Rite of Passage

mlipton — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 10:47:41 +0000

I study at a convent. Well what was once a convent. St. Petersburg State University is quite large, and there just aren’t enough buildings on the main campus to house all the faculties. As a result, the foreigners are subjected to study at a women’s convent, which Lenin once used as his headquarters. The convent surrounds the beautiful Smolny Cathedral. In Russian, this is translated as the Tar Cathedral, because the site once was a vast tar pit. Lucky me. Anyway, since I have been here, there has been continual construction on the cathedral. I assume it is to get it ready for the summer when all the tourists come and take pictures, they want to see a pretty cathedral, not a smog eaten, beaten up cathedral. As a result construction workers are always around school. There is a secret pact. We dont bother them, they don’t bother us. We don’t tell their bosses that in actuality they do very little work in a given day, and they don’t tell our teachers that we sneak out of class or play hooky. It works well, the unspoken bond. Anyway, the other day I got to witness a very unusual rite of passage of the construction workers. One man was working. He was driving a plow and moving dirt from one pile to another. In his path, two brave men stood, ready to embark on the ritual. Along the wall of the cathedral the others sat, watching, and eating their sack lunches. As the plow passed back and forth along its unstable path, the two men in the center began to embrace. But not in a friendly manner, in an angry manner. Each one trying desperately to take the other to the ground. It was a duel to see which one was more manly. Stronger. Who was a better wrestler. All the while the plow moving back and forth, across the two brave fighters. The people eating their lunches were cheering on the inside. But their hard construction life led them unable to show emotion. Soon the ritual was over. The men proved their strength. And soon, two more men continued this display of manhood. All the while their symbol of strength, the plow, kept driving passed them. The regularity of its movements, back and forth, but on an irregular path, sometimes it went to the left of the fighters, sometimes to the right, seemed like a symbol of life. One too complicated for me to even ponder. But clearly, the stoic and solid men eating their sack lunched knew the meaning of the display in front of them. No, they were not just lazy, bored construction workers, trying to waste time wrestling, while the dirt was being shifted to another pile, they were enlightened men going on a journey of sorts.

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Rite of Passage