By Lowell Poisson (MFA 2016)
Urban exploring is always a freeing
experience, a new place with mystery and questions and excitement. The abandoned
escalator was what the group needed, a break from museums and cathedrals and
large throngs of zombified tourists. Climbing over broken concrete and fractured steel is
always a rush, maneuvering through piles of broken glass and getting some good
views. The structure, being weathered by human neglect and nature, always
brings up moments of calm amongst a situation of chaos.
But unlike the crumbling
neglected escalator once used by many and guarded. Lenin's body is an odd sight
to see. Not that it is amazing or anything special, it is just a comically dark
sight to lay ones eyes upon. Matt suggested that we go and check this out. I
did not know what too expect out of this experience, but little did I
know...After waiting in a somewhat long line for about 30 minutes or so
passing through metal detectors and a backpack screening and stern faces of the
guards, it started to seem more like a very grim Disneyland ride. We entered a
marble crypt environmentally controlled, bringing to mind something like a
giant vegetable crisper to keep him, Lenin, as fresh as possible lest decay
really take hold of the nearly century-old corpse. As we entered I turned to
Magaly to ask...and was immediately quieted by the guard watching over his body
and asked to take my hands out of my pockets. As I looked at his surprisingly pink
corpse somewhat flattened with time adorned in a lavish casket one hand in a
fist the other laying flat and calm; I started to ask myself: Did he really
want this done to himself? Who is the poor sap that has to clean him? Is that
actually his body? Why is he so pink? What does this accomplish for anyone?
Later on we took a visit
to the Russian space museum. Seeing what the space race began with was
interesting insight to where we are today. As I stood Gazing upon the
original Sputnik 1 that launched in 1957 and thinking about and the storm that
immediately followed creating the American Sputnik crisis. I realized that this
right here is one of the turning points in human history. Where we are today
was literally launched with this metal sphere. A hunk of flying metal
intricately engineered by the knowledge of man created a fear of fellow human
beings. This term was coined the Sputnik crisis, and with this our government
created NASA, ICBMs, chicken that comes in tubes, astronauts, and tin foil hats.
And a fear arose of who would be the world super power, an arms race began, and the Cuban Missile Crisis sent a fear through humanity that global catastrophe could happen. And there is still residual fear of this, as we have stock-piled enough ICBMs to create our own mass extinction twenty times over. It is quite a curious thing how we humans can take such amazing and mind-opening endeavors and then churn them in to a loaf of fear to consume and get always, perpetuating the idea that we are always up to some sort of evil. Why must the glass be half empty?
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| Laika and Strelka the Soviet space dogs, stuffed and on permanent display. |
Onward our group traveled, seeing onion
dome cathedrals and icons, beautiful Russian art through a haze of Moscow
cigarette smoke. I love this place!
We met up with our awesome professor,
Chea, and soon after we where boarding a tiny cramped train bound for Saint
Petersburg that smelled of B.O. and black tea. Cold beers were a must on this
journey. We were taking the night train, chasing the sunrise that starts at 2am
because of the higher latitudes that we were traveling towards. I lay in my
bunk watching the trees pass, bathed in the light blue glow of the never-setting
sun, listening to the murmur of the train and the occasional snores of my fellow
travelers, and suddenly I awoke in Saint Petersburg. Sharing some super tight
quarters with fellow travelers and Ruskies was great!
Later I greeted Saint Petersburg with a
proper sunrise! Climbing up on some rooftop at 3am with guide Nikita and a
fellow explorer, we looked over the canal. I sat there till 5am; coming back down
from being on top of a beautiful city was a difficult, but that day we were
going to The Hermitage Museum, so more fun was waiting down in the city that I
was just admiring from above.
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