|
russian desires In the early morning hours, I finally finished reading Reeling in Russia by Fen Montaigne and having finished it, I want to read even more about Russia. Here is a nation that for decades was the enemy in the cold war, but all of that came to a close at the beginning of this decade. These were the people that beat the United States in the beginnings of the space race and now they are abandoning Mir. This was the country that my parents remember being scared of when their leader said that they would bury us and now his son is an American citizen. So much about this country has changed and I want to see it at least once. I'm not trying to belittle the people. No, I'm just trying to understand something so far removed from my daily experience. Here is a country in chaos struggling for some kind of order with the Russian people lost amongst the ruins of what they once knew. Some of the people are succeeding under these new conditions of freedom, while others are lost without a government to feed and protect them and end up being mired in vodka. They have far more resources than the United States yet most of the people live in a form of poverty that resembles the nineteenth century. I want to see if the curent generation can change the future of the country. There is so much possiblity there, but they themselves know that it will not happen over night. I am sure that some of this might sound condescending, but I don't mean it that way. I'm not trying to be the self righteous American laughing at their sorry state. I just want to see this country that was hidden from us for so many years and before I fell asleep I found three more books to read about traveling through the new Russia. If I can do it, I want to go to St. Petersburg next year when I am in Europe. I guess that I should have expected it to happen. As soon as I talk about the heat, it disappears here. When I walked out of work this morning, there was an actual chill in the air. Clouds drifted west across the sky with the cool breeze and I could tell that autumn was that much closer. Soon the days will be even shorter and the leaves will start to change color. The best part is that I can hardly wait for it to happen, because fall is my favorite time of the year. Most people see it as a time of slowing down or dying, but for me there seems to be so much more energy in the air after the dulling effects of the summer heat.
|