Red

This picture came up on my screensaver slideshow. I took it around Orthodox Christmas, 2020, which is in January on the Orthodox calendar. 

It got me thinking.

If you will look closely, you will see a tower in the distance, almost dead center, with the star on top. It is not a Christmas decoration. It is one the towers of the Kremlin in Russia. Kremlin means ‘fortress.’ There are lots of kremlins in Russia, but only one Kremlin. (Hint: That’s the one where the Tsar lives.

The bangles and bongels all lit up on the polls and above the street are the only street lights they have for a few blocks around the Kremlin. They are industrial Christmas lights that are used all times in the year. Some of the globes that you see contain little, mechanical, singing birds. It gives the surroundings streets a surreal, sultry, sensual feel. Tchaikovsky would approve.

It’s lovely. 

Cars are forbidden here. Neither hustle nor bustle of city life is permitted.

To the right are some buildings, churches, and an alleyway to a gate, the subway is somewhere outside. Next to that and also along the alleyway is the Museum of Russian History. Well worth the visit.

Back to our picture’s perspective. To the left is a big building. A huge building called the Gum, pronounced, ‘Goom.’ Gum means shopping center, bizarre, market, or any other colorful name people have used to call such a place. It is huge and came about because of a cleanliness minded tsar long ago. Or maybe that tsar was just a pragmatist. Or maybe it never happened. Or nobody knows how it got there. Maybe it’s apocryphal. All are viable options.

This is a story I heard in Russia.  

One day, a tsar was looking over the big, bustling market square that was planted right outside of his residence fortress. It seemed untidy. Unruly. It seemed dirty. It seemed disordered. Disorientating. Disgusting, even. 

So he made a decision. 

He would forbid the souqs and tables and money changers and food sellers and drug dealers and garment vendors and wine sellers and dancing girls and dancing bears and all the rest of the clingers on of society that we love to hate; except when we need them, desire them, lust for them; from just throwing up booths in any old public space and selling their wares to the gullible public and then dodging away after the show was over and the duped public, that’s us, had enough time to realize what they had just had done to them. And were left to clean up the mess... they had left behind. 

Or not. Just let it rot...

And eagerly await the next one.

He ordered a place to be built. A permanent place where people could come in, out of the cold, and leisurely luxuriate among the wonders available to them, and buy and sell what they wanted.

The merchants would pay rent, of course. Nothing comes for free, right? This would be used for graft, upkeep, kickbacks, trash disposal, cronyism, general maintenance, palm polishing, water and sanitation services, and all of the accouterments of civilization. With a little skimming off the top. Just for fun.

Boiler plate. Regular stuff.

It seemed fair.

And the land that was vacated? That disheveled, disturbed, destroyed, and eternally deconstructed and rebuilt place before the tsar’s fortress? That became a public space. A square. For parades, speeches, spectacles, acrobats and dancing bears, and sometimes riots. Quickly put down, of course. Unless they won. Then they were very quickly forgotten. 

It became, ‘The Red Square.’

I know. Many people in the west think that, ‘red’ in communism means, ‘blood,’ or, ‘war,’ or ‘badness,’ or just communism in general. Whatever. But its origins are spectacularly simple. And profound.

Red means Beautiful.

It is an old bit of cultural mythos and is woven into all of Russian culture. And not just the Russians. All Slavic people, Nordic, northern Europe, and Germanic people have ancestry that most probably mingled in the past. I would say certain.

Cultures exchange ideas. They just can’t help it. Between fighting and killing each other they are fraternizing and learning from each other. Coming together then pulling apart. Tearing off pieces of each other and stitching them together into the new. It’s a thing you do.

And the best ideas stick. And then they become, ‘ours.’

That made me wonder. Has anybody done a study of folklore and fairy tales where something is described as, ‘red?’ There are whole catalogs of folk tale types, tropes, and stereotypes for every form of fairy tail from the, ‘Boy who finds the magic object,’ trope to the, ‘This god does that,’ trope. I wonder what they would say about the word, ‘Red?’

And how would it relate to today?

Little Red Riding Hood comes to mind immediately. Why red? Does it mean, ‘Little beautiful riding hood?’ Is the hood beautiful? Is the girl wearing the hood beautiful? Is her littleness beautiful? Is the way she is riding beautiful? All of the above? 

When you tug on a single thread of the tapestry of humanity, you might just pull back wonders.

Red night to you all.