manuscripts don't catch fire!.. ...in the Internet...
(…the game of ‘knifelets’ starts as a kiddie fun, yet it goes on all over your lifespan and even from a generation to generation. It’s only that among adults the game acquires a longer name, Securing of Interests, however, remains as fascinating and brings in play lots other playthings besides a primitive knife blade. Consider the following example, if you please.
At the initial, small-fry stage of ‘knifelets’ the player Russia (further in the example named ‘R1’) lost some part of its ‘earth’ sector to the players Armenia and Azerbaijan (further on, ‘A1’ and ‘A2’) because the USSR broke into parts (you can’t avoid sharp downs and outs in so a dynamic game).
A1 and A2 go on unskilled stabbing at the territorial integrity of each other while R1 goes over to the next level in Securing of Interests and assumes the peace-keeper attitude in the eager contest of two A's. As a result, the conflict between A1 and A2 flourishes for 3 (as of yet) decades and very beneficially for R1. To see how a peace-keeper can by Securing of Interests make profit on war, one should watch it from the book-keeping angle. For a starter, let’s try some finger-counting. Suppose that army of each side to the conflict comprises 100 000 servicemen. (Sure enough, none of the A's' General Staffs reports me the quantity of their armed forces, yet adding up the military clerks and other suchlike chmo the numbers would be way higher. Still and all a manly man keeps to his word, if it was said 100 let it remain 100: keep the change!)
Now, every serviceman wears army boots. For the sake of calculus simplicity, imagine that all the warriors, from privates to generals, put on the same, cheapest, ‘kirza’ boots for $12 a pair. The footwear is worth its price and serves for 2 years (The artificial leather plant named after Kirov always was a reputed producer), thus, one year of the conflict secures peace-keepers' revenue for $ 50 000 by ‘kirza’ alone. But camouflage pants, Velcroed jackets, pea-jackets, belts, helmets?! But Kalashnikov assault-rifles, machine-guns, mortars, artillery, both ground and anti-aircraft?! But the ammo for all of the mentioned and still upcoming equipment?! But military trucks, armor vehicles, tanks?! But the land mines, anti-personnel as well as anti-tank ones?! But choppers, jets, radar and missile installations, night-vision devices?! But… (nearing the third decade of the conflict it dawned even on Jews in Israel what a bonanza it is here and they started to supply drones.)
I am running out of my fingers but we haven’t yet reached the military advisers who help each of the A sides to master the delivered weaponry. They also have to be paid for. In full… As they used to say in the besieged Stepanakert in the winter of 1991-92, ‘The Armenians pay Russians to shoot their artillery while the Turks (in Karabakh, Azeries are handled ‘Turks’ for some reason) pay Russians to miss the target’. Which is a jest, of course, because the military advisers never miss when Securing of Interests demands it. So it was in Khojaloo, so it was in Horadiz – the two key moments that did not allow the conflict to untimely die out. That’s the essence of Securing of Interests on the international arena, stick to it and keep it on.
However, the game is so engaging that it goes on at the internal level as well. Let’s take, for instance, R1. One calls it ‘Russia-Mommy’, another one handles it ‘Russastan’, the popular Lubea band sings ‘Russeaaa!’, I call it Russia but all those discrepancies converge in the same mujik who after his working day throws the earned money in with his pals to buy vodka and gulp it from the bottle’s neck and then he comes home to give his kids a stinging example of a reprimand, fuck you, fucking motherfuckers! Then fucking batters his fucking wife for speaking up fucking too much and falls asleep on the floor next to the cooled away Russian oven covering himself with his padded jacket while his petty Czar soigne gives out bon mots from the TV box above his sleeping head. And that’s the way it should be because State is a multi-functional community of people where each person performs their function. Someone is to make decisions which interests should be secured and in what way, another one executes those decisions, still other glorifies in his carols the decision maker and its executors and so on and so forth because I have no fingers enough for each and every one down to this very mujik who’s snoring now on the floor under his padded jacket and is nothing of a functionary but the material for the internal Securing of Interests.
Now, he’s given up his day pay to the treasury exchanging it for vodka distilled from the mixture of sawdust and oil byproducts and later he’ll give up his son so that they format the boy into a law enforcer who will Secure the Interests against his dad and other mujiks. The sleeper’s daughter will, of her own will, choose the career of a prostitute because someone should entertain the other functionaries in the society at their leisure time.
The hardest lot, of course, is that by those from the highest functional layer. Besides Securing the Interests in the outer and internal space, they have to think about their own interests too and that’s where they can’t allow themselves any slacking. Constant alertness and readiness for anything is the pledge of success. Here 'anything' means anything at all – to kill, to betray, to give in, and to lie under (not only metaphorically)… Securing of Interests demands utter dedication.
People! Humans! Countrymen! Do we really need all that?! What do we gain? Power, money, glorification? Be vigilant, O, neighbors, don’t get hooked with that petty scam! Power-money-glory are nothing but a means and not the aim for a sober-headed member to a human society. No! Our aim is the purest, unalloyed envy. Envy from the rest of society members is all we need. That's the apogee, acme and climax of human existence. Mere survival is not the goal for a Robinson Crusoe, what he really needs is finding an envious man Friday. Because neither nanny-goats no billy-goats can stimulate a normal individual. That’s where lies the foundation corner stone to uphold the working model of the human society. Perpetuum Mobile, with your kind permission, checked by the uncountable millennia of usage. At one pole of the society vertical there is Slave in a state of eternal inebriety while at the opposite pole we see Pharaoh – same shit of an animal only Rollex-ornated…
But why have I slid to expressing myself in such an evasively streamlined manner? Am I afraid to unequivocally disclose the scumbags' identity? Well, firstly, I’d rather avoid soiling my letter with the sewage stinkers’ names and, secondly, I’m far from being sure that Listiev, Mkrtchan, Nemtsoff, Sargsian and countless other executed from behind a corner would not start playing Securing the Interests the same shitty way were they to reach the higher levels in the game itself which is so f..er..yes! fucking addictive. You start to feel yourself kinda Almighty, you start to change the rules and draw new laws… Well, not the laws of Physics, or, say, Biology, like, enhancing longevity, juvenilation and stuff… But the works in that direction are underway, yes…
In short, under the current situation in the world, devaluation of information by means of the Internet, there’s no sense in censorship and strict ideology control. Okay, let’s say I’m pouring out the most subversive stuff, so what? (I can’t do that at Facebook or any other popular social net, they purge such things out automatically) About my indie site on the Internet there are millions buzzing Emelyas, each one in their style, I’m buried by evergrowing avalanche of advice on the best practices in fucking, making pizza, enjoying Tick-Tock, buying Perpetuum Mobile for just $49. That’s why I’m not afraid of telling what I know.
And then again, if talking about cowardice, here we all are on the same ground. Let’s take me, for instance, I do know that Algerian Bay has a bump on his nose but keep myself in check and don’t blare about it from the roof-tops. Because you never know when they gonna pop up and fix you with pissed thru pieces of a torn bedsheet…)
Yes, life kept rolling along the same rails, where there was the bath, and the beach, and calls from Twoic. And everywhere I acted my rolled-in role, but somehow I got already split from everything, both from the systematically adjusted way of life and from my part in it. I kinda turned that mujik who, leaning against the fenced bounds of the playing grounds, like, watches the kids messing around in the sandbox… Everyone was busily busy with their business in that sand, and Twoic, and bosses, and helpers, and I myself with my streamlined lifestyle, yet I did not really care about all that fuss…
In spring, Twoic proposed to visit Nezhyn for, like, to kick up a party in the old school style at the Hosty. I remember that it was definitely Thursday, my bath day and, apparently, the eve of some holiday, he would not call me in the middle of the week. So I took a towel and underwear for change and went to Nezhyn because even though there was no steam room in the hostel, yet the shower could still be used…
In the hostel lobby, auntie Dina was sitting on duty, she had not changed a single bit and, of course, she didn't let me go any farther. I asked a passer-by student to check the room where, as arranged, Twoic had already been waiting for me to show up, and tell him about the predicament. He went upstairs and I had a discovery.
A young student entered the lobby from the hostel corridor, wearing a crumpled dressing-gown and a sleepy indifferent face. She did not give me the slightest look, ignoring another of casual visitors who pop up in the hostel lobby, and just came over to the window… I waited for Twoic or a message from him about thru which of the back side windows on the first floor I could climb in. So I was not at all prepared that my body, getting no order from me, nor any permission, would unexpectedly throw my right hand up and behind my head, so that my elbow stick out in the air. What a cheeky kink! Was it triggered by the nearness of the common-looking girl with her face of not so well-kneaded dough? Or was it her crumpled dressing gown to turn me on and out of control? In any case, it was outrageous, moreover without any distinct need! That body of mine got really too far! I, for my part, did not intend no gestures… And the cause of the mutiny aboard, a couple of meters off me, was staring at the absolutely void landscape of the two-story canteen behind the gray glass in the window. Some shocking discovery…
The messenger returned and said the door of the indicated room was locked. Apparently, Twoic had already begun a shake-up in the old-days-style of some complaisant chick… I went out of the hostel. To be back in Konotop before the bath closing hour was just unthinkable. But it was a Thursday! Okay, there remained the lake in the Count's Park, I headed there the shortest way.
A group of student lads in their sportswear were coming up along the same shortcut from the park. They reached the pipe from which Fyodor and Yakov once flopped into the water, yet now there was no water anymore, and the moat turned into a wide sod grown ditch. One of them crossed it walking along the shaky pipe. Wow! It seemed to become a student tradition here!
So what? Drumming myself in the chest and shouting "It's me! I'm the legend! It's been started by me!"?. In the sad, elegiac mood I entered the alley of Elms and strolled to the narrower end of the lake by the thicket in the deserted parts of the park. There I undressed and in the altogether entered the water.
Having rubbed the soap all over myself, I threw it ashore and scrubbed the hand-reachable parts of my body. Then, to wash the foam off, I churned along a little, turning around in a screw-wise twirl before diving back towards the shore. White spits of foam scattered the black ripples. The birth of Aphrodite. The f-f..er..frivolous Little Mermaid, thought I rubbing myself with the towel… No, I'm not a pervert. It simply gets so, somehow all by itself, and then just rolls on in a progressive spiral-wise rotation…
Lenochka entered the sewing college in the Sumy city and went to study there. I did not have any reason to go on living at 13 Decemberists, and found a place on the opposite outskirts of Konotop, closer to the "Motordetail" plant.
It was a summer kitchenette of 2 × 3 meters with a pretty low ceiling, in the yard of a khutta whose owner worked at the wastewater treatment plant, where I once laid individual walls. The kitchenette's brick stove left room only for a bed and a desk by the window, yet it was enough for me to shack up with a couple of books in German and The German-Russian Dictionary of Medical Terms because no other kind of a dictionary in the target language happened on the shelves in the bookstore on Lenin Street. The rent was only 15 rubles but, nevertheless, I finally stopped sending out the already irregular alimony transfers in 2 directions…
The extended interest in German was brought about by training up for the final showdown with that old good Freud. As an attested schizophrenic possessing a considerable store of experience in the field studies, I did not see any plausible reason for his fixation on the symbolism of genitals. Well, yes, a cigar may have penis' looks while an ashtray may be persistently associated with vagina and so on and so forth. But then, what of that? They got transfixed by those interpretations and stuck with no more progress than a stick in the mud.
So I finally consolidated my belief that Freud, in fact, is a storyteller, like, say, Hans Christian Andersen, they differ from each other only by the choice of words they used. Thus, Freud divides the Kingdom of consciousness into four parts (a good fellow Sigmund, that was a step forward from the Hegel's triads):
the Duchy Consciousness;
the March Subconscious;
the Baronetcy Ego; and
the County Super-Ego.
Ah! How nice and pretty! They're so delightfully poetic, them those fairy tales! Thank you, Uncle Ziggy!
Anyone has the right to a scientific theory of their own, however, theories are checked by their application in real life situations. Propped by the theory of personal concoction, Freud cured 12 percent of his patients. And although they might've recovered on their own accord or else got healed by the cruelest, yet most efficient therapist of all – Mr. Time, we'll still will give them to Freud awarding for his merits – he offered at least some foothold, a gaudy oasis, when the subject in question was as bare and empty as the arid desert, which endeavor put the inventor on the map.
Besides, he still inspires slews of artists to portray their individual vision of adventurous cocks and charming fannies in all sorts of disguise and juxtaposition…