VIGNETTES
I knew nothing of this place before visiting, but the name drew me in. It’s heavy with the memory of the original British city, yet has absolutely nothing to do with it. There is something thick in its connotations, in the fact that it is named after a place that it has little in common with except for the fact that sand and water meet. It comes across as a place for reflection, for reminiscence, for nostalgia. A place that was condemned to imitate something that it is not, that should be “like” something else. There is so much power in the word “like”. Why should something ever be “like” something else? It is a false parallel, a physical reflection for the human longing for repetition, for sameness, and stability. A stability that does not exist along that beach, that is as inconstant as the breaking of the waves on the shore. As Milan Kundera said, “therein lies the whole of man’s plight. Human time does not turn in a circle; it runs ahead in a straight line. That is why man cannot be happy: happiness is the longing for repetition.” Brighton Beach is further doomed because it not only carries the weight of the British, but has, over the years become a home away from home to the Russian community. “Welcome to Little Russia!” And, what happens then? Who claims Brighton Beach? What is Brighton Beach? Its very birth comes from a longing of “home”, and has not evolved into anything else but a sadder and more poetic manifestation of that longing.
Brighton Beach in my mind appears like a place where one goes to contemplate deeply. A place where one goes to get lost in the scenery, to either forget about their problems or try and remember what used to be good. It makes me think of sad days of reflection along the grey of a place where people go to heal heartbreak, or to embrace their loneliness and clear their mind. However, I’m sure good things do happen here; Family vacations, romantic getaways, evenings with friends. Yet, there is a nostalgia to it all, to the clash of times, of past and present as one, of idealization and reality, and of the physical manifestation of a state of mind. This happens in several levels, the two most essential ones being the tourists and the residents. The tragedy of the tourists lies not in the making of those happy memories, but in the cherishing and longing to keep them. For the residents, the tragedy is not as immediate, not as obviously desperate, but far more profound. The fact that a great part of these immigrants come from a broken past, came to this place not out of desire but out of terror, out of necessity, makes it all the more touchingly melancholic. It seems clear in the survival of the Russian language and culture that none of these people really wanted to leave their home, but were in one way or another forced to do so. They were separated from their family, people and traditions, brought to a land where nothing is the same. They attempted to make it the same, “Little Russia”. It’s entirely a physical manifestation of the mind, of idealization. Nostalgia is in their speech, in their shops, in their food. It is an attempt to re-create home, a community that is built on traditions that did not belong to this land, but now, in a way, do. Their experience is just as melancholic, just as beautifully devastating as those who go to Brighton Beach to try and remember, try to go back to a happiness that they will probably never find there again. The happiness they left is gone, stolen by the waves, buried deep in the sand, lost in time.
Brighton Beach is the result of the weight of memory, of the unexplainable inability to let go. There is some sort of expectation that by being there one might be transported in time, back to the to the time or place where there was happiness. It is a place of a contained misery and a common unhappiness that is not entirely tragic. It is a place built from hope, a form of coping almost, the embracing that there is no going back but without fully letting go. It is a sad, sad hope, yet a beautiful expression of memory an how it can form a physical place, and define lives. The shops and restaurants are magical in the sense that they achieve the purpose they were set out to do; To transport the visitor to a far away land, to Russia or Turkey, but far into the past as well. The ceilings are compulsively decorated with ribbons and baskets, and flowers, in a style that is somewhere between baroque and kitsch. There is not a single piece of concrete to be seen, modernity is hidden behind rows and rows and more rows of nuts, and candy, and coffee, and spices. Only the floor is left uncovered, yet still tiled to match the journey into an overwhelming past of colors and abundance. Caviar for $5 dollars is not a luxury simply because in the Old Land it never was, caviar for $5 dollars is the rule, a little overpriced even. The homeland that immigrants remember is the homeland that was translated into this beach, into what is the living abstracted memory of a memory, an extension of time into a different space.
Are we even in the United States? Welcome to Little Odessa, to Little Russia, the jewel of Eastern Europe. A bite of xachipuri is enough to transport one to Georgia, as is a refreshing sip of Baltika or a meat dumpling to take one to Russia or Ukraine. The motherland. How is it possible that it is so far away yet it feels so real? Also, what is with the name Brighton Beach? It is the only thing that breaks the enchanting spell of the journey to a place that is miles and miles away. Where is the so-called America? Did someone say New York? Isn’t that on the other side of the world? Having to speak English in the lack of any response skills in Russian was almost enough to create awareness of one’s geological standing, but still not quite. It was a marvelous journey, into an unknown land, a new culture, a land that has been manipulated and transformed into someone else’s vision, someone else’s expectation of how life should be like. It is a community, they are not immigrants, they are residents, this is their land, their vision, and their traditions. People know each other, they have things in common, they share the weight of longing, they hold on to it and pass it along. If it was not for this, having to speak English when spoken to in Russian would be a harsh awakening into reality, a raw realization that one is in fact, not in Russia. However, the interactions that take place here make it impossible for an outsider to be anything more than a tourist, making English simply part of the journey as a visitor into an unknown country, into “Little Russia”.
WORK IN PROGRESS
FINAL GUIDE BOOK
