Onion Domes, again

"...He closed his hand on the twenty copecks, walked on for ten paces, and turned facing the Neva, looking towards the palace. The sky was without a cloud and the water was almost bright blue, which is so rare in the Neva. The cupola of the cathedral...glittered in the sunlight, and in the pure air every ornament on it could be clearly distinguished...He stood still, and gazed long and intently into the distance; this spot was especially familiar to him. When he was attending the university, he had hundreds of times--generally on his way home--stood still on this spot, gazed at this truly magnificent spectacle and almost always marvelled at a vague and mysterious emotion it roused in him. It left him strangely cold; this gorgeous picture was for him blank and lifeless. He wondered every time at his sombre and enigmatic impression and, mistrusting himself, put off finding the explanation of it. He vividly recalled those old doubts and perplexities, and it seemed to him that it was no mere chance that he recalled them now. It struck him as strange and grotesque that he should have stopped at the same spot as before, as though he actually imagined he could think the same thoughts, be interested in the same theories and pictures that had interested him...so short a time ago...Deep down, hidden far away out of sight all that seemed to him now--all his old past, his old thoughts, his old problems and theories, his old impressions and that picture and himself and all, all...He felt as though he were flying upwards, and everything were vanishing from his sight..."~~~Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

Reading Dostoevsky and I am suddenly walking along the naberezhnie outside of the university, making my way home though the bitter cold after choir rehearsal with a tune still strumming at my lips. The frigid night wind pulls at my scarf and I walk a little faster, screw my eyes closed and run across the street towards the strelki of Vasilievsky Ostrov. St. Petersburg herself strums and night rhythm and the ice flows on the river Neva whisper, battling the stars for command of the thundering evening silently. Facing now the krepost Petra Pavlovskova with the river on one side of me and the canals of the islands on the other and I can see for miles in the crystalline reflection of the fortress. The bridge itself hums beneath my feet in the wind and the traffic, and I continue anxiously past the casino and it's cabal of resident thugs through the dark and deserted streets.

I remember the air that evening, sort of solid, ice-cold, and almost human. It is so cold that my nose hurts, and I wrap tighter in wool, and quicken my step even further. I have a penchant for jumping at the slightest sign of life--every shadow is alive in the thick darkness, and I have been well-trained. Crossing the threshold between the dvor and the soft pillowy heat of our apartment is like a border to a foreign land, chai waits, and conversation. Yet my mind lingers on Nikolaevsky bridge, wrapped in the panorama of the city, of the darkness, of Russia herself.