Askew

Yours truly (minus the Lance Corporal stripes) in Independent Special Purpose Motorized Rifle Brigade (OMSBON) of the Ministry of Interior of the Soviet Union (1987-1989).  OMSBON had a glorious history but in the day of my service we just mostly stared at goats and each other (same thing).  Where's an emoticon for "face validity" when you need one?

Youth is fundamentally askew.  Idealism, immaturity, utmost self-confidence, utter lack of self-awareness.  You are looking at it.

OMSBON "Dedi"

"Ded" ('gramps') in Soviet/Russian military slang is a reference to a second year soldier that is on his last quarter of service.  These are my OMSBON platoon fellow soldiers - when we were "dedi," - in the spring of 1989, in Armenia, counting days till "dembel" (demobilization/discharge).  Soviet Army and Russian Army has a ruthless tradition of hazing called "dedovschina" (with an unusually high death and suicide rate).  OMSBON dedovshina was no exception: after a few attempts at defiance, you just basically had to go with the flow and accept it.  If you stood up, you felt good for a moment, but then your cohorts (soldiers that had been recruited at the same time as you) would be harrassed along with you which is a total lose-lose because not only would you be now hazed by "dedi," you'd be also ostracized by your cohorts.  That was pretty much my story: my ego couldn’t settle in time so by the time my cohorts became “dedi” themselves they had “paid down” on too many of my disobedience “sins.”  My popularity was shot which is probably why I am not in this picture or in the next one (and have a peculiar role in the following two photographs).

Platoon

My OMSBON vzvod (platoon) 3d rota (unit), 1989 (in Erevan, Armenia, during Nagorno Karabakh).  Picture was taken before the demo fight that we put for the locals (see below)(yours truly not this pic).  Leningrad OMSBON in late 1980s had three roti (units) each consisting of several vzvod (platoons).  The 1st rota guarded Smolny Palace (the Leningrad equivalent of the Moscow Kremlin).  The 2nd rota were cooks, mechanics and radiomen.  We were the 3d rota, the OMSBON grunts.  We sweated the most.

Demo

Yours truly is on the left, up in the air, after a kick.

Punished

Picture quality is poor but you can see me on the right, falling back after a chest kick.  There are also two guys flying dragon-style in a synch leg kick (they are right in the middle of the picture, chest high in the air, facing each other).  I had taken a mouthful of tomato juice which you can kind of see bursting out of me (to simulate injury as a cheap special effect).

Leningrad

Long after my "dembel" (demobilization), I am visiting our headquarters where I had been stationed (the OMSBON building in Leningrad is right across the Kanavka Canal that pours into the Neva River), next to the Hermitage Museum (I am the tourist on the left with the fanny pack, OMSBON on the right).  The Leningrad OMSBON building (on Khalturina street) doesn't look like much (with the exception of a guarded gate).  Inside there is a spacious training courtyard.  I have once zipped out of the front gates hiding in the back of a military ambulance to take a stroll down the Palace Square and got busted on an AWOL.  A week in the Leningrad brig cured me of my nomadic/sight-seeing habits.  Yeah, right!

Crew

I grew up in the Arbat neighborhood of Moscow.  In mid-80s the Arbat Street became the first promenade in the Soviet Union.  This was pre-Perestroika, pre-Glasnost, ramping up to openness.  You couldn't find a wilder place at that time in Russia.  Bards, artists, poets and, of course, the constant tension between punks, breakdancers, and Luberi (suburban body-building gang). (a picture of the party crew that I was hanging out with, a few years after the turbulent Arbat days; I am the dumb ass on the right). 

Cohort

Cohorts (the guy on the left, a fellow water polo player, built like a tank).  The guy in the middle - part of my Arbat roots.  The lady to the right - on our minds (at the time of snapping this picture).

Jitney

Having a car in the late 80s meant many street opportunities.  Jitneying was one.  Quick money for the night life (unless you got jacked, of course).  This is a picture from early 90s.  A crappy Moskvitch car, probably with one of the very first Bazooka subwoofers in the trunk of a Moscow car (I brought two Bazookas to Moscow in 1991, installed one in this car, and barely sold the other - it was tough trying to sell the concept of the audio-in-the-trunk to a Soviet audiophile in those days).  I was zipping around in this coffin, listening to Dr. Dre and D.O.C., practicing English.

Played Against Oneself

Undergrad days, playing tennis with a good friend of mine, going McEnroe on him...

Moscow Zen

As a sports-obsessed teen (enrolled in an Olympic Reserve Training School # 36), I used to run 3-5k jogs in the morning, past guys like this.  When my family moved from the Arbat neighborhood to Kozhukhovo region of Moscow, I found myself in an entirely different cultural environment.  Whereas the Arbat neighborhood was posh (the US Ambassador's residence was literally next door to where I grew up), the Kozhukhovo region was populated by proletariat and the so-called "limitchiki" (a derogatory term that Moscovites used for the folks that streamed into Moscow on work visas to work hard jobs).  Kozhukhovo, by the way, was in the Western media a few times in the last several years.  Remember that subway station explosion from a few years back (that was right at the Avtozavod/Autoplant subway station that I used every day while commuting to my sports school).   Then, there was that botched up hostage situation at a theatre where the Moscow militia OMON used nerve gas (if I remember that correctly).  That too was in this very region of Moscow, just a bridge away from where I lived.  Why there?  The Kozhukhovo region (as I mentioned) had a lot of "limitchiki"/non-Moscow-born work-visa workers.  So, getting back to the point of the picture.  As I'd run my morning jogs I'd frequently see these guys fishing before their morning shift or after their night shift. They never seemed to catch a damn thing.  I believe for them it was about the process, not the outcome.  This was my first lesson in Russian zen...

Soviet Cars

A Russian winter morning (in the early 90s): my brother and I getting a jumpstart on our Soviet military-issue "jeep" (UAZ, on left).

Two Flags and 1 LL Bean Coat

This is a 21 year old version of my ego, sitting on top of my first car (a Zaporozhets, with hints of BMW 2002 model, if you know what I mean; fyi: motor is in the trunk, just like in those vintage Beetles).  On this picture I am all aglow: shipping off to the States (that week i was cruising around with two flags mounted on the hood of this car, like some kind of ambassador of good will and self-unawareness).  Glory days (cue Bruce).  A bit of trivia for the fashion-conscious: I am wearing (insert "I am cracking up as I am writing this" emoticon) an L.L. Bean coat... in the middle of Moscow summer.  I was that proud of it!  Got many offers on it from fellow fashionistas.  LMAO.

Dennis on Top of the World

This is my undergrad buddy, Dennis.  Man, did we have fun going to school!  Dennis spent some time in Washington D.C. (his father worked in Russian embassy).  So, whatever English slang I knew in those days came straight from D's mouth.  His favorite phrase at the time was "You name it!"  As for myself, I just couldn't wrap my brain around this phrase...  As for the pic: this is Dennis on top of his own military-issue UAZ "jeep," looking preppy as ever, like he's gonna run for Congress or something, on our graduation day.

We Did a Lot of River Together

This is a rowing buddy of mine, Komarov.  We did a lot of river together, on two-sitter Olympic canoes.  I had grown up playing water polo for years.  Then I broke my throwing wrist while skate-boarding and had to choose a different sport in order to stay in the Sports school (Olympic Reserve secondary education system).  I chose Olympic canoe.  Must've been all that Fenimore Cooper adventure stuff I had read as a kid.  We are 20 here.  I stopped at a random road-side mechanic shop to get a tire fixed and ran into Komarov.  He was, perhaps, the most Zen guy I knew growing up.  He knew his flow (which helped his rowing; he really had a lot of talent on the water).

Sharing in Peace

This is a photo I snapped in Moscow a while back: I loved the "sharing-in-peace" black-and-white ying-yang of it.

Dog Packs

During the post-Soviet economic crash-and-boom, many average Russians could no longer afford to keep their dogs.  Moscow flooded with stray pure-breds.  I snapped this picture not far from a farmers' market where trash (from a dog's standpoint) is particularly promising.  As you see, these smart dogs (despite all the domestication that had been encoded in their genes) still remembered their ancient ways: they formed a pack and posted a watchdog... 

Illusions of Safety

As I was strolling through the backstreets of Kozhukhovo (Moscow), an orphan-pup (apparently in search of benevolent guardianship) "parked" by my Adidas shoe.  Illusions of safety...

No one to shepherd

An abandoned shepherd, with no one to shepherd it. 

Dumpster Diving

Moscow: an old Russian woman dumpster-diving - not a sport, but a means of survival. 

Moscow Bentley

Moscow/Kalininsky Prospekt (aka "New Arbat"): a trolley-bus is crowding a Bentley.  In my childhood I'd catch "B" trolley-bus from Smolenskya Square (in Arbat part of town) to Gorky Park skating ring; price of the ride: 4 kopecks (or free - as long as you didn't mind being hussled by the "conductor"/ticket-checker). 

In and Out of Light

a Moscow "arka" - a passage-way that leads into a building court-yard ("dvor").  These passage-ways allow you to dive in and out from the light of the street, affording a kind of informal navigation grid of short-cuts. 

Arbat Passage-Way

Another passage-way, near an old gym of mine, in the Arbat area of Moscow.

Lenin still skates on in some places

Skateboarding hit Moscow in early 80s.  There were just 2 brands of boards back then: a flat Rula and another board (with a bent lip; can't remember the brand).  I had a Rula - it came with a shoulder bag and a lot of maintenance.  A friend of mine, from the Sports School, Khan and I, would meet up and bum around Moscow, in search of a perfect slope.  Most of the skating we did was downhill/a kind of slalom around pot-holes and pedestrians.  Our favorite slope was "MID" (down from the Ministry of International Affairs building/one of the Stalin's 7 Evil Sisters); and also "Luzha" (Luzhniki stadium); and, of course, Paveletskaya subway pass - a long, tiled, underground subway change station underpass (we'd do that one a few times late at night/both of us had to take that subway change on the way home).  Skateboading cost me a wrist fracture and my "career" in water-polo.  All for the better!

Meta-Trash

Moscow 'dvor' (court-yard): Even trash containers are eventually trash: arising and cessation.

Dembel Superstitions

OMSBON radio man points to an auspicious sign - the license plate on his radio-truck coincided with the year of our 1989 discharge!  Small things acquire signficance - all thanks for pattern-making cliche-making mind-machine inside our skulls...

Not Really a Volvo Attitude

While in the States I used my license plates not for vanity but to express the inexpressible - i.e. the Russian three-letter exclamation "bly'a" ("commonly used as an expletive, to emphasise one’s point" - read more).  What's my point?  Does there have to be one?  Blya!

My early 90s Volvo 740 - adding just a touch of Russian attitude to American highways...

ZEN CAB

I mid-90s license plate on my NY state Mazda 929 said: "ZEN CAB" - I still have no idea what I meant by that and I'd rather keep that way...

Lenin's Rolls Royce

I snapped this picture in Lenin's museum.  As you see, Vovik didn't order any vanity plates.  But here's a curius observation: Lenin drove a Rolls, Shoko Asahara (remember the Tokyo subway bombing, his cult) did too... Wherever there is a cult of ego, there always seems to be a Rolls a nearby... Decadence is decadence - whether it's in the context of socialism, capitalism, or buddhism (read about Asahara's Aum Inc to see what I mean).

Pattern Interruption

"I" - whatever that means - am on the right, breaking patterns and yet following them (otherwise why would "I," a "pavelsomov," be wearing a Wayne Gretzky hockey jersey?  The ladies are from my undergrad group at MGPU (Moscow State Pedagogical University).  Issues of identity are intriguing...  We confuse words with their meaning.  Who is this who is reading this right now?  Surely, not the word "I."

Security of Identity

Identity is illusory security: "pavelsomov" is just a bunch of letters (any name is).

Caddy Mechanics

Father-in-law and I: his Caddy, my curiosity. 

Same Engine

My dad: in front of his UAZ (Russian military-issue "jeep"): when my father-in-law visited Russia and looked under the hood of UAZ, he said "Just like vintage Ford."  One planet, one engine - pursuit of wellbeing...

AmeriCares

In early 90s I was privileged to work as a translator with AmeriCares in Moscow, with John Riehl (on left).

When in Arkansas, Wear Boots

"When in Rome do as Romans do" is one of those cliches that, on one hand, organizes adaptation and, on the other hand, constrains it. 

Here's yours truly, in the early-90s, at the University of Central Arkansas. working out in a gym with cowboy boots on - adaptation or stupidty?  Both, neither.  In the early 90s I studied in US but still identified myself as a Russian.  Now I get it: home is wherever you are, cowboy boots or flip-flops...