Reading Lolita in Sevan

What a crazy fun weekend. This was the first weekend that new volunteers weren't on 'lock down' at our sites and weren't allowed to leave for the first month as volunteers.

So we decided to go to lake Sevan (in the city of Sevan, reminds me of Erie and lake Erie) and it turns out to be totally freezing cold, way colder than I thought it was going to be but I at least had some warm clothes I could wear, I just had to wear them all day instead of only at night.

There was lots of fun and celebrating, just hanging out and being American, speaking English, and we got to see some of the volunteers from the south who I leave about 8-9 hours away from and won't be seeing very often in these next two years.

I laugh a little inside when talking about distances here in Armenia as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Armenia is the size of Maryland. Mountains make it tough to travel anywhere, especially in winter. But compare this to Mongolia or China or Kazakhstan, where I know volunteers that are/have been there. We're talking 18 hours by train to get to the capital, 3-5 hours from another American. Almost no one here is more than an hour from at least one other volunteer.

So really in Armenia, we're not that far, though that doesn't mean I won't miss all those southerners any less. From other PC experiences, 7-8 hours is 'eh, no big deal' but in Armenia that is LOOOOOOOOOONG (like that word, how clever, but not really, more like the opposite of clever, more akin to 'obvious' than clever).

So really it's all about perspective. In Armenia 7-8 hours means something different than it does in China. Which is a good segway into what I thought I was going to write about, which was re-reading books. I've found that I have been doing that while here in Armenia. Not that I have ran out of books, I still have a fair amount and a library in my town with an English section. I deliberately brought books that I like but haven't read in a while because I wanted to re-read them now.

I remember being told by my writing professor (and for the life of me I can't remember which one, I have it narrowed down to two) that re-reading a book at different times of your life changes the meaning of the book for you, and in some ways is like reading an entirely different book.

While I don't think I've gotten there yet, just in sheer experience and age (Maybe I should try to re-read Green Eggs and Ham?) I have had some interesting experiences with re-reading a book here called "Einstein's Dreams." It's basically a collection of dreams by a fictional Einstein in the months when he is coming up with his theory of relativity. Each chapter is a different musing or conception of time, a "what if time acted like X or was like Y.

There's two stories in particular that have changed from the first time reading them, specifically because I am in Armenia. Nothing groundbreaking or life changing, just a different tone or shade in the meaning that I couldn't have had happen had I not been in Armenia.

I'm going to quote from the first story:

In this world there are two times. There is mechanical time and there is body time. The first is metallic as a massive pendulum of iron that swings back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. The second squirms and wriggles like a bluefish in a bay. The first is unyielding, predetermined. The second makes up its mind as it goes along.

And so along with this you have two types of people, the ones that like mechanical time, and the ones that like body time.

It's very eloquent how the two types of people are described and I'm almost temped just to quote the entire thing (it's only maybe 500 words tops).

But reading this again here in Armenia it just struck me as incredibly poignant to what I've experienced here in Armenia. In Armenia we have body time. Now this could probably be said generally about a lot of countries the Peace Corps is in, things here and in many PC countries move at a slower pace.

But when you ask an Armenian how long it takes to get somewhere, they'll give you a time that probably is wide of the mark.

When traveling to Sevan I got estimates anywhere from 1 hour, 1 and a half hours, and two hours.

It took a little over three hours.

But with body time, what difference does it make? You'll get there when you get there.

I find this a lot when you ask about time here. When doe shops close? "9 or 10, maybe 11?"

During training I had asked my language teacher about crossing the streets in Yerevan. After giving the same 'maybe, kinda, sorta?' answer I've now become so used to she told me this:

"Armenia is a very approximate country."

That just about sums it up.

I made a connection to another conception of time from Einstein's Dreams today, on the Marshutka ride back to Vanadzor.

I keep just looking at the landscapes here and I just fall in love with them every single time. There are many places in Armenia that are very very beautiful.

That's not what I'm talking about. There are also very melancholy and ugly places here. Streets and sidewalks that haven't been paved in over a decade, abandoned or unfinished buildings. Soviet style apartment complexes.

All this is somehow incredibly beautiful to me. It speaks to me more than any Eiffel Tower, or Saint Peter's Basilica has ever done.

In this other conception of time the book says that "in this world, time flows not evenly but fitfully, and, as a consequence, people receive fitful glimpses of the future."

So in this world once people get a glimpse of their future they stop whatever their doing and try to fulfill it, or work against everything to stop it (if they don't like what they see). So you have unfinished buildings, bridges; murals start off with a religious theme and then switch abruptly to a sweeping naturescape.

I heard from another volunteer that Armenia has more houses then people. Most of those are abandoned or unfinished. Now the extremely sad part is that this is because of the collapse of Armenia's economy with the fall of the Soviet Union and the closing of its eastern and western border and war with Azerbaijan. And this most recent world economic crisis hurt the Armenian economy as well.

But for a moment today, I thought, it's because those people who were building those houses caught glimpses of their future, stopped everything to realize their future.

It's false, but it's a nicer thought than thinking about the actual suffering that these structures commemorate like a scar. I said I thought they were beautiful, and while that is true, I'm here to help improve this country and if I could make all of them disappear or build/re-build them I would do that in a second.

Okay this has gone on way long and I applaud you if you've read all this way.

Oh yeah a post-script:

On the re-reading books note I re-read Lolita. Amazing book. So hard to read. I appreciate it more having read it a second time. I just sit there reading his prose (in his 2nd/3rd language) and it's so incredibly fucking gorgeous. I'll read something and I have to stop and say, wait what, how did you do that? That was amazing. Holy crap. I will never write that well. I read it in college and even re-reading it now I still don't know if I got the whole thing and I know I'll have to re-read it another time, maybe in a few more years.

P.P.S.

I finished Lolita in Sevan, right next to the lake, in the sunshine after a long cold rain. There is also a book called Reading Lolita in Tehran, which is a cute title. So that explains the title, if you were wondering why I titled the blog post that.

This was going to be the original post script but I decided to expand it a bit.

"oh yeah lolita blah blah catchy title, allusion blah"