This week in the neighborhood park, a historic bit of Moscow where fish were once caught for the holy patriarch, workers have been digging (by hand of course) deep square holes where saplings will be planted. On our daily circle around the pond the other day, we spotted a pile of fragments dug up from one of these holes, and to my surprise it included some impressively large bones, brownish yellow with age, the delicate lace of marrow still intact inside them. Whose? Horse, deer, person? No one else was bothered by this, as the bones lay out in the open on the grass, next to severed tree roots, an old glass bottle, and mud-crusted pieces of beautiful glazed pottery, a few feet away from a busy playground. I love Moscow for this. Is it fatalism? Resignation in the best sense? An appreciation for history?
The churches here are so beautiful: rustic and ornate, loads of gratuitous gold, wide and dim and low, bouquets of candles quivering before every icon, their spectacular colors overlaid with haze, full of low murmurs, the women's angel voices and the robust bass of the chanting priest, satisfying so many senses at once. The Russian faithful visit their churches not just to speak to saints but to kiss them, and they retreat back to the street bowing, as if in the presence of an emperor. The two Catholic parishes here (one brightly French, the other bare and Polish) feel empty by comparison and are not seductive in the same way.
In other news, we have discovered quince. So delicious!
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