m Of Chaos Was Refurnished
All somehow got in the groove by now. Well, yes, half a year in this here blockade, and you day after day wait for the pending ethnic cleansing, humanitarian catastrophe, another dirty war or special operation they keep threatening you with but still…
And before they there (who? where?) are reaching out for the Button, barking their orders down the chain of command, manning the installations, zeroing in on… and so on and forth, you have to find something to fill up the eternity forked out to you, right? Haven’t you?
So meanwhile, to ward off my premature demise from ennui I keep it up, my addiction, yeah, keep writing little by little. Moreover, I’m a small man on campus and because those ends of the world proliferate like mating rabbits (for the optimism’s sake I shun calling the roll even though I could and who feels interested in the matter fire off Google or something and enjoy your fill of consternation) let them themselves then sort it out who’s after who in their queue of ends.
Now, the hardest task, when you’re a writer, is finding a plot. It is the thing of paramount importance, the plot is, from which you’d see what you are about at all and what comes after what in your scribble while its absence spells disastrous primeval chaos and that metaphysical shit you’d better give a wide berth. Don’t ever venture into that dreary jungle, too few and far apart are those who managed to come back, almost zero, statistically speaking, were ever seen after. I swear. But even those who pop up back, by pure chance, are eyed suspiciously: wow, man! What a surprise! but why can’t I recollect you? your name, again?
In short, chaos will take you to the cleaners. Do you follow? Be smart, go and find a plot, so as to avoid unnecessary risks both for you and unprepared public. Hence, by the by, springs up that cursed, below-the-belt question: where to get it? The effing plot?
Here is my friendly and open answer: I have no idea! And in the same breath, parallelly, I am informed on existence of prodigies grunting under the weight of heaps, and hills, and Cheops’ pyramids of plots they have. Looks like some unscrupulous archaeologist has leaked to them the King Solomon Plots’ Mines GPS numbers. Yeah, so it looks to my naked eye. That’s how they go about it, clandestine extraction of plots, on the sly.
Asking for proves? Both natural and clever attitude, yours. Okay, recently and rather inadvertently I rammed into the fact myself and got dismayed in earnest. I wish I still remained in the dark about the issue. But it’s too late now. No way to ditch my awareness (screw Google!) that there is a certain authoress of more than four hundred plots and printed too in the form os bestsellers. While from behind she hears already the wheeze of another (also female) racer turning out her 387th book! How do you like it? The couple of shrews, even if counted apart, belted Steven King’s, and Alexander Dumas, and Alexander Dumas Jr.’s output taken collectively. I couldn’t but feel dismayed and sorry for the guys because of unalloyed solidarity of cavemen.
However, my concern is yield of worthy literary products not base flimflam for housewives and other society strata witth not fully developed psyche. As of yet, if ever.
The problem touched here (as lightly as it is humanly possible, not to take much of your precious time) is not anything new. On the contrary! Back in 19th century did irk it Pushkin, the great swarthy Pushkin who gave birth to the Russian poetry per se. It was his habit, when too sore by the problem, to ask his serf nurse:
‘Whither to sail?’
That was his way of begging from Arina Rodionovna a plot, subtly and metaphorically…
And all of a sudden, no nurse applied, I had a lucky strike! A good plot was stumbled at, faith! Even though it had some drawbacks—being written in English—but then who’s ideal, eh? And as always, the silver lining was in place, that is, the Russian reader hadn’t chanced yet to get not bored by the stuff. Besides, no need to skirt around the sanctions meant to quench the Russian aggression, alias Special Military Operation, against Ukraine because the plot sits on this, Russian, side of the communicational hedge, at the litres.com domain, lucky me!
‘Now, boy, to the mill!,' said I to myself, and dug elatedly, and delved euphorically into translation. But then the insider whistle-blower (I don’t know if you have this built-in bitch which is beyond the point anyway) blew it, the above-mentioned whistle. Like, there had cropped up not a little deviations from the original text and the original author might feel hurt, a sort of.
Well, yes, I also marked there a thing or two for deeper contemplation, after the whistling I did, and had to scratch where anyone’s supposed to when having an itchy sensation but then, gradually, I came to the final conclusion:
‘Fuck you! You don’t like it? Then go and sue me! Sue me or draw it if you be a man! Ungrateful jerk! I’ve let you into my personal space, allowed you to publish your hooey from my personal litres.com account, and now what?’
So, while the bugger gathers back his shooed off thoughts, I go on translating it into Russian for my compatriots… No blood ties involved though, my compatriots by sharing this here planet.
2023-05-05
a. What made me walk out on sports?
Strange may it seem, yet the career of a weight lifter never appealed to me as an attractive walk of life. Quite captivating sports, no denying. Look at the guy’s seductive way of approaching the thing, caressing that smooth shaft in the barbell, the tenderness itself. His stare turned away to something a thousand miles off so as not to scare it prematurely. And then, the unexpected savage roar—yargkhah!—and tears he up above his head all that mass of metal. A couple of seconds, maybe three, the stick stands under the weight, his coccyx a-jerking spasmodically, before to smite the bitch against the floor! Some sportsman, not suitably reserved, might add a yell sounding like “screw you!” Or even to kinda jump. Not overly high though because of his improper shape, a weight lifter never reaches an altitude above half a meter, not even with the pole.
The barbell whimpers its clang-bang complains to the gym flooring, and shuts up, while the weight lifter, like a proud ironclad, goes off with a swagger. Well, yes, not exactly goes but carries he his beefy cross of muscles to the sport podium to mount it and to thrust from aloof his head thru the medal band. Then he would stand erect and listen to the anthem he’d been brought up under or to that of the nation whose chawbacon did occupy the upper step. Besides, the motley flags hang down, also three in number… A catchy show.—
Still and yet, I don’t even know why, there always was a feeling – no, not for me that barbell and stuff.
Later, as my regular ails caused by the Olympic Games current on TV abated, I got it finally that they were not for nothing busting their asses. Nah! Some guy was grunting from under that bloody barbell to stake off a separate apartment another one to secure a seat for himself in the Committee, no matter which one, they would tell, and so forth. And that’s an absolutely justified ends – why should he otherwise make of himself from his junior years a beast of burden, huh? Straining his skeleton and all to the detriment of his mental skills? Not aiming at to break wind fiercely while he puts back on trucks a derailed trolley in a coal pit, right? Of course, as anywhere else, there are zilch winners too with a chronic rupture instead of the booby-prize of his much-coveted medal.
For these and suchlike good reasons sports somehow failed to hook me on. Well, maybe except for the free calisthenics and figure skating, in part, yet also temporarily before I grew up to appreciating Rubensian forms.
Which is a pity, on the whole, because sport is life. Ask any hockey player and he’ll confirm it. Yes, you’re likely not at once to decipher his lisping thru the couple of teeth still there, the rest knocked out in the ice arenas, which is the underlying reason for their speech problems. And stay assured, when leaving the harsh ice of jousts, they do insert their dentures to have what to smile with, yet the lisp still abides, that’s the mark of their profession. Unavoidable.
The fact is well-expressed in that lyrics by Robert Rozhdestvensky to that soundtrack song by Arno Babajanian for the famous Soviet spy-epic sequence:
…give your cut to the mutual course / the scars and evening bells will be your pay…
Damn, no! Wait! It was Michael Tariverdiev who