MOSCOW, Sunday, 29 August 2004

TIRED

It is 8:07 PM and I am tired. I earned it. Went to bed at about 3 o'clock this morning after reading a little Agatha Christie and watching the Olympics here and there.

I don't know what time I woke up to read a little more Agatha Christie and return to bed. At 3:30 PM, I left the hotel only to return five minutes later, when two drops from heaven fell on my head, to collect my plastic raincoat. For the next four hours, with the exception of one stop on the train from Kropotskinskaya to Borovitskaya and another stop to Chekovskaya, i have been on my feet.

On the way, I saw a beautiful painting of mother and child for $200 but didn't buy it. It was well worth it! There's this area stretching for about 100 metres of paintings on the sidewalk, near the Moscow River. Real good stuff that I simply admired in passing because I didn't want to be tempted. But I did stop for mother and child. I have a fascinating with all mother and child paintings. I had two wonderful books of paintings which I gave to two friends.

Apropos walking. If walking is what the doctor ordered, I guess I will be blogging well into my 120's, but, alas, he ordered more. And I told him to forget it, if what ails me kills me, so be it. I will be rid of a lot of crap on what could've been a wonderful planet.

When words fail me, I always seem to opt for my notes:

VISIT

If you plan to visit Russia, do yourself a favor and at least learn the alphabet. It will help you to figure out stations in the metro system and PECTOPAH (restaurants).

It may have been 1976. I was working at UNICEF in New York City and had a strong desire to attend the Olympics in Russia. So I bought a book to study the Russian language. The only thing I learned then was something like "Ya na panamaya pa'russki", which means "I don't speak Russian." Unfortunately, after almost 30 years, that's as much as I can say. The extent of my vocabulary.

In 1995, when I met Irma at a reggae dance in St. Petersburg she knew just enough English to ask: "Patrick like Irma?" Irma was soft spoken, had a child, and was with a girlfriend. We danced a lot that night and something very strange happened. A Russian approached me, and sort of took me over to his group of guys to dance. I felt threatened. Did he find it distasteful that I was with a Russian woman, or did his crew simply want to learn the latest reggae dance steps? So, for a quiet life, I danced for a while, a bit like those guys in the Western movies who dance while some crazy bloke with a wild scar on his cheek, fires gunshots near his feet. I thought I had danced enough and returned, unhindered, to Irma. We were once doing that snake dance where you hold the waist of the person in front of you, and I was holding Irma, or was she holding me?, but a woman cut in between us and Irma was quite pissed. It must have been around 5 AM when I tapped her on the shoulder to tell her I was leaving. She turned and hugged me as if I was her man and was going off to fight the Cossaks.

Irma!

Patrick Barry Barr