end film.
So after all that, why did I like it? First, it's different then most films out there. And since superheroes movies are to the late 00's as star heavy action movies were to the late 80s, anything that pushes the boundaries of the genre is a very good thing. Second, I feel the strengths of the film outweigh the flaws, even though several of them pull you out of the film. Finally, 90% of my complaints are how they did things differently than the comic, and I don't feel you can truly compare works from differing media, even if they are the same story. Two final thoughts: it's a better film than 300, but I don't think I enjoyed it as much. And if you sit back and imagine "Zack Snyder's Watchmen", it's exactly that, both good and ill.
“One day I’m going to drop a bomb on this city. A contraceptive bomb.” – Spider Jerusalem
The real gold in this New York Times article – besides the hilarious, unselfconsciously awkward cooking-show lead (“Today we will be talking about…” Oh, science writers. You just get right into it, don’t you?) – can be found in the comments section, wherein readers of the New York Times bemoan the coming stupid-ocalypse. Good gods, people, the human race has somehow staggered along thus far, I think it will continue to do so.
Actually, it reminds me of the opening scene in Idiocracy, the sporadically hilarious but mostly awful Mike Judge flop.
I try to be a little more optimistic (and a little less histrionic), but I will inevitably encounter something like… oh, I don’t know, a mother who thinks an empty bag of Wonder Bread makes an acceptable diaper substitute for her otherwise-naked three-year-old child. And my faith is tested.
Meep Meep Meep Meep Meep Meep Meep Meep Meeeeeeeeeep Meep-Meep!
When my friend Y––––– (She’s quote “majorly google-phobic,” so I’m seizing the opportunity to assume 18th century literary affectations) proposed an early Saturday-morning constitutional followed by a quick plunge into the Moscow River, the only part of her plan that gave me pause was the prematurity of the appointed hour. I am not, in my nature, a habitual early riser…
(And with that, I think I’ll stop [badly] aping Bertie Wooster’s diary and tumble back into graceless modern prose)
So yeah, other than getting up at the crack of dawn – which, incidentally, we failed at spectacularly – I was down with this plan. I went swimming in the Novgorod River (talk about uncreative names for bodies of water) back in November, but that was before it had frosted over, and there’s a warm banya just a few yards away. This time, we would be a good 20 minute walk from Y–––––’s apartment with only a towel, a warm change of clothing, and our hardy constitutions to sustain us.
This kind of action is old hat for my river-rat girlfriend, and archaeological-artifact-believed-to-have-been-a-hat (really old hat, in other words) for Y–––––, who has been jumping into cold bodies of water for decades.
We brought my sled down to the park near her house, figuring we could get a few good runs in before going swimming. We did go down a couple of times, but the snow was hard-packed and icy, which meant super-fast, uncontrollable runs. According to the Calvin & Hobbes philosophy, that kind of uncontrolled vertiginous descent is the optimal sledding experience, but we were evidently feeling our mortality a little too keenly that morning.
Maybe we were worried about ploughing into the dozens of little kids clogging up the base of the hill, maybe we left our cojones at home, or maybe the park by the river was just too suffused with peace and tranquility for mad dive bombing.
Moscow really is a miraculous city – it presents a completely different landscape, aesthetic and mood depending on where you’re standing and what you’re looking at.
I live in the chain-store, mall-colonized shopping district, where every corner you turn opens up on another shop-lined street or megamall, another McDonalds or Кофе Хауз.
But Y–––––’s flat is a little further out of town, on the fringe of the embryonic, unfinished business district of Делавой Центр. Hills and trees are everywhere, major retailers are few and far between, and the only thing that gives a hint that she’s living in a bustling metropolis is the jagged cluster unfinished skyscrapers in the distance. Even the atmosphere of the metro changes as you head toward her neighborhood; the train shoots out from underground and into the opening, emerging from its tunnel into a glittering world of tree banks and white snow.
Anyway, the stretch of river and parkland near her place is about as tranquil a bend of water as anyone could ask for. We walked along the bank for about 15 minutes, until we came to a trio of rusty metal leading into the water, next a small woodcutter’s shed and an assortment of old Soviet exercise equipment, all painted that ubiquitous military green and flaked with rust.
We waited for a few cross-country skiers to clear out and got down to the business of taking off our winter clothes and jumping in the river. The pictures explain the experience better than I can, but what’s missing is the expression of shock and horror on my face as I plunge through the icy scum on top and into the deep, cold water.
Unlike Y–––––, who did a few abortive doggy-paddle circles before climbing out, I basically starting fumbling wildly for the ladder the second I broke the surface.
After climbing out, the cold shock was replaced by that exhilarating flushed-clean and tingly sensation, when every nerve in your body suddenly snaps to attention and says “Wha? Whazzat? I’m awake, I’m awake!”
It felt great, actually, and after running up and down the river’s edge and clambering over some exercise equipment, I warmed up again, enough so that my shaking hands were no longer rendering picture taking impossible.
The only problem was that instead of big sheep-wool boots like Y––––– had, I brought a pair of one-size-small cotton sneakers I found in the closet of my apartment. My feet were so numb and unresponsive that it took a couple of minutes just to jam them into the shoes. Once I got moving and stamped my feet a little, the life came back into them, but next time I’m going to bring the biggest, warmest pair of boots I own.
Right as we were getting ready to leave, a pair of ancient old men walked up to the little shack where we had hung up our clothes and asked us if we had gone in. When we told them yeah, they just raised their bushy white eyebrows and said “Bravo. We’re going in, too!”
When we left them shortly thereafter, they were doing aerobic jumping jacks and stretch exercises in preparation for the big plunge.
On the way back, we noticed all kinds of symbols and signage left by the Russian “Walrus” Club – old dudes and dudettes who jump into cold water in the wintertime. I like to think the two old walruses who cheered us on are proud to see the younger generation taking up the mantle.
Goog goog g'joob!
