Visiting Mtskheta

Saturday afternoon, November 13, 2004. At about 13:00, after desperately uploading the camera images onto the computer, we were off to Mtskheta by car, me holding a camera whose memory card was nearly as empty as the charge in its battery (fortunately I brought three sets of fully charged batteries on the trip and had a second set ready to swap in along for this ride; note to self: next time have at least two 512 Mbyte memory cards and at least six sets of batteries). The ride to Mtskheta follows a four-lane highway (that’s in fairly good shape pavement wise) and which follows the Mtkvaré river upstream. The ride is interesting since there is a combination of Soviet era high rise apartments, luxury apartments, make-shift stands selling all sorts of items (much of it car related), and much new construction that appears to be for luxury retail and/or dining. Georgia clearly is not the wealthiest country on Earth, and it is a place not nearly as consistently well developed as Amsterdam or Ljubljana, Slovenia, for examples, but there really is money that is going into infrastructure here and that must be coming from somewhere. Unfortunately, not nearly enough of that money appears to be flowing into the Institute, but nevertheless it is very apparent as we ride north/northwest. On the other hand, there is a strong carryover of what can only be described as really crappy Soviet-era infrastructure, and especially the apartment buildings can give certain areas a high-rise but nevertheless third world quality. Thus I present two photographs, one presumably of post-Soviet apartments (above) and the other of Soviet-era apartments (below).

One of the magical qualities of Tbilisi are the numerous statues and churches. The churches range from very old to quite modern but still built using the “traditional” materials of fitted stone. Our journey today began by visiting a eighth-century church, called Jvari, that sits at the top of a mountain and which is surrounded by the remains of a protective wall. It is a relatively small structure when you are inside, but the ceilings vault 60-80 feet into the air and from it dominates the valley below. As for much old architecture, it is just difficult when interacting with it to appreciate how people could put in so much effort, with so little machine power, to not only produce these amazing structures but even to just carry the stones to the site of construction. But I think this amazement comes in part from a perverse modern sense that life should move very quickly. We forget that the process (the means, for example) really are just as important as the product (the ends, of course). But the means are what life really is all about. The important things are what we do and what we don’t do on a daily basis. Furthermore, we are not going to see to completion everything that we start, but what a wonderful feeling to start or nurture along something greater than ourselves. These efforts, at least assuming no slave labor was involved in their construction, is what these churches represent. They are more than just religious glory, they also or even more so represent a glory of the people who built them as well as a glory of the people who have continued to care for them. They represent a gift from the past to the present. They simultaneously point out (and inspire) both the significance and the insignificance of individual lives. We have within our collective powers to bequeath to subsequent generations a world that is nearly as good as the one which we inherited from our ancestors, and the strength of our existence is manifest in, at the very least, not severing, through our actions, the ties that link the past to the future. These churches, just like big trees, are symbols of both the robustness and fragility of our collective lives.

From the church perched overlooking the valley below, one can see hazy mountains, the Mtkvaré river, and the town of Mtskheta. The town is dominated by these three entities, plus has a large church near its center that served as both the strategic center of town and the spiritual center of the entire country. Our next stop would be to head down into the valley to visit, though not before obtaining numerous photographs from up above, one of which I’ve inserted to the left. Note the joining of the two rivers. These, to Georgians, represent the joining of the metaphorical male (the larger river to the left) with the metaphorical female and at the confluence of the two rivers apparently numerous baptisms take place. The mountains above the river, as you can see, are spectacular. The town, of course, is to the right. Just above the boy’s head—who, in fact, is the grandson of the people who are taking us around this day—is the church that we will be visiting about an hour later. You can see why or how Georgians are inspired by their country. Who could not be inspired by such beauty, and also in such perseverance that was capable of maintaining such beauty in the face of the God-awful (literally) Soviet imperialism that dominated this country 70 or so years. Fortunately, and despite some effort on the Soviets part, the Soviet influence seems to have only marginally scarred the landscape as well as the people. And testament to the resilience of the people is  the celebration of both the natural and historical beauty of the place. Clearly, having recently emerged from totalitarianism, civil war, and political incompetence, they could be doing far, far worse. Indeed, the day after we will be leaving (November 23) they will be celebrating only the first-year anniversary of their most-recent revolution.

The most interesting thing about the ride up and then down the mountain was the lack of lane control lines on the roads. Apparently, even on exits and entrances from the highway, people are allowed to rule over their own existence by taking it upon themselves to avoid oncoming traffic. What a concept, personal responsibility for one’s own safety and that of others. Considering the age and number of cars (as well as the chaos) on the road, it is amazing that I’ve yet to see the remnants of an accident, other than the ubiquitous minor bumps and scrapes even on some of the luxury cars (and there are a lot of luxury cars, mostly BMWs and Mercedes). I see this often lack of center stripes on the roads as part of the closeness of the people of Tbilisi to an embracing of life. They live and feel the nitty grittiness of reality, without being insulated from it by extreme personal luxury nor a government sanctioning of individual safety that seemingly is held far above the actual living of lives. It is so hard to maintain this connection in the states, a land, to my eye, of out of control insulation from reality. Just driving a standard transmission vehicle is so outside of the norm in the states. Never mind walking to get somewhere or, gasp, having to fight one’s way across four lanes of traffic (and how many of you who are reading this immediately picture my doing that forcing while driving a car?). To satisfy some inner demon demanding an absence of imperfection we put up with food that tastes like crap (but, on average, looks better than terrible—note that I didn’t say, “good”). We have almost no opportunity in our daily lives to get in any exercise, unless we go out of our way to get it (how many of you have driven a car to a gym to work out?). We work way too hard to earn enough money to surround ourselves with things that we simply must buy because without more things our lives are just so empty. When is the last time any of us felt the thrill (and convenience) that comes from partaking of public transportation? How often do we have access to decent pickles, and never mind good bread? In America, fortunately, we can still seek and embrace the good life, but increasing this is so far against the norm of the typical existence that a significant portion of the population is shocked (just shocked!) that somebody would choose living above certainty (though, apparently not nearly so shocked by doing this through an abuse of, for example, alcoholic beverages—how did the line go? Everybody was getting DUIs back in those days?). I believe that we have lost a sense of personal responsibility that is exemplified by our insistence on center lines on roads and serves as an indication of our irresponsibility, so much that we, as a people, can’t be trusted to drive our own cars on the right (not left) side of the road. Or perhaps what I’m really experiencing is a taste of what we Americans describe as the “Wild West,” another land where a live-and-let-live attitude (supposedly) is held in such high regard. Even in Amsterdam, that bastion of civility, Talia was shocked that we were able to walk so closely to construction sites and currently operating heavy equipment, with no one complaining about our doing so, nor even taking much notice. There is a sense, out there in the greater world, that people can take it upon themselves to look out for (and appropriately either avoid or embrace) both self and other as they go about their everyday activities. Where oh where has that sense gone to in America? Are we truly so awful that none of us can be trusted to look out for safety of both self and others?

Our next stop was the church that dominates Mtskheta (Svetickhoveli, which was completed in the 11^th century), the town found down in the valley below. It was built by a master architect whose arm was cut off by the king because of a rivalry over the same woman. The site was a place of ritual in Georgia long before Christ was born. Old Georgians believe that this place is the site where the Earth connected to the sky. The church is found within a walled enclosure that is surrounded by a combination of sidewalk vendors, beggars (yes, as we found out today, there are beggars in Georgia), and numerous well-dressed people in various stages of weddings. As Naomi had promised we would, we saw quite a number of weddings between the two churches, at least three, and we only spent about two hours between the two churches. Saturday apparently is the day and these apparently were the places to get married, and get married they did. What remarkable places to do so. Like the church up high on the maintain, and most throughout Georgia, this one was Georgian orthodox, which is among the oldest surviving churches on the planet, having been founded approximately in 400 A.D. and boasting numerous church buildings that are in excess of 1000 years old. This one was not quite that old, but was spectacular nonetheless. The walls surrounding it were set up to be well fortified against attacking enemies and the exterior walls of the church building, as I was told, are hollow in their centers to serve as a hiding place for women and children. The courtyard surrounding the church, inside the walls, is larger, on the order of two football fields (side by side) in size. There are a few cows and sheep grazing free. Everywhere there is the buzz of restoration (literally a buzz as saws cut stone to fit into new walls or walks). Note in the photo, by the way, that time does not appear to be put into a mowing of the courtyard. As I write that line I am valiantly fighting the temptation to go into a long diatribe on the mowing of lawns. Let me instead merely pose that most obvious question: What do you think, does God own a lawnmower? (answer: well yes of course, just look at them grazing between the two trees)

Our next stop was for lunch, which for me turned into dinner as well (assuming one discounts significant snacking on mostly veggies done later that evening). We ate large dumplings (called khinkali) filled with a sautéed beef. The fillings were so liquidy, around the meat, that they demanded a style of consumption that served to retain the liquid so that, ultimately, it could be consumed. They were wonderful, especially liberally doused with black pepper. Amazingly, despite my having spent the previous few hours bugging everybody to death by taking photograph after photograph after photograph, I actually failed to even think of taking a shot of the lovely tray of dumplings, each nearly the size of my daughter’s fist. I easily ate a half a dozen of them (there probably were a dozen on the platter as a whole) and then ate a number of sausage type things that were wrapped in thin, tortilla-like bread.  Those were not nearly as good as the dumplings, however, and I actually didn’t eat all of the sausage thingies (that’s been a general trend—an inability to finish off all of the food on the table here, despite a strong desire to attempt to). Still, by the time I was done, still before 16:00 (4:00 in the afternoon) I was more than willing to skip dinner. Below I show two shots, one taken of me eating a dumpling. The other of the beer that accompanied my meal:

“A given replicator in me could, in theory, be traced backwards through a straight line of ancestors. These ancestor, and the environments that they provided for the replicator, can be regarded as the replicator’s ‘past experience’.” p. 93, Dawkins, 1999.