I
twist the ring between my fingers, the smooth spotted bluestone soothing
against my skin and my nerves. I do this without thinking
I've done so many things but nothing
is as great as standing where people have been standing for thousands of years.
I can't cry with everyone around so I stem the flow and wish I could stand at
Stonehenge under the stars. I can't believe it’s simply something that humans
have done and then ruined because we ruin everything.
Everything hurts me and I feel different from everyone else but I know it will
get better, because I bet they all feel the same way and that hurts even more.
I don't think I'll forget but I'm worried that I won't remember that this is
really happening.
Standing before Stonehenge and
trying not to cry because it's too much to take in even though I've been there
an hour and really, it's just some upright slabs of stone, but it's too much to
think about. It's a Moment, just like my first glimpse of Russia at 1:30 am
through windows of the Solarium.
There were other moments, but I
think about Stonehenge every morning when I put on my necklace I bought in the
gift shop after I finally managed to rip myself away from it. It was simple and
cheap, only a bluestone ring on a short silver chain, but I wear it every day
and I think about it when I get nervous or stressed. I twist the ring around my
middle finger, a new habit I've picked up these last few months, and I even
have nightmares of it shattering. Twisting it only helps so much; it's never quite
enough to calm me down.
As
I return to my cabin each night, far later than anyone but the staff still
cleaning and preparing and smiling unfailingly, I seek out each security camera
and make strange faces at the black lens.
I don't mind that someone will see
because it's just a glass lens and it has to be refreshing for whoever’s on
watch at 2 am to see someone who doesn't look half-dead (physically or
figuratively, it's all the same here). I want to stop and scream that I'm not
the ghost you are to me but no one would hear. Instead I just walk to my cabin
and clutch my laptop and journal and nod at each passing attendant, using my
headphones as an excuse not to engage in excruciating small talk. All I want is
to just carry on.
I don't want the age thing to be
such a big deal but if one more old person gives me that surprised look when I
tell them I graduated from university already, I'm going to give them a deadpan
stare and say "Why, how old are you?"
I know that's not really playing fair but it's much harder to be respectful of
the elderly when I've already listened to this album three times and my
headphones are starting to press against my glasses and give me a headache and
if I forget to say "university" instead of "college" they
think I haven't actually accomplished anything yet.
My dad likes this song, as I found out when he drove me to the airport on day one of my trip. He raised me on Beach Boys and Dr. Demento but I never did like the Beatles, and I know he doesn't like My Chemical Romance but it's good that he likes Fun. because they are my traveling anthem.
I desperately want someone to find
new ways to fall apart with, but I don't lack for people to carry me home. Even
though home can never be in the same place as my parents because I can't live
in San Diego. I don't talk about serious things when we are driving to the
airport because I can't bear to set the world on fire and then disappear without
helping them put it out.
For forty years, French architect Auguste de Montferrand designed and oversaw the building of St. Isaac's Cathedral in St. Petersburg, Russia, commissioned by Tsar Alexander I.
Montferrand died in 1858, one month after the cathedral's completion.
While Montferrand's widow grieved, Tsar Alexander I refused the man's last wish to be buried in the crypt of his masterpiece, for Montferrand wasn't Russian, or Orthodox.
The altar of St. Isaac's Cathedral is carved out of lapis lazuli and malachite. I've read about these stones in textbooks but I didn't expect them to be so deeply and painfully vivid; how can such color exist in nature? Maybe I was supposed to spend more time looking at the golden, shining paintings of Christ - they looked like someone had taken a long time to create.
Probably not as long as forty years, though.
My grandma came to stand next to me as I stared at the blue and green altar for the thirty-five minutes we were allowed inside. She whispered in my ear even though every other tourist wasn't bothering to be quiet. She said that she wished she could lie down on the floor and stare, forever, because only then could she truly manage to take everything in. I nodded in agreement and thought, if a man can spend forty years building a monument to a religion he didn't believe in, then we are all entitled to the eternal resting place of our choice.
St. Petersburg has no shortage of Russian Orthodox churches but apparently Moscow holds the more traditional ones. I felt more cheated by the lack of interesting souvenirs than in the European-style churches. I honestly couldn't tell the difference between them anyway, at least not from the exterior.
The Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood was built around the location of the assassination of Tsar Alexander II, thus earning it’s grotesque moniker. The altar isn't made of lapis lazuli but it does have a great origin story, for it was built directly over the pooled blood of the tsar. I wondered if they washed the blood away before they began construction or left it, a morbid stain to mark out the right spot.
The small girl picking daisies in the grass outside didn't know about the blood, and I wished I could have taken her in hand and shown her the lapis lazuli in St. Isaac's instead of merely spying at her from behind the wrought iron gates. Instead I went inside and ignored the floor-to-ceiling mosaics of New Testament stories and gazed upward at the colossal image of Christ's face bearing down on the worshippers. In his arms he once cradled a German bomb, which stayed live for decades yet never detonated, only to be discovered in the 1970s when restoration finally began.
I didn't want to spend forever in the Church of the Spilt Blood. Maybe because it's only a museum and no longer a place of worship, which I suppose made me feel a little cheated, just like I felt cheated out of good souvenirs. Fake Faberge eggs and cheap nesting dolls and vodka were all that any tourist shop had to offer.
Stupid or not, I expected snow and bears in Russia, and although both were conspicuously absent I did find a t-shirt that read "I've been to Russia and there are no bears." Whoever started that stereotype was an idiot but I'd love to meet him, just as I'd love to meet Montferrand and that little girl with her flowers.
The cruise ship was cold at night. I often had to pass through the outdoor pool deck to get to my chosen haunting grounds, because I kept taking the wrong staircase. An elevator would have taken me directly to the Solarium, but I quickly stopped using elevators; I always wanted to be alone and the elevator walls were made of glass and the ocean was always so very dark and close.
I'd pass the pool attendant shivering in his windbreaker, which might be enough during the day but at night the Baltic Sea feels freezing, even though it's far from that. We were sailing on the first crossing for the spring, and although the Baltic hasn't frozen over completely since 1987, it's still too icy to travel through until May.
I always tried to greet him pleasantly, the poor man on top deck duty, but all that would come out was an awkward half-smile as I hunched over and slowed my steps for the automatic doors. It was warmer inside, the Solarium artificially heated, jungle sounds playing softly and the spa jets humming even though by 9 pm I'd be the only one around. I could never quite pin down the theme of the Solarium, some mix between safari and wilderness and India, but it didn't matter because there were green chaise lounges and no one to bother me except the passing attendants.
So one night, like every other, I sat down in one of the lounges and turned on my Kindle and turned up my music and settled down to pretend I wasn't in the middle of the ocean. It took longer to get to Russia from Estonia than I would have thought, so these nights grew common, and I learned that George R.R. Martin is great for escapism and between fiction and Fun. I always managed to forget about the ship for a while.
I'd read for hours, stay out longer and longer each night, and feel relieved that I refused to carry that walkie-talkie my step-grandpa tried to force on me the first day of our trip (“I am twenty years old,” I told him, and the subject never came up again). I did have a cell phone, a red flip phone like the ones we had in middle school, but it barely got reception on the Baltic. So I'd read and listen and eventually come across some profundity beyond fighting and politicking and that night, like so many others, I paused to collect my thoughts. And like so many other nights, I thought the same things:
The people I wish would talk to me won't, because I'm a tourist in a group of so many camera-toting t-shirts and they are native and I can't leave the group, as much as I want to turn down a cobblestone street and just disappear. So instead I try to meet the younger crowd on the ship, but to do so in earnest would require me to visit the clubs and that's not my scene. Instead I just keep wandering by myself and reading for hours in the Solarium and going up to climb the rock wall, shuddering away from every accidental glance at the oceanic whitecaps.
If only I had the guts to stop the young girl I keep passing in the elevator and ask if she wants to hang out. I imagine exactly how the conversation would go:
"I know this sounds weird, but you're literally the first person I've seen in a week who wasn't 50-plus," I'd say, raising my hands in a gesture of peace.
The girl would regard me closely. "I'm 20."
"Me too," I'd tell her. "You don't look it."
"Neither do you," she'd answer, starting to smile.
"A fact I've been constantly reminded of since I left London," I'd sigh and roll my eyes.
"You're from London?" She'd ask, her own accent making it clear she's either American or Canadian. "I would have guessed America."
"I'm from California," I'd shrug, closing the gap between us and holding out my hand.
The girl would reach out and shake it briefly and then pause for a moment, wondering about the proper follow-up question. "So where are you headed?" she'd ask, settling for a change of subject.
"Well, it's dinnertime, so I guess I'll go eat."
"You know, if you want to wait, the buffet opens in half an hour." Her implied invitation would be clear, yet smooth in the way I never manage.
"I like the food there much more than the fancy shit in the dining room," I'd grin.
She'd laugh and agree, "And none of that ridiculous assigned seating!"
We'd continue to chat as we climb the staircase and spend the rest of the evening hanging out together. She wouldn't try to talk me into going to whatever party was happening on whatever dance floor and I wouldn't talk too much about things that don't matter, all those things that tend to spill out when I’m desperate for company, like obscure movie trivia and my favorite trends in young adult fiction and why I don't want to be from California anymore. We would just walk around the ship and laugh and agree to Facebook each other the moment we found working wifi, no pressure, just laughing and sharing our misery together.
But at some point I would always stop imagining this beautiful fictional friendship and remember that I don't "hang out," not with strangers on ships that I'm too shy to talk to. And I definitely don't use elevators anymore.
May 9, 2012. Four days after I graduated from university, I got on a plane with my grandparents and flew to London. We spent only five days there, but for the first time in my life, I learned a profound and honest truth about myself, without even trying. I learned that for once I actually knew myself and my heart. I had thought for so many years that I wanted to live in England, that I needed to be there; and the most important thing I learned in those four days was that I was incredibly, profoundly right. And after those five days, I got on a cruise ship and visited some other neat places and at the end, I was different. That I hadn’t predicted, and living life again as my old self was no longer possible, probable, or doable.
In the end, all I had left was the desperate need to get back to England. It took me four more years to do so. In the meantime, I had Fun.
