Moscow City's Afimall

A new Cathedral of the Consumption.

praying for a missing god

(A note to Russian poet IS.)

Just finished a book yesterday on Nietzsche reception in America from the 1890s to 1990s. Very interesting and enlightening. I went as usual into a Starbucks coffee shop to be for a couple of hours, and make some notes with my friendly moka, then walking alone out into another Saturday night, I happened onto, and -- needing some impossible consolation -- into a Russian Orthodox Church (Церковь введения во храм пресвятой Богородицы в Бараша). There was almost no one in the church, though it was during the evening service, and I found a distant place aside to be alone with myself, my thoughts and longings...

I thought about how when someone is ill, people go to pray for their restoration, and how there was no place in Moscow, or likely anywhere else?, to go and pray for the health... the safe return... the revival, the resurrection, of God, after what FN in his "madman" well termed the requiem aeternam deo...

How there are no real places in cities for meditation of those suffering from agnosticism... no agnostic churches to a missing god... no "Sils Marias" in cities...

How stepping inside a Russian church allowed one suddenly, as is almost impossible outside in the city's noisy streets, shops, cafes,...quiet reflection on the higher, the deeper, what Berdyayev, et al, called the "vertical" questions of life and meaning...

And then unexpectedly, I heard someone mumble something behind me, apparently to me...and when I turned around from my isolated, solitary thoughts to see what it was, I saw a babushka, who pointed to a carpet, indicating that I should rather stand there...

I turned back to face the iconostasis, reflected on this event for about 1.5 seconds, and walked directly out of the church. I sincerely hoped she felt a bit guilty, or regretful , and might perhaps hesitate next time before bothering someone not disturbing anyone but a missing God.

Moscow Policemen, Car Rally Faces, and Goethe's "entelechies"

The newly-named Russian "politzia" arrived early in the morning to guard a temporary fence around the park where the Motor Rally Car race was to be held. Hundreds of hundreds of spectators arrived to catch a glimpse thru the thickening crowd.
I was one of the very first viewers, not of the race itself, which is of no interest to me, but of the viewers.
These policeman were of the level that are assigned to stand at 10-meter intervals to keep order within and people without. Still early, they were yet bored, and thus still interested to look and comment among themselves at my appearance (whether my bearded face; bare, well-toned jogging legs; both or other...). I came to observe them; they were clearly observing me. Their faces were those that can be expected of such policeman. Obedient. Rather simple, though not stupid, looking. A couple of them had found some girly magazine, and were sharing it amongst themselves...

I thought of  what experience and view of the world they had to obediently spend some perhaps 5-7 hours at a fence... joking amongst themselves at me... having a chance to see cars and trucks speeding around the former 1980 Olympic bike track. What will they learn before they die, from "how they are" now? And I thought of the many who learn little after their teens, some even listening to the same music for their "three score and ten".

The crowd that came and stayed to watch were those one would expect at such an event. Their faces matched the event they were watching.

I thought of Goethe speaking to Eckermann about how if he continued to work and learn even onto his death, nature would provide a way for him to continue. September 1, 1829: "I do not doubt our continuance, for nature cannot do without continuity; but we are not all immortal in the same way, and in order to manifest himself as a great entelechy, a man must first be one."

In Goethe's well-known talk with Falk on their return from the funeral of Wieland in 1813, Goethe described "monads", in ways that explain the faces I saw today.

"How much or how little of a personality deserves to be preserved, is another question, and an affair which we must leave to God. At present I will only say this: I assume different classes and degrees of ultimate aboriginal elements of all beings which are, as it were, the initial points of all phenomena in nature. I might call them souls because from them the animation of the whole proceeds. Perhaps I had better call them monads. Let me retain this term of Leibnitz, because it expresses the simplicity of these simplest beings and there might be no better name. Some of these monads or initial points, experience teaches, are so small and so insignificant that they are fit only for a subordinate service and existence. Others however are quite strong and powerful…"

Bohemian ad nauseum in Moscow?

The cafe tonight full of poets,

their audience,

and their smoke.

Some well known, I hear.

Rising puffs of smoke made clear

cigarettes the unpoetic do not know,
are au courant again.

A chamber of chain smokers,

'tweenst Lubyanka and Chisti Prudi...

All looked like poets should look,

and acted like poets should act,

and were all polite and ardent

       as polite poets' are wont.

It all seemed, to me,

unconsciously,

a "bohemian" evening,
in act.