the most final
concluding work

(…as of yet, I have only outlined the external contours of the Area, the shell of it. But what is its essence? What is the point, if any, in all that chaotically turbulent movement or, on the contrary, in the frozen motionlessness not giving a fuck for anything? Does it exist? Certainly, yes.

The boiling bouillon chaos of the soup, both from messy lightheaded ingredients and motionless vegetables at the bottom, is nothing else but a cross-section of the component parts and the current state of the human race. The question "how tasty is it?" does not belong here. So, without much ado, yet strictly to the point, inside the Area, you easily will assort the following five categories of nuts:

a) personnel, aka paramedics, aka bitches in white, etc., etc.;

b) not all there, aka phase-shifted, aka cunt-thinkers, etc., etc.;

c) crazy, aka schizics, aka halfnuts, etc., etc.;

d) nuts, loony, mad, etc., etc.;

e) stark raving mad, aka bananas, aka departed, aka irrevocably free, etc., etc.

To begin with, you need clearly understand and keep it in mind that the boundaries between the above categories are oscillating and overlapping – some medical workers, for instance, are distinguished from certain other forms among the following categories only by the color of their uniform.

Secondly (and this is of prior importance!), the touchstone that allows for differentiation, is the possibility of using the individual in the interests of the current social formation, which creates those Areas. Such a formation must necessarily be current.

Now in order of appearance.

Those suffering from a "phase shift" are distinguished from the normal ones by their inability always and under any conditions remain the same as everyone else. Therefore, for all those who are constantly like everyone else, they are not all there. Don Quixote, for example, who was not all there, would have perfectly fitted the ranks of the normal in the previous formation, where he would appear like everyone else.

Schizics, those incomprehensible geniuses, invent theories of relativity, probability, etc., or write something like The Finnegan’s Wake in the aftermath of which the normal are necessitated to pretend they have understood the slightest bit of crap in all that theories or literary works.

Yet, if you try to push forward your crazy ideas without having the appropriate diploma – welcome to the fifth unit! The hotly hospitable Area will brotherly embrace you!

Nuts have difficulties when asked to intelligibly expound the logic of their actions, however, having a musculoskeletal apparatus sufficient for moving weights, and being capable of reproduction, they are the backbone of any formation. It's only that from time to time them those sancho panzas must have their ass kicked so they’d wipe the drivel off their gaping muzzles and abstain from crossing the street to red.

The Tarzan-like roaring departed, who has achieved absolute freedom from the conventions of morality and behavior patterns of human species, would easily become their own in the family of brown bears, or in the lost and, sadly, never found by Mr. Darwin, link between the ape and human herds, but the currently normal have no application for his qualities.

Yes, but why shall we need each other? What could the normal have to do with the absolutely free? Let's don't forget the mobility and overlapping of the categories; before reaching the absolute, the departed had been start-ups within the lower leagues. Besides, some of the normal (or else exceptionally gifted pretenders) could still harbor hope for a return of the departed ones out of the rough.

"Shine! Shine on!

You, crazy diamond!"

Don't panic, partner! They'll never catch up! They cannot climb the shining peaks of your absolute freedom…

What category am I, personally, from? By the method of excluding the superfluous, I irrefutably place myself at the not all there. After all, no normal one would allow themselves the luxury of a hearty laugh when all alone and there is no "Comedy Club" on the TV.

My belonging to the departed is excluded because of my aversion to impurities; both physical and mental… Well, and I do not have the IQ to count myself one from among the geniuses. I have not been tested but I know for sure it won't be enough for the category.

In the course of life, you have to naturally zip in any of the categories because each of us is just a drop in the streams and tides of the current formation. Sometimes, the current gives me over to a stream to drag along the rapids, at other times I happen to be kicking back in the languid backwaters.

That's what my letter is, actually, about, which I am now due to proceed with…)

~ ~ ~

Everything returns to normal, and in forty-five days I returned to our team. A couple or so of months later, the buttocks also returned to their normal shape. The body is fluid. It's only that walking along the Settlement streets, whose dusty potholes for the future puddle-pools, had already been filled with scattered piles of fallen apples fetched out from under the trees in the gardens and dumped in the road, I felt saddened that everything rolled on somehow without me.

"So the summer has passed,

As if it was not there…”

At 13 Decemberists appeared Guena, the husband of my sister Natasha. He was a representative of a well-to-do layer in the population. His mother, Natalya Savelyevna, with her face and blue eyes was like a movie star from the Mosfilm, but she worked at the station restaurant and every night returned from there loaded with food-filled bags.

Her husband, Anatoly Phillipovich, had already retired, kept shouting at everyone and swallowing his medications – an unmistakable specimen of the managing stratum. The newlyweds still did not get along with the husband's parents, but there's a time for everything…

Yes, I missed the wedding, but every cloud has a silver lining and Lenochka had gone all the way to "Artek". It turned out feasible, despite the pessimistic forecast of "boss" Slaushevsky. Besides, all came off so cheap, I did not pay a kopeck for her seaside summer, the expenditures for recreational facilities in our land were traditionally met by trade-unions.

Did Lenochka meet her mother Olga? After all, Theodosia was also in the Crimea. I do not know. I never learned to ask the most elementary, simple, questions…

The newlyweds returned to live with the Guena's parents and, as the wedding present, I built in their khutta yard the walls for garage and summer kitchen combined into one shed. The roof and plastering were not of my concern though. Well, there were also partitions in the bathroom inside the khutta. Just so trifles…