Where, I don’t know? Russian is a stressful language, or at least it wants to be stressed, to be pushed and pulled with predefined rules such as in a predefined dance. Dance classes stretch me, demand exactness and reciprocity and it is the same for the Russian language; I want to make it all up, express it at my own guise but it is important to learn the set conventions, for better communication.
The streets of St Peter are full of stereotypes, effortless stereotypes and not the carefully constructed images of London. A man in tweed and glasses hanging by string, tall and gangly, from a book, from a film. A tall pale man, he too from a image of primitive revolutionaries, of innocent youth.
The many women epitomising feminity with long shining hair and furr coats that seem still to be alive, beautiful full hoods. They have stepped from the muted colours of an eighteenth century painting, rather than from the immense uncouth jaws of the metro.
In my world, the ideal is to appear ‘inappropriately centuried/era’d’, to not have been born into this same era, to have something magic and other, transcending all, standing out in all western culture. The red beret - it stood out as more solid, more wholesome, antique, magic than the high street berets which sprung into fashion, was one means of such a transcendance but that has been stolen from me now, in this tranposed world full of beautiful antique butterflies amongst the rising capitalist mist.
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