The Blog

Let us take comfort in at least knowing through whom, not unlike the quivering shimmer of St. Elmo lights in the St. Vitus dance, descendeth spirituality to us.

And keep it marked as ineffaceable as the stars configuration in Ursa Major that wagoners are not creators. They are just drivers who turned up in the right place at the right moment equipped with a draft horse and a sturdy cart suitable for the purpose. But the preferences of the Messrs. Drivers themselves have nothing to do with the goods transported. Otherwise, given the enlightened age of homotoleration running nowadays so very high, the flood of The Swan Lakes would have surpassed the aggregate capacity of the Baikal Lake and the Caspian Sea, and The Nutcrackers’ quantities would suffice for a life-size copy of the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric power station. Which phenomenon we do not note as of yet…

(Charsky thoughtfully approaches the chair with prostrate Mimi, picks the tip of her tail and hoists, but after a brief glance in the guest’s direction, changes his mind and scratches the bald spot in her hide instead. The bitch, without ever waking up, purrs like a cat on heat, a kinda feline transvestite.)

And, while speaking of music… You must have heard already how at the ball thrown by the Yusupstein-Rurikurgantotskys that our notorious rogue… What’s his name again? The family name of that funny ring in it… like Rzhelenovskiy or something…

Nulin: (Readily) Lieutenant Rzhevsky?

Charsky: Nah, yeah, it’s him I’m talking about… Some perfect varmint… Surprised the visiting Miss of England with her humanitarian bonbonniere… Right on the slippery piano lid, without removing his hussar uniform, spurs and stuff… That’s a real virtuoso for you!

And by the bye, he invites me to pay him a visit in his Kolomenskoye. The estate’s not quite extensive, says he, but in the cellar he still keeps on ice an intact barrel of Amontillado.

His friend-in-spurs, chamberlain's diplomatic courier for special missions, on his way from Venice, delivered.

To go or not to go?

( He takes a Valdai bell from the mantelpiece and tinkles.

His serf Gerasim, tousled and sleepy and, on top of all, deaf-mute servant, appears thru the door.)

Geraska! Right to the stable! Tell Vaska, Master has ordered to rig the carriage up! Yet, not with that Savraska mare!. Let him harness Covid, the brown brute looks bored recently…

(Gerasim exits stuttering eager moos and baas).

Nulin: (Pleadingly) But still and yet, Appolinary Aristarkhovych… what’s on about Kenty? and Maya has not yet born Buddha…

Charsky: Everything will be fine, Edgar Poelimpsestovych, just oftener trust in the mischievous imp of luck and regularly air the scarlet sails of hope beneath the jolly roger hoisted naughtily… Just easy with using of that opium for people, the choice of synthetic drugs has grown enormously since Marx' days…

Ha! Amontillado!

(With an anticipating pleonastic ring)

The sound form of it alone caresses gourmet’s palate, if the gift of hearing is not denied the wretch…

* * *

Bottle #39: ~ Finishing Off The Delivery By The Maverick Galleon ~

I am a writer. Which fact happened not because I was promoted, appointed or trained and certified. Hell, no! What the fuc… I mean… nothing of the kind!

I got pressed into this vessel of bitter wrath even before Serafima Sergeievna inserted the lacquered handle of a nib pen (don’t forget to dip the nib into the ink well for writing!) between the cramp seized fingers of a first-grader gull – mine…

And then – off you go! March to do what's planned by Dick-only-knows who in Dick-only-knows where to be accomplished by applying me, when I still had not been yet near about this here world at all.

Bastard damn well knew beforehand what conscientiously painstaking ass of a peon would I make, eventually…

Writing is an ungetriddable birthmark, inseparable, were you even as blind as N. Ostrovsky.

True, he wrote badly and garbage, but still better than the deaf-blind-mute challenged from their birth or brought to the same standard by the compulsory secondary education.

I am a writer who writes the picture of the world as I see it. The image is final, stable and incorrigible because of the absolute absence of predisposition, in me, for proofreading and—as a result—having no time for the deed, chronically.

This reason is weighty enough to make my views pretty conservative and stubborn, there's no way to convince me of anything not conceived by me firsthand, personally. On the other hand, I am an easily malleable stuff for any fool to shape me into waiving the worldviews rigged up and sermonized by myself.

Yet, if giving it a sober thought, do I need it? Or anybody? What’s the use of those creative impulses tornadoing my PC keyboard? And that's another victim, by the bye, who's not at fault absolutely, the keyboard isn't.

Just so violent sadistic battering of the innocent accessory thing plus monstrous harrowing of my beloved self.

For suchlike excesses, one should be born by blood-thirsty ghoul Saltychikha after her one-night stand with Malyuta Skuratov, the henchman of Ivan the Terrible (where, the hell, has I misplaced my birth certificate?).

(Which SOB was murmuring right now, “So was it written in your birth tablet”, back there, huh? Let me interview that unsolicited genealogy writer, eye-to-eye, for 17 minutes maximum, and the bitch will on his own accord sign the confession that his tablet-scratching was a gruesome act of sabotage ordered by, at least, three intelligence services of different imperialist nations!)

Of course, I'm interested in any response to my scrabbles. But quite a few bottles have sailed off my hands tagging along after the torrents in the Digitized Gulf Stream, and only silence echoes back—not a single splash by the wiggly tail of a playful goldfish, no whiskey-voiced 'ahoy!' by a pessimist albatross:

“Hey, Titanic! Smack bang you heads against a fucking iceberg!" (as if it would stop us, both the iceberg and me or let us bypass each other, or cancel what was predetermined before the creation of the world!)

Still, it does not take much of IQ to figure out the reason for sea critters’ shyness – the Internet is only 25 and folks are not used yet to think openly. What’s worse, being trained to read between the lines, they can’t see what is said directly, right before their eyes.

At 25, I was a way more timid guy, albeit shaggier.

Let’s speak easy, the hunger for feedback once more highlights my irrepressible egoism and wish for a distraction. Gimme anything to forget all them those Big Brothers—glossy glove puppets, each one, stretched over three fingers – the Military-Industrial Complex of their respective belonging. Seated about the ghostly sheen in their table of negotiations, they portion away the uneven heights of Karabakh:

“These uranium deposits in Kalbajar be for you, and this piece of pleasant climate for military bases – my share.”

And soon after the talks (and also resulting from them) the Prime Minister of Armenia (non-Armenian), gives up the lives of 7.5 thousand boys to fulfill his obligations to Big Bros, and along the highway through the indescribable beauty of mountain nature, huge SPAYKA trailers are rushing crammed with the variety meat of humans, torn, spoiled, messed-up by the cluster bombs shrapnel, white phosphorus and fragments of old-fashioned Grad missiles…

The world has changed beyond recognition since then. It has become more comfortable, more dynamic. Kinder. Cleaner.

It’s getting harder and harder for me to keep apace with the tempo in its everyday life, to follow all those witchy-bitchy gadgets.

However, these all are my problems, because of my age, maybe. Too slow learn I keeping the refugee ID on me, presenting it to polite Russian peacekeepers in a freshly chopped off colony…

I still can’t know nothing and care less when off the city limits, the team job of repairmen from the Stepanakert Water Supply Services, unearthing a water-pipe on a slope, gets interrupted by an unknown person (non-Azerbaijani), who shouts, “Siktyr Ermenlyar! (fuck off Armenians!)” and shoots a sidearm at them.

Because the peacekeepers communicated with the Azerbaijani side about the pending repair work at that spot and got "Roger that!" in broken Russian.

Because exactly that hour in Shushi City, another irreplaceable (and why not? as if the trick is only for very Big Brothers, eh?) president, spiffed in a swanky camouflage, winds himself up by his own screams before a row of microphones and video cameras, so that the whole of Azerbaijan perk up and get united:

"Wow! What Rambo of a czar we have! The big shot knows how to hook up a great victory!"

"Ilham sulh!"

"Si-eg he-il!"

(Corporal Schicklgruber at this moment grinned maliciously:

"Genau das hatte ich gesagt! Das dritte Reich ist unsterblich!. Ja! Ja, meine lieben Herren! Si-eg he-il!.")