"That day, for no particular reason, I decided to go for a little run..."

Distance: 21 kilometers
Time: 2 hours 1 minute (one minute, for God´s sake...)
Average Speed: 10,4 km per hour
Most Encouraging Information: 1277 calories burnt 
Personal achievement:  and a completely new feeling of knowing myself better.  

It was not before my body had completely gotten over the torturing experience of running for good two hours non-stop;

It was not before I had generously helped loading it with tons of chocolate, pies and sugar in the following month with two birthdays of my daughter´s and my husband´s;

It was not before a month had passed, 
when I actually felt ready to come out and talk about it publicly -
- my first and largest masochistic experiment - taking part in the Reykjavik marathon. 

It started at 8:40 am on a most boring and wet late-August typical Icelandic morning. I will abstain from the chronology and detalization of the events, but will instead share my experiences and interesting moments of taking part in that "most unnecessary and disturbing" (thank you, mom) event.

My moderately handsome husband was running full marathon (for those blessed who do not know, this means 42 kilometers of pain, misery, blistered feet, and occasional self-pity) that day. We started together and he, in a rather gentlemanly manner, was accompanying his lady the first ten kilometers, until, of course, he felt rather bored and got tired of, actually, walking.

After the first five, I got a recurrent thought circling in my mind, measuring the distance: God bless Drinking Stations and good people working there. This is the actual measure for a runner, an occasional oasis of life and hope, not the abstract kilometers which seem only growing longer with every step.

A half-conscious crowd sharing a common blurred state of mind, hardly seeing anything through the pain in the lungs and with the leg muscles dying with every step, can hardly be expected to observe the manners and etiquettes and avoid throwing paper cups under the feet, but miracles happen: a moderately handsome gentleman of mine was actually running with his cup in the hands for a good mile looking for a trash bin, under the judgmental look of his not-so-well-mannered spouse, until one of the cheering people took it from him. Apparently, manners are always manners.

People standing outside and cheering was the highlight of the trail. Honestly. Thank you all for being there! If you haven´t been at any side of the path, just try to imagine how all those people got up on an early cold and wet morning, went out with the kids and occasional water and pastry, were standing outside in the rain, clapping, smiling, playing music, encouraging us, to get over ourselves, to keep on going, to believe we can do it. (When I stop running, I,  hereby, in this piece promise to all of you - witnesses reading this - I will put up all my grumpy, irritated and sullen kids at 8am and go out at every marathon to cheer and support those crazy courageous people). Here and now I can only say, thank you. Probably, you have no idea how much it mattered!

Other words of gratitude I should address to my brave and determined step-son just only for the fact that he, in his teenage anarchic-nihilistic prime, put himself out of a warm bed at 8am on Sunday morning, went out alone into the cold rain and wandered for hours in the streets of Reykjavik with a camera, trying to catch us on the trail to take good pictures... Indeed, that day was full of personal victories.

A rather (believe me, this is just a literary understatement) lean Japanese man was running somehow around me most of my twenty kilometers - overtaking lazily and lagging behind for taking pictures of the most beautiful scenery and places that we were passing by, until he quite (again, understatement) easily and gracefully turned into the full marathon path and lost himself for his next 42 kilometers with more pictures to be taken with grace and ease of running. Speaking of the cultural labeling.

Interesting (I am not sure it was the exact emotion of the spur of the moment) it was to see the cocky sporty super guys running already back fresh and frisky when me, my pain, both of my lungs and each and every of my leg muscles were only hardly finishing our first ten.

Rather amusing was to realise that both feet started to blister on the 12th kilometer (9 km more to go). In my defense - I did prepare! I did read all those numerous advice web-sites about how to prepare for the marathon. I did put on my old comfy running shoes and all-proven professional socks. I just failed to take into consideration the high dampness of the day, and on several occasions in the beginning, when we all were still running in one big crowd, I stepped into the water and that irrevocably for weeks, for many a painful shower, settled the sorrowful destiny of both of my feet. The professional running socks, eventually, were the only serious loss of the day.

People show their true colours in the long distance running. Or is any demanding situation working as a touchstone and depriving us of the craftiness and pretense? Spending two hours with more or less the same people around you, one can see how different we all indeed are. Someone runs pushy, overtaking and stepping just in front of you, someone steps into the big pool and makes the feet of everyone around a wet mess, and someone (there was one guy) completely exhausted, sweating and already hardly running, who saw a glove drooped by a guy running in front of us; with everyone just passing, he picked it up and followed the guy for six more kilometers unable neither to get up to him, nor even to shout anything, but just carrying his glove.

Finishing the last kilometer with the rain in the face was not what a girl with a makeup on the eyes would dream of (you know exactly what I mean, sisters), especially with the full awareness that my step-son would be waiting for me to take pictures of me beautiful finishing. Nothing doing... Passing by Harpa (a national opera house) - a grandeur manifestation of the small and proud nation´s self-consciousness - encouraged me to hold my head high and whole-heartedly believe Christina Aguilera that we are all beautiful... no matter what.

I do not consider myself an emotional person to weep in the movies, on books or cute stories but going through the finish line, at that very moment, I blessed the rain washing down stuff from my eyes.

I did it.


Copyright © 2013 by Olga Johannesson

An Always Within Never

"Thinking back on it, this evening, with my heart and my stomach all like jelly, I have finally concluded, maybe that´s what life is about: there´s a lot of despair, but also the odd moment of beauty, where time is no longer the same. It´s as if those strains of music created a sort of interlude in time, something suspended, an elsewhere that had come to us, an always within never. 
Yes, that´s it, an always within never." 

(Muriel Barbery "The Elegance of the Hedgehog")


Have you ever stopped completely absorbed by the moment? It could have been anything: a purity of nature, a breathtaking landscape, a stunning sunset, a pale sunrise, a piece of music, a line of a poem, a frailty of a flower, a tenderness of a bird´s singing, anything? As if, in this particular moment, we get the revelation of life, if only we could read through it...

Have you ever been able to almost physically feel the bliss of a perfection, a unity of the nature and a human, a state when everything around you and inside you come together despite the most disturbing circumstances, states, dispositions, griefs, sorrows, concerns - everything gets washed away leaving you cleansed and pure, ready to absorb this momentarily gift of the universe - the gift of being.   

...by its definition to make a day perfect something special should designate a senseless 24-hour existence or even a better definition would suit a chain of desirable events (to cover a 24-hour senseless existence) in such a way so that by the time one is ready to hit the pillow and send oneself into the oblivion one actually feels (for once) accomplishment and a positive attitude which justifies the meaningless dwelling and fulfills unyielding all-human existential Angst (at least until a warm encounter with a cup of coffee, appeasing with the harsh reality of the following morning).

My perfect day started at 5:30 am, with the sun still enjoying the nap, and my own daughter slapping me by my own pillow into my own face. As the weekend morning are primarily my duty to wake up before dawn with our smiling early bird, with the angels still sleeping, I greeted my usual 5 am friend, the devil, who was already dancing in my head, running shivers through my body and with a tender whisper tempting me to run away and join the circus (until it's too late and everyone wakes up).

I took the smiling happy angel out of our bed and let my lucky bastard moderately handsome husband watch his I-am-using-my-laser-to-kill-all-aliens-in-space dreams (I, quite groundlessly and naively, still choose to believe it is only scenario that is running under the warm cuddling blanket in the sweetness of early mornings since his age of fourteen).

At 5:30 am I went out of a warm bedroom into the coldness of an abandoned living room to face the unbearable brightness of being in the five electric lights with the demon of electricity (seriously, what is this thing?) snapped out into the human world by a switch.

And that was still long before God created coffee that day...
Or roosters had finished with the demons for the third time that lonely September morning...

Holding the thought of the roosters, demons and a protective happy baby in the arms I have proceeded to open the balcony door to see... an Eden - a quiet, completely calm, warm September morning - air standing still, motionless; thin salty smell of the ocean layering the gray transparent air, like the jasper seaweed curls gently threading through the solid waters of the ocean; and all was peaceful, still: houses, trees, posts. Grass, roofs, tarmac saturated their colours with the sprinkles of mildew and turned up ever so bright and sharp in the dullness of the air. Beauty.

I packed my angel into the overalls and we went out. We walked to the playground in the complete silence of being. While the little one was quietly exhilarating herself on the swings, tuned into the common mood of the nature and the city around (babies are strangely sensitive to the nature talking), I looked at the damp jade thickness of the shrubs circling the quiet playground and sheltering our bliss. Time stopped. We were in a parallel universe, standing in our quiet transparent world in the middle of the noisy and loud playground, children running, shouting, mothers chatting with an occasional yell for a bully to stop or a toddler's cry after falling on the ground - and at the same time - only me and my daughter, in the silence and tranquility of the damp morning, and a raven cawed harshly three times, flying pass by above our heads, pronouncing our fates, and us, blessed in our ignorance, incapable of knowing...

When we came back home I had my morning coffee. Many things happened through that ordinary September Sunday, none of them would seem obviously special. But the perfection lies in simplicity, and the beauty in the eye of the beholder, doesn´t it?

It is just about a beautiful morning, a smiling baby-daughter, a loyal husband, safe home, and a good coffee. And once, an always within never.


Copyright © 2013 by Olga Johannesson

That Moderately Handsome Husband of Mine...

The Russian proverb goes as paganly as it can be: "A husband and a wife are one devil", bearing a direct reference, of course, to the most sacred book of the mankind: "...and shall cleave into his wife: and they shall be one flesh" (Gen. 2:23). I think I have already mentioned that unique spiritual blend of paganism, mysticism, eastern beliefs and Christianity in its splendid and grandeur case of Orthodoxy which makes up an ordinary religious vision of a commoner and explains the appearance of the proverb, but today it's nothing of a religion or of a commoner.
Today it's about someone very special... 



Some years ago (let's leave diachronic precision to the historians) in a far away land, in the most improbable circumstances, deep in the sweat of the work exhaustion, in a state as remote as it can be from any romance potentiality, despite all the odds, in the middle of my relatively set and content life, I am meeting a moderately handsome man - "my heart's desire", "an apple of my eye", "a flesh of mine", "my bread of life" and "the fat of my land" and so much more... whatever that above-mentioned Holy book may produce on the case.

Many things have happened since, and a lot of water passed under the bridge. As two pawns on the tricky checked field of a relationship we have suffered both our losses and our victories and certainly walked a long way to the other side of the board in understanding each other. Almost a year of a long-distance relationship with its inescapable emotional roller-coaster (to be honest, mine mostly), smoothed by the exuberant means of communication complimentary of the XXI century made the first years together Heaven on Earth (hence so many biblical references here). Then we became fruitful and multiplied and brought a brand new little human being into this wicked world.

And then we got wed. In the church. Twice. In two religions and in front of one God. Let no man therfore put asunder, yt which God hath coupled together.

But what I want to say, really, what I need to say now, is that I am grateful to him, to my moderately handsome man. And as now he sits on the couch, remote and deep in a silly movie, with a silly smile understandably provoked by the same silly movie (you know, that boyish "I-am-so-cool-fighting-aliens-with-my-laser" type), which he is so fond of watching, and has no idea that I am writing about him...

So, my love, there it goes:

I am grateful to you that you came to the (literary) End of the World in the temperature far below freezing point and common understanding and made us happen.

I am grateful that through that first dark year of a long-distant part of our relationship every day you were leaving "a morning message" for me. Always.

I am grateful that you always translate all those Danish movies that we watch together, even when sometimes I am not much interested.

I am grateful to you that you can make any call for me, and take me any place.

I am grateful that every day you try to make my life better.

I am grateful that you accept my neuroticims, depressions, and complexities with the exceptional sense of humour which kills it all.

I am grateful that you accept my mother (boy, that says it all, doesn't it?)

I am grateful that you take me as I am (basically, as my mother).

I am grateful to you to put Katya to bed and wake up with her when I do not even ask.

I am grateful to you for all the excellent food that you can cook from scratch.

I am grateful that you motivate me for something which I would have not even dreamt of doing otherwise.

I am grateful that you always believe in me.

I am grateful that in the quarrels, as stubborn as you are, you always come and hug me first.

I am grateful for you always patiently listening to whatever verbal emotional (not always, but mostly) trash I have to produce on the remains of the day.

I am grateful to you for Katya, who would have never existed if it were not for you.

I am grateful that you are an excellent father: loving, understanding, fun, caring and strict.

I am grateful to you for finding my apple earphones yesterday (seriously).

I am grateful that you show me better.

I am grateful that by your actions, decisions and thoughts you teach me to be better.

I am grateful that you love me (and I try not to take it for granted).

I am grateful to you that you are what you are...


Long time ago a rather mystical scenario ran out in the streets of my native city, when quite an elderly lady that I helped to come all the way home asked me what I want in the life most. My inborn sobriety, skepticism and politeness replied in chorus that I was quite content with what I had. In a proverbial pause, effect strengthened by a deep look, she said that I would soon get my halves back together, hinting in an obvious way on the romantic aspect of being, which I scoffed out, but apparently remembered, setting somewhere on the depth of the consciousness.

Years passed. In a relationship like this one, as close to perfection as it can be, one can easily allow to remember and cherish that episode with a witch. So, my dear single girls, there's an answer: open thy eyes and look for the old ladies around. Quite possibly most of them are just ordinary old ladies, who will benefit greatly from your help, but the beauty of it - you never know...


To conclude I, hereby, call upon you, commoners: let's eat, drink and be merry, as my cup runneth over - today is my husband's birthday!

Happy birthday, my love! And thank you for being with me.



...and seriously, just so you know: there's absolutely nothing moderately about him!
(you know what I mean ;-)




Copyright © 2013 by Olga Johannesson

On Beauty, Poetry and Autumn

A purely Icelandic summer evening in the late August can be very romance-inducing - wind putting feeble, scarce trees to the ground, howling above all limits of sanity, washing out any thought of opening the door, let alone going out. Rain (or, wait, was it snow) is beating the windows with the rage unknown in the rest of the world, slapping and stamping the last leaves on the sleek wet transparent surface, forcing them down to the bricked unyielding uncaring cold wall. No one is behind the windows, no one exists in the world, we are stuck inside.
 

And this is the perfect evening to go down with some "roistering, drunken and doomed poet" with some good whiskey (if I could ever drink any).  

Today it has been two years since I arrived at this proud little island.  

        ...O may my heart's truth 

                Still be sung

On this high hill in a year's turning. 

______

Poem in October

By Dylan Thomas

It was my thirtieth year to heaven

Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood

        And the mussel pooled and the heron

                       Priested shore

                   The morning beckon

With water praying and call of seagull and rook

And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall

                    Myself to set foot

                        That second

       In the still sleeping town and set forth.

My birthday began with the water-

Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name

       Above the farms and the white horses

                         And I rose

                     In rainy autumn

And walked abroad in a shower of all my days.

High tide and the heron dived when I took the road

                    Over the border

                       And the gates

         Of the town closed as the town awoke.

A springful of larks in a rolling

Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling

          Blackbirds and the sun of October

                      Summery

              On the hill's shoulder,

Here were fond climates and sweet singers suddenly

Come in the morning where I wandered and listened

                  To the rain wringing

                    Wind blow cold

          In the wood faraway under me.

Pale rain over the dwindling harbour

And over the sea wet church the size of a snail

          With its horns through mist and the castle

                    Brown as owls

                But all the gardens

Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales

Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud.

              There could I marvel

                     My birthday

         Away but the weather turned around.

It turned away from the blithe country

And down the other air and the blue altered sky

          Streamed again a wonder of summer

                   With apples

              Pears and red currants

And I saw in the turning so clearly a child's

Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother

                 Through the parables

                       Of sun light

         And the legends of the green chapels

And the twice told fields of infancy

That his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine.

         These were the woods the river and sea

                      Where a boy

                  In the listening

Summertime of the dead whispered the truth of his joy

To the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide.

                   And the mystery

                         Sang alive

          Still in the water and singingbirds.

And there could I marvel my birthday

Away but the weather turned around. And the true

           Joy of the long dead child sang burning

                        In the sun.

                It was my thirtieth

Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon

Though the town below lay leaved with October blood.

              O may my heart's truth

                        Still be sung

            On this high hill in a year's turning. 

"Pretty woman walking down the street..."

We live in a world of stereotypes - we are born into it and by that same fact of birth we acquire a predetermined inventory of characteristics. Then having absorbed with the mothers milk the core attributes of femininity or masculinity on a long road of maturity we are becoming more of what the society expects of us: "Aren't you a boy to be whining like a girl?", "You have to be clean and pretty - you are a girl!"

And, gradually, chiseled by everyday judgments we are shaped into what we have to be: pretty, clean, shy, weak, or strong, decisive, rugged and ambitious - you know, sort of blue or pink, skirts or trousers.
As a Russian woman ("pink", "modest", "timid", hmm... "pretty"? , "blushing", "with long hair", "coy" and "shamefaced" (whatever that means) living abroad I want to discuss intercultural gender misunderstandings that I faced being brought up "in a pink-bow-Russian way".

source of photo
In one famous and most revered Russian (Soviet) movies ever, which got most of the all possible prizes abroad - "Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears" - the plot is banal and as conventional as it can be: three simple girls came to Moscow from the province in search of a better life in the middle of the 60s. The obvious embodiment to a better life was a fortunate marriage which could establish a position of a woman and secure the rest of her life.

Consequently, in a rather archetypal and fairy-tale manner, one gets married to a simple worker, the second in an ongoing search of something better ends up alone having lost her quite a decent husband to alcoholism, and the third, having been knocked up by some ambitious charming scunk, after 15 years turns into a self-sufficient director of a huge and successful plant, sort of a self-made woman - bitter, cold and decisive single mother in well-made Soviet pants, spending her scanty free time with a married lover - quite a widely-spread and accomplished image these days.

The movie touches upon many issues (if you come across a version with English subtitles - as a winner of a Golden Bear in Berlin 1980 and an Oscar in 1981, it should most certainly exist in  English - I implore you - watch!), the main being the fate of a woman in a society.  

None of these women is happy without a man, the successful one being utterly unhappiest of all three. Envied by many, she confides into her friends: "Just don't tell your sons that when you get everything in life, the only thing you feel like doing is to howl as a lonely wolf" (- Только ты пока ребятам не рассказывай, что как раз когда всего добъешься в жизни, больше всего волком завыть хочется"). 

Until (of course - this movie got an Oscar) she meets the real man - sort of a Soviet Mr. Big - who sets the priorities right - "And by that remember: from now on, everyday, everything is decided only by me. With one simple reasoning that I am a man". (- А заодно запомни, что всё и всегда я буду решать сам. На том простом основании, что я - мужчина").

And what happens with that forty-year-old woman, the head of an enormous industrial enterprise in Moscow, the strong woman in man's pants? She weeps with happiness - I am not joking!

In a society like Russian, despite all the hard work of Clara Zetkin and Rosa Luxemburg, life, still in many respects, is organized around good old Domostroi (a 16th century book or a code of a patriarchal rules of family life), of course, changed and adopted by the compliments of the XXI century. But a woman - in a notion of a woman - is supposed to be pretty, skinny, well-dressed, high-heeled, red-lipsticked, long-and-polish-nailed, educated (preferably, but not to use it), smart (optionally), good cook, good mother, good friend, good (inventive) lover, strong, fit, and by all that - stand by the side of a man. Just a man. With no attribute.

All that, no doubt, made a Russian woman a proverbial model wife all over the world with no obvious realization and acknowledgment from her side. Because we are brought up this way, we find nothing special in being a woman.

When my moderately handsome boyfriend, back then, was visiting me in Russia, I found it so rude that even stopped speaking to him for 30 minutes or so, after he left the bus ahead of me without offering me a hand. Then, this uncultured (so I thought) schmuck went through every door in a city first, never waited for me to take my place in a taxi, never offered (of course I would have declined gracefully, but still) pay a bill in a coffee shop. Never. never, never. So that eventually my inner lady-in-pink felt so cheap and neglected that I even considered an immediate break up.

Now it seems like charming memories from the past. But still the difference exists. We are, in our personal imaginative way, princesses in an ebony tower waiting for our knight in a shining armor (preferably on a white horse, produced in Germany). Even if we never admit it.  

And we let them think we are a bit stupid, naive and weak because...
we are not.


Copyright © 2013 by Olga Johannesson

On the Victory Day: Iceland which helped us live

If I were to write something, anything about war what would it be? What do we, people, born and brought up as remote from war as possible know about it? Movies, photographs, stories, chronicles, memoirs can give a general picture, but hardly any real understanding, any realization of the proportions of every human's tragedy involved. 

War is not only about heroism and deaths on the battlefield, it's just as well about a life of a child born in the hot summer of 1941, it's about the whole life of a mother who lost her toddler in the bombed train, it's about every day of a wife who is waiting for her husband, of a mother who still hopes for her son to return, waiting through deaths of children and hunger. 

Year after year somehow I find more and more details about the World War II. Having moved to Iceland,  I discovered Hvalfjörður - a birthplace for at least ten Arctic convoys, seven from which ended in my native city of Arkhangelsk between 1941-1942, bringing food and supplies, giving hope and saving our lives. 

on the photo - the most famous and tragic Arctic convoy PQ-17 is being assembled in Hvalförður

It's a Victory Day in Russia today - on the 8th of May, 1941, the World War II officially ended, as Field-Marshal Keitel signed Wehrmacht capitulation papers in Berlin. Interestingly, due to the time difference, it was already the 9th of May in Moscow, since then we keep this date to remember.

World War II is a huge historical field in terms of topics, actions, direction, events, places, people, etc. Arctic convoys is one of them, undoubtedly, influential for the whole course of events. More importantly for me, as it has always been tightly connected with my native city, and now as I have found out, with my new homeland. 

A lot has been researched and written about Arctic convoys, but just to make a small picture:  in the period between August 1941 to May 1945 there were 78 convoys, sailing from the United Kingdom, Iceland and North America to the two most northern ports of the Soviet Union: Arkhangelsk and Murmansk. 

Let respected historians forgive me for the small possible inaccuracies, but as far as most of sources state in 1941-1942 fourteen convoys started from Iceland: ten from Hvalfjörður and four from Reykjavík. Seven out of ten coming out from Hvalfjörður ended in Arkhangelsk. The importance of them is difficult to underestimate: a complete new vein brought blood to the dying, exhausted heart of the country, reviving the huge organism for the victorious fight. The great value of the convoys was not only in terms of supplies or food, but in terms of hope - suddenly the victory seemed closer, possible, soon.

Every year Arkhangelsk becomes a meeting place for those who survived, sadly, less and less of them with every year. Every year we, children, were in the streets to look at those old dignified foreigners, who seemed strangely alike our grandfathers, walking side by side with them; every year, we, students of the language department, were volunteering with translation; every year, marveling at their courage, theirs and our grandfathers´ feat, which gave us possibility to live. We grew up with the knowledge of the convoys, but somehow to my shame Iceland literally has never ranged the ship bell in our heads.

Last year a couple of my very good friends were visiting Iceland. On the road from Borgarnes, approaching the tunnel, my friend asked about convoys. The answer of my moderately handsome husband took me by surprise as he mentioned Hvalfjörður which we were passing by at that moment. How come this peaceful, most breathtakingly beautiful place on Earth was involved in the war. How come there is a direct link between this place and my home. How come the lives of my parents, my life and the lives of my children depended on this particular part of the world. How come I didn't know...

The war, the end of which Russia celebrates today, is exceptionally multifaceted and manifold. There's hardly a person in Russia who has never been touched by it. And it still echoes to us - through the other times, through the other places.

At this moment I want to thank Icelanders who helped us live.

beautiful and peaceful Hvalfjörður almost 70 years later

source of photo



Copyright © 2013 by Olga Johannesson

Christ has risen!

On the holy day of the Orthodox Easter, Sunday, 5 May, indeed as the situation required, I thought of God. Then I thought of the seventy years of the soviet times when the Mighty Position had been secured by Vladimir Lenin with a twenty-year interim intermission of the ever more almighty, loving and punishing - Stalin.
Thinking back into the history, Russians have always had an extremely grievous and hard relationship with God, which, combined with the inherent mysticism and fatalism as parts of the national character, engraved religious traits even on the all-negating stoned stance of the atheists.  

In the Orthodox religious tradition the icons - the depictions of God and the saints - were present in every house. According to the rule they were positioned in the so-called "red corner"  ("red" in the old Russian language meaning "beautiful", "honorary" - c.f. the Red Square). The icons were supposed to be in the Eastern corner of the house, as praying, sending our thoughts and talking to God we face the appearance of the sun and, thus, symbolically greet the Advent.

In the Soviet years religion becomes quite a dangerous puppet in the hands of the master - just think what a believer may do for the God. Some clever man, unfortunately the history keeps his name a secret, offered - no, no, not just to abolish God - that would be impossible for the country where religion was so tightly intertwined with the everyday life - but to replace Him. And who comes into the picture?

The decision was exceptionally smart and worked for many decades. Even the honorary red corner was kept to fit yet another deity.

The portraits of Lenin were adorning the walls of every institution, every establishment, every official room, on a frequent occasion enforced by the bronze or gypsum busts, the honest and strong look coming from the different sizes. The Bible, the Testaments and the Gospels were banned, instead we were given the Stories of Lenin - now I cannot tell what part of truth was there, but looking back I realize how much of a hagiography or menology (the lives of the saints) it reminded of and certainly served the purpose well. There was even a children's version of the Acts with pictures - just like Noah's Arch story.

Interestingly, the religious rituals were still kept going - we baptized children, painted eggs for Easter. But the pure religious meaning of them was a bit tarnished - baptism, for example, started to bear more of a pagan belief of the holy water protecting a child from the illnesses. Still, most of the children were baptized - secretly, at home, by an isolated priest. Consequently, we even had a mummified deity (whose remains are still by the way kept uncommitted to earth in the Red Square, the spirit haunting economy and politics - so far the only obvious, undeniable, unquestionable explanation of the ongoing Russian misfortunes), a religious doctrine - a successful mold of communism and spiritism, a set of rituals - books, learnings, common meetings, portraits -"icons", in other words, even when we didn't have it, we had it all.

Nowadays, the busts are on the dump, the pictures faded in the cellars. With the life so cruel and grim, fiercely grinding people by its millstones, people are seeking for the alleviation and looking for God once again...

In Russia on the holy day of Easter we greet each other with the traditional words: "Christ has risen!" and for many He has finally risen indeed.




Copyright © 2013 by Olga Johannesson