Between high school and college, my dad and I took a trip to Russia. We spent ten days in Moscow and St. Petersburg. While in the latter, we visited a monastery, and our tour guide pointed to a gravestone. “There is the grave of Somebody-or-other,” she said. He was a Russian writer whom I had heard of, vaguely. I stood at the grave, trying to drink in the moment … here was someone famous. But since I didn’t really know who he was, I moved on pretty quickly, not much impressed.
It was only later, after reading Crime and Punishment in college and Brothers Karamazov a few years afterwards, that I realized I had been standing at Dostoevsky’s grave. I’d been a few feet of earth away from my favorite author/artist of all time … and hadn’t even known it.
But, you know, I think he would have been okay with that. (Pardon me while I get all Julie & Julia on you here.) I think he would have thought it was cool that I stood in front of his body unimpressed, while only later realizing the enormity of the soul that had once been there. He would, I think, have liked the irony and the out-of-time-ness of that.
So Dostoevsky and I are cool, which is a relief.
(Still. INCHES away … oy.)