[To the 130th anniversary of V.I. Chapaev]

The bronze Pushkin seemed a little sadder than usual - probably because he had a red apron hanging on his chest with the inscription: "Long live the first anniversary of the Revolution." But I didn’t have any desire to be ironic about the fact that it was proposed to celebrate the anniversary, and the revolution was written through “yat”, lately I had many opportunities to discern the demonic face that was hiding behind all these short absurdities in red. "It's not even about the play itself," he said. - If you continue this comparison, earlier anyone could throw a rotten egg from the audience onto the stage, but now they shoot from the stage every day with a revolver, or they can throw a bomb. So think about it - who is it better to be now? Actor or spectator? This theater of yours begins too much with a hanger. With it, I believe, it ends. And the future, - I pointed my finger upwards, - all the same belongs to the cinema.

Revvoensonnet. Comrade fighters! Our sorrow is immeasurable. Comrade Plywood was murdered villainously. And now we no longer have the Oldest Bolshevik in the Cheka. Here is how it was. He was walking from the interrogation, and stopped to light a cigarette when the counter-revolutionary officer took out a pistol and aimed it at him. Comrades! There was a booming shot from a Mauser, and a bullet stung Comrade Phanerny on the forehead. He pulled his hand into his bosom, swayed, closed his eyes, and clapped to the ground. Comrade fighters! Rally ranks, sing something in unison, And answer the white bastards with revolutionary terror! - Yes, in that if you try to run away from others, then involuntarily you go all your life along their unsteady paths. If only because you keep running away from them. To escape, you need to know firmly not where you are running, but from where. Therefore, it is necessary to constantly have your prison before your eyes. - And the fact that all the changes in the world occur solely thanks to this group of the most sophisticated scoundrels. Because in fact, they do not foresee the future at all, but shape it, crawling to where, in their opinion, the wind will blow. After that, the wind has no choice but to really blow from this place. - Why is this? - Well, how. After all, I explained to you that I am talking about the most vile, nosy and shameless scoundrels. So do you really think that they will not be able to convince everyone else that the wind is blowing exactly from where they crawled? Moreover, the wind in question blows only within this idiom... As they say, Russia cannot be understood with the mind, but it cannot be reduced to sexual neurosis either. - Has the time passed, - an insinuating voice asked from the ceiling, - when Russian pop music was synonymous with something provincial? Judge for yourself. "Inflammation of the Appendages" is a purely female group that is rare for Russia. A complete set of their stage equipment weighs as much as a T-90 tank. In addition, they include only lesbians, two of whom are infected with English streptococcus. Despite these ultra-modern features, "Inflammation of the appendages" plays mainly classical music - however, in its own interpretation. Now you will hear what the girls made from the melody of the Austrian composer Mozart, whom many of our listeners know from the Foreman film and the Austrian liquor of the same name, which is wholesaled by our sponsor, Third Eye. Wild music began to play, similar to the howl of a blizzard in a prison chimney. I suddenly realized that every melody has its exact meaning. This one, in particular, demonstrated the metaphysical impossibility of suicide - not its sinfulness, but precisely its impossibility. You know, Peter, when you have to speak to the masses, it doesn't matter at all whether you yourself understand the words being uttered. It is important that others understand them. You just need to reflect the expectations of the crowd. Some achieve this by learning the language spoken by the masses, while I prefer to be direct. So if you want to know what "zaruka" is, you should not ask me, but those who are now standing on the square. It was written in large block letters under the picture: "Fight at the Lozovaya station." Next to it, with the other hand, was added: "Chapaev in a cloak, and Petka in a durka." He believes that he is able to see and feel inaccessible to "laity". For example, in the folds of a curtain or tablecloth, in a wallpaper pattern, etc. distinguishes lines, patterns and forms that give the "beauty of life". This, he says, is his "golden fortune", i.e., that for which he daily repeats the "forced feat of existence". With age, I realized that in fact the words "come to yourself" mean "come to others", because it is these others who explain to you from birth what efforts you must make on yourself in order to take the form that pleases them. But I digress. I just wanted to say that the very phrase "all women are bitches" - I repeated these words with sincere pleasure - means, in essence, that life is a dream, and lilacs, as you said, we only dream of. And all the bitches too. That is, I wanted to say - women. If you look at it, I believe that there is something in me that can attract this woman and put me in her eyes immeasurably higher than any owner of a pair of trotters. But after all, such an opposition already contains an unbearable vulgarity - by allowing it, I myself reduce to the level of a pair of trotters what, from my point of view, should be immeasurably higher for her. - Love, then, happens in your head, right? - Yes. - And this condescension too? - It turns out, so, Vasily Ivanovich. So what? - So how did you, Petka, come to such a life that you ask me, your military commander, whether what is happening in your head is always what is happening in your head, or not always? - Oh, Petka! Do you even know how I fight? You cannot know this! There are three Chapaev blows in total, got it? I nodded mechanically, but listened inattentively. - First strike - where! He slammed his fist on the table so hard that the bottle nearly toppled over. - The second - when! He again slammed his fist down on the boards of the table. - And the third - who! - There are maps of the area. And this table is a simplified map of consciousness. Here are the red ones. And here are the whites. But do we acquire colors because we are conscious of reds and whites? And what is it in us that can acquire them? - Petka! - Chapaev's voice called from behind the door, - where are you? - Nowhere! I muttered back. - In! - Chapaev suddenly yelled, - well done! Tomorrow I will announce gratitude before the formation. - The intellectual, - he said with a grim grimace, - especially the Russian, who can only live on the content, has one vile half-childish trait. He is never afraid to attack what subconsciously seems to him righteous and lawful. Like a child who is not very afraid to do evil to his parents, because he knows that they will not put him further than a corner. He is more afraid of strangers. The same with this vile class. “It is pleasant to flirt with evil,” Kotovsky went on ardently, “there is no risk, but the benefit is obvious. That's where the huge army of voluntary scoundrels comes from, who deliberately confuse top with bottom and right with left, do you understand? All those calculating pimps of the spirit, those drunken Chernyshevskys, the punctured Rakhmetovs, the depraved Perovskys, the drugged Kibalchichis, all these... - Let's start in order. Here you are combing the horse. Where is this horse? Chapaev looked at me in amazement. - What are you, Petka, completely fucked up? - I apologize? - Here she is. For a few seconds I was silent. I was completely unprepared for this turn. Chapaev shook his head incredulously. - You know, Petka, - he said, - you better go to sleep. The Order of the Yellow Flag does exist, but it is from a completely different area. I don't write poetry and I don't like them. And why the words when there are stars in the sky? “Well, this world,” Serdyuk said ingratiatingly, “is like bubbles on water.” The guard chuckled and shook his head. “Well,” he said. We understand where we work. But you understand me too. Just imagine that along with these bubbles, the instruction is also floating on the water. And while it is reflected in one of the bubbles - at eleven we lock it, at eight we unlock it. And that's all. - If the mind is a lamp, where will you go when it is broken? At one time there was one person who could not live like others. He tried to understand what it is - what happens to him every day, and who he himself is - the one with whom this happens. And then one night in October, when he was sitting under the crown of a tree, he looked up at the sky and saw a bright star in it. At that moment, he understood everything to such an extent that the echo of that distant second is still ... - I will not bore you with details, - said the baron. - I will only say that in all six hands I have sharp sabers. - Which of your appearances is real? “Unfortunately, I don’t have a real one,” replied the baron. “He is strict,” said the Cossack. - Everything is on schedule. Now they will sing, and then answer the question. That is, they will respond. And I already fired. I'm leaving today. Forever and ever. - So it is written there that a person's mind is like a Cossack's horse. All the time we are moving forward. Only Mr. Baron says that today people have a completely different calico. No one can co-own this horse, and therefore, one might say, she bit the bit, and now it is not the rider who controls her, but she carries him wherever she wants, and carries him there. So the rider forgot to think that he wanted to get somewhere. Wherever the horse wanders, there he goes. “Well, well,” said Chapaev. - A second has not passed, but already got drunk. And why is the hat yellow? Why is the hat yellow? What are you, a cat of a bitch, wanted a tribunal? - This moment, Petka, is eternity. Not a door, he said. - So how can you say that it ever happens? When will you come to your senses... - Never, - I answered. Chapaev's eyes widened. “Look, Petka,” he said in surprise. - Do you understand? Nothing strange. This is how it always happens. Now imagine that this internal prosecutor of yours arrested you, all your internal lawyers screwed up, and you sat down in your own internal trash. So, imagine that at the same time there remains a fourth person whom no one is dragging anywhere, who cannot be called either a prosecutor, or the one for whom he sews a case, or a lawyer. Which never passes on any business - like not an urka, and not a man, and not garbage. - Well presented. - So this fourth one is the one who is rushing from the eternal buzz. And you don’t need to explain anything to him about this buzz, understand? Just think, since he ended his life in such terms, then he, it turns out, never actually left the zone. He just got up so much that he began to ride on the Porshak and give interviews. And then in this zone even his own Paris was found. Two sailors in the forest Turn to the wind and dusk, Cut through the leaves With the dark skin of broad shoulders. Their hearts are far away, Beneath their belts, ammo bags, And their legs, like piles, Down into the sewer stream. The Emperor is tired. After all, the road from the forest to the city - It's an elbow to breathe And another bruise on the knee, Someone's faces in the bushes, Orderlies spitting in their beards, And other fruits of the Decomposition of the Russian soul. He does not hear any oaths, No false advice to close his eyes, Neither their "fuck your mother", Nor how the butt hits the ground - The Emperor says goodbye To the forest, sunset and street, And he doesn't give a damn All that they say about him. He will shout to them from a hemp: "In the midst of this stillness and sorrow, In these days of distrust May be all can be changed - who can tell? Who can tell what will come To replace our visions tomorrow And to judge our past?" Now I said what I wanted. He said that there is a similar idiom in Romanian - "haz baragaz" or something like that. Not I remember exactly how it sounds. These words literally mean "underground laughter". The fact is that in the Middle Ages, all sorts of nomads often attacked Romania, and therefore their peasants built huge dugouts, entire underground houses, where they drove their cattle, as soon as a cloud of dust rose on the horizon. They themselves hid there, and since these dugouts were perfectly camouflaged, the nomads could not find anything. The peasants, naturally, behaved very quietly underground, and only sometimes, when they were completely overwhelmed with joy from the fact that they deceived everyone so cleverly, they, covering their mouths with their hands, laughed softly and softly. Kotovsky, it was so t a precise description of the situation, that I ceased to be a Russian intellectual that same evening. Laughing underground is not for me. Freedom is not a secret. - What to do, Petka, - said Chapaev, - this world is so arranged that all questions have to be answered in the middle of a burning house. - Here is the focus. These are forms about which one can only say that there is nothing that accepts them. Understand? Therefore, in fact, there is no wax or moonshine. There is nothing. And even this "no" is not there either. - So who are you, Vasily Ivanovich? - I? he asked, and looked up at me. - I am the reflection of the lamp on this bottle. It seemed to me that the light reflected in his eyes slapped my face. And then, quite unexpectedly for myself, I understood everything and remembered. The blow was so strong that at first I thought that a shell had exploded right in the center of the room. But I came to my senses almost immediately. I had no need to say anything aloud, but the inertia of speech had already translated my thought into words. “The most interesting thing,” I whispered softly, “is that I am too. - So who is it? he asked, pointing his finger at me. “Emptiness,” I replied. - And this? He pointed a finger at himself. - Chapaev. - Fine! And this? He gestured around the room. “I don't know,” I said. “I understood one thing,” I said. - There is only one freedom - when you are free from everything that the mind builds. This freedom is called "don't know". You are absolutely right. You know, there is such an expression: "A thought uttered is a lie." Chapaev, I'll tell you that an inexpressible thought is also a lie, because in any thought there is already utterance. What I saw was a likeness of a stream luminous with all the colors of the rainbow, an immeasurably wide river that began somewhere in infinity and went to the same infinity. It stretched around our island in all directions as far as the eye could see, but still it was not a sea, but a river, a stream, because it had a clearly visible current. The light with which he flooded the three of us was very bright, but there was nothing blinding or terrible in it, because at the same time he was mercy, happiness and love of infinite power - in fact, these three words, filthy with literature and art , completely unable to convey anything. Just looking at these constantly appearing colored lights and sparks was already enough, because everything I could think of or dream about was part of this rainbow flow, and more precisely, this rainbow flow was everything that I could think of. or experience, all that could be or not be - and he, I knew for sure, was not something different from me. He was me and I was him. I have always been him, and nothing more. - What is it? I asked. "Nothing," replied Chapaev. “No, I don’t mean that,” I said. - How does is called? “In different ways,” Chapaev replied. - I call it the conditional river of absolute love. If abbreviated - Ural. We sometimes become it, sometimes we take forms, but in reality there are no forms, nor us, nor even the Urals. Therefore, they say - we, the forms, are the Urals. In fact, everything was completely different. It was Anna's birthday and we went on a picnic. Kotovsky immediately got drunk and fell asleep, and Chapaev began to explain to Anna that a person’s personality is like a set of dresses that are taken out of the closet in turn, and the less real a person really is, the more dresses there are in this closet. It was his birthday present to Anna - I mean, not a set of dresses, but an explanation. Anna did not want to agree with him. She tried to prove that everything can be so in principle, but this does not apply to her, because she always remains herself and does not wear any masks. But to everything she said, Chapaev answered: "One dress. Two dress," and so on. Do you understand? Then Anna asked who, in this case, puts on these dresses, and Chapaev replied that there was no one who puts them on. And then Anna understood. She was silent for a few seconds, then nodded, raised her eyes to him, and Chapaev smiled and said: "Hello, Anna!" This is one of my dearest memories... The Papuans caught Kotovsky and said: "We will eat you, and we will make a drum out of your bald scalp. And now make your last wish. " Kotovsky thought and said: "Give me an awl." They give him an awl, and he pokes it in his head! : "Culture", "History", "Politics" and something else. I randomly opened the "Culture" section and

You know, - I started talking, - if history teaches us anything, it is that all those who tried to equip Russia ended up equipping them. And, how should I put it, far from the best sketches. - You know what? Take ecstasy and dissolve it into the absolute. It will be just right. Eternal non-return. Taking different forms, appearing, disappearing and changing faces, And sawing the bars for about seven hundred years, probably From the seventeenth exemplary psychiatric hospital A madman by the name of Void is running away. There is no time to escape, and he knows it. Moreover, there is nowhere to run, and there is no way into this nowhere. But all this is nothing compared to the fact that the one who runs away is nowhere to be found. We can say that there is a process of sawing the grating, And we can say that there is no sawing of the grating. Therefore, the mad Emptiness wears a purple rosary on his hand And never pretends to know at least one answer. Because in a world that tends to go nowhere, It's better not to swear to anything, but to say "No, no" and "Yes, yes" at the same time.

What has always amazed me, - he said, - is the starry sky under our feet and Immanuel Kant is inside us.
- I, Vasily Ivanovich, do not understand at all how it is that a person who confuses Kant with Schopenhauer was entrusted with commanding a division.

It's always like this in Russia - you admire and cry, but if you look closely at what you admire, you can vomit.

Oh, to hell with this eternal Dostoevism that haunts the Russian people! And the devil would take a Russian person who only sees her around.

To escape, you need to know firmly not where you are running, but from where. Therefore, it is necessary to constantly have your prison before your eyes.

It was difficult to settle on any particular drink. The assortment was large, but somehow second-rate, as in the elections.

There is only one freedom - when you are free from everything that the mind builds. This freedom is called "don't know". You are absolutely right. You know, there is such an expression: "A thought uttered is a lie." Chapaev, I'll tell you that an inexpressible thought is also a lie, because in any thought there is already utterance.

A person is somewhat similar to this train. In the same way, he is doomed to forever drag behind him from the past a chain of dark, terrible cars inherited from no one knows who. And he calls the meaningless roar of this random coupling of hopes, opinions and fears his life. And there is no way to escape this fate.

Beauty seems to be a label behind which something immeasurably greater is hidden, something inexpressibly more desirable than itself, and it only points to it, when in fact there is nothing special behind it ... A golden label on an empty bottle ...

Eh, Petka, Petka - said Chapaev - I knew a Chinese communist named Tse Zhuang. He often had one dream - that he was a red butterfly flying among the grass. And when he woke up, he often could not understand whether it was the butterfly who dreamed that she was doing revolutionary work, or whether it was the underground worker who had a dream in which he fluttered among the flowers. So, when this Jie Zhuang was arrested in Mongolia for sabotage, he said during interrogation that he was actually a butterfly who was dreaming about all this. Since Baron Jungern himself interrogated him, and he is a man of great understanding, the next question was why this butterfly is for the communists. And he said that she was not for the communists at all. Then he was asked why, in this case, the butterfly is engaged in subversive activities. And he replied that everything people do is so ugly that it makes no difference which side you are on.
- And what happened to him?
- Nothing. They put him against the wall and woke him up.
- And he?
Chapaev shrugged his shoulders.
- It flew further, presumably.

The more cunning and shameless a person is, the easier it is for him to live. And it is easier for him to live precisely because he quickly adapts to changes.
There is a level of unscrupulous cunning in which a person anticipates changes before they happen, and due to this, adapts to them much faster than anyone else. Moreover, the most sophisticated scoundrels adapt to them even before these changes occur. And all the changes in the world occur solely thanks to this group of the most sophisticated scoundrels. Because in fact, they do not foresee the future at all, but shape it, crawling to where, in their opinion, the wind will blow. After that, the wind has no choice but to really blow from this place.

I never really understood my poems, having long guessed that authorship is a dubious thing, and all that is required of someone who picks up a pen and bends over a sheet of paper is to line up a lot of keyholes scattered around the soul in one line - so so that a sunbeam suddenly falls through them onto the paper.

In fact, each of us still sees in life only a reflection of his own spirit. And if you find impenetrable darkness around you, it only means that your own inner space is like night.

What are you writing? Zherbunov asked. Who do you want to arrest?
- No, - I said, - here if you take, then everyone. We will do it differently.
Do you remember the order, Zherbunov? After all, we not only need to stop, but also to draw our own line, right?
“So,” said Zherbunov.
- Well, - I said, - you and Barbolin go backstage. And I will now rise to the stage and draw a line.
And as soon as I do, I'll give a signal, and then you go out. We will now show them the music of the revolution.
Zherbunov tapped his cup with his finger.
“No, Zherbunov,” I said firmly, “you won’t be able to work.
Something like resentment flickered in Zherbunov's eyes.
- Yes, what are you? he whispered. - You do not trust? Yes, I ... I will give my life for the revolution!
- I know, comrade, - I said, - but then cocaine. Forward.

In essence, the approach to the goal is itself higher than the goal.

And here is another episode ... Kotovsky sent Chapaev from Paris red caviar and cognac. And Chapaev writes in response: “Thank you, Petka and I drank moonshine, even though it stank of bedbugs, but we didn’t eat cranberries - it hurts like fish.”
I couldn't help it and laughed.
– Kotovsky did not send anything from Paris. And there was something similar. We were sitting in a restaurant, really drinking cognac and eating red caviar - I understand how it sounds, but there was no black caviar. We had a conversation about the Christian paradigm, and therefore we spoke in its terms. Chapaev commented on one place from Swedenborg, where a ray of heavenly light fell to the bottom of hell and seemed to the souls who live there, a fetid puddle. I understood this in the sense that this light itself is transformed, and Chapaev said that the nature of light does not change, and everything depends on the subject of perception. He said that there are no forces that would not let a sinful soul into heaven - it simply does not want to go there. I did not understand how this could be, and then he said that the caviar that I eat would seem to one of Furmanov's weavers to be cranberries, which stink of fish.

Do you hear? she repeated, turning to me.
Indeed, a rather beautiful and harmonious singing made its way through the roar of the wagon wheels. Listening, I made out the words:

We are blacksmiths - and our spirit is Moloch,
We forge the keys to happiness.
Rise higher, our heavy hammer,
Knock harder on the steel chest, knock, knock!

Strange, I said, why do they sing that they are blacksmiths if they are weavers? And why is Moloch their spirit?
“Not Moloch, but a hammer,” said Anna.
- The hammer? I asked. - Oh, of course. Blacksmiths, hence the hammer. That is, because they sing that they are blacksmiths, although in reality they are weavers. God knows what.

I know what I was thinking... They say - the tragedy of the artist, the tragedy of the artist. Why an artist? Somehow dishonest. You see, what's the matter - artists are still prominent figures, and therefore the troubles that happen to them are made known and put on public display. But will they remember some ... No, they can talk about an entrepreneur ... Let's say, about a train driver? No matter how tragic his life was?
“You, Pyotr, are coming in from the wrong side at all,” said Volodin.
- Like this?
- You are confusing concepts. The tragedy does not happen to the artist or the train driver, but in the mind of the artist or the train driver.

Do you happen to have someone like you with a red face, three eyes and a necklace of skulls? - he asked. - Who dances between fires? BUT? Still tall? And waving crooked sabers?
"Perhaps there is," I said politely, "but I can't figure out which one you're talking about." You know, very common features. Anyone can be.

Then my thoughts returned to the conversation with Chapaev. I began to think about his "nowhere" and about our conversation. At first glance, everything was easy. He asked me to answer the question whether I exist because of this world or whether this world exists because of me. Of course, it all came down to a banal dialectic, but there was one frightening side to it, which he masterfully pointed out with his seemingly idiotic questions about the place where it all takes place. If the whole world exists in me, then where do I exist? And if I exist in this world, then where, in what place is my consciousness?
One could say, I thought, that on the one hand the world exists in me, and on the other hand I exist in this world, and these are just the poles of one semantic magnet, but the trick was that this magnet, this dialectical dyad, was nowhere hang up. She had nowhere to exist!
Because for its existence, one was needed in whose mind it could arise. And he also had nowhere to exist, because any "where" could appear only in consciousness, for which there simply was no other place than the one he himself created ... But where was it before it created this place for itself? By itself? But where?

And what is this work?
"Oh, nothing complicated," said Kawabata. - Papers, clients. Externally, everything is the same as in other firms, except that your internal attitude to what is happening must correspond to the harmony of the cosmos.
- How much do they pay? asked Serdyuk.
"You'll get two hundred and fifty koku rice a year," Kawabata said, and closed his eyes for a second, counting something. "In your dollars, that's something like forty thousand."
- Dollars?
"As you wish," Kawabata said with a shrug.
- I agree, - said Serdyuk.
- I didn't expect anything else. Now tell me - are you ready to recognize yourself as a samurai of the Taira clan?
- Still would.
- Are you ready to connect your life and death with our clan?
“Well, they have rituals,” thought Serdyuk. “When do they find time to make televisions?”

That the emperor spoke English did not strike me as surprising at all. It was still not enough that before his death (or, perhaps, something else - I did not understand this myself) he would begin to express himself in a language defiled by the decrees of the Council of People's Commissars.

Eternal non-return

Taking different forms, appearing, disappearing and changing faces,
And sawing the grate for years, probably about seven hundred,
From the seventeenth exemplary psychiatric hospital
A madman by the name of Void runs away.

There is no time to escape, and he knows it.
Moreover, there is nowhere to run, and there is no way into this “nowhere”.
But all this is nothing compared to the fact that the one who runs away
Nowhere is it possible to find it.

We can say that there is a process of sawing the lattice,
And we can say that there is no sawing of the lattice.
Therefore, the mad Emptiness wears a purple rosary on his hand
And he never pretends to know at least one answer.

Because in a world that tends to go nowhere,
It is better not to swear in anything, but at the same time
say "No, no" and "Yes, yes."

Black bagel

Princess Meshcherskaya had one exquisite little thing -
Velvet dress, black as the Spanish night.
She went out in it to a friend of the house, who returned from the capital,
And he, seeing her, trembled and rushed away.

“Oh, what pain,” thought the princess, “what languor!
I'll go and play something from Brahms - why not?
And at that time a naked friend of the house was hiding behind the curtain,
And passionately caressed a bagel, painted black.

This story will not impress
For little guys who do not know what we once had,
In addition to the peasants and the working class, lived
Exploiters who sucked the blood of the masses.

But now every worker has the right
Put on a donut, as before the princes and counts!

I am Marmeladov

- I am Marmeladov. Tell a secret
I have nowhere else to go.
For a long time I walked around the white world,
but saw no lights ahead.
I conclude by your gaze,
that the oppressed people are not alien to you.
Maybe we'll have a drink? Pour you?
- No need.

- As you please. For you. So,
your face is full of mysterious glory,
your beautiful mouth with a smile is silent,
your forehead is pale and your palms are bloody.
And I have no reason left
so that behind faces with motionless skin
emptiness bloomed with pride
and looked like God.
You understand?
- I think yes…

- Here. And without it - you know.
Every morning is like blood on the snow.
Like an ax to the back of the head. Introduce
can you, my boy?
- I can.
I don't want to look into my soul.
There is darkness, like inside a boot.
As if in a narrow cold closet -
dead women. Scary?
- Yeah. What would you like? What is the purpose of the conversation?
- Right now?
- Go ahead quickly.
“Maybe a glass of liquor first?”
“You are annoying as a barber.
I'm leaving.
"Dear boy, don't be angry.
I'm tired of our blind conversation.
Maybe you can finally explain?
What would you like?
- Sell the ax...

- …What? What for?
- This is for me to work.
A symbol of one of the sides of life.
You, if necessary, steal another.
Stolen is more correct, I think?
- So ... And I think - what kind of hints?
Have you been there? Behind the curtain? Yes?
- You know, you, Rodion, are shallow,
even with an axe. However, youth is always
sees both the essence and the cause in the final,
wants something simple - to laugh, to love,
gently plays with the shoulder strap.
How many you want?
- Let me ask,
what do you want?
- I say from the first phrase -
strength, hope, Grail, egregore,
eternity, radiance, moon phases,
blade, youth... Give me the axe.
- I do not understand. But anyway, please.
- Here it is ... It sparkles like a flame between rocks ...
How old are you?
- How many you want.
- Enough?
- Ten ... Fifteen ... Well, robbed.
However, I feel that this is not the case.
money. Something is changing... Already
collapses, as it were ... It overtook ... And the wind
it blows cold in a broken soul.
Who you are? My God, you are wearing a mask!
Your eyes are like two yellow stars!
How vile! Remove!

God... The old woman... And the hands are empty...

Two sailors in the forest

Two sailors in the forest
Turn to the wind and dusk
dissect the foliage
Dark skin on broad shoulders.
Their hearts are far away
Under belts, ammo bags,
And their legs are like piles
They descend into the sewer stream.
The Emperor is tired.
After all, the road from the forest to the city -
It's an elbow puff
And another bruise on the knee,
Someone's faces in the bushes
Orderlies spitting in your beard
And other fruits
Decomposition of the Russian soul.
He hears no oaths
No false advice to close your eyes,
Not their "fuck your mother"
Nor how the butt hits the ground -
The emperor says goodbye
With forest, sunset and street
And he doesn't care
Everything that is said about him.
He will shout to them from a stump:
"In the midst of this stillness and sorrow,
In these days of distrust
May be all can be changed - who can tell?
Who can tell what will come
To replace our visions tomorrow
And to judge our past?"

Now I said what I wanted.

Such, I thought bitterly, would be the fate of all the arts in that dead-end tunnel into which the locomotive of history is dragging us. If even a farce ventriloquist has to resort to such tricks in order to maintain interest in himself, then what lies ahead for poetry? She will not have a place in the new world at all - or, more precisely, there will be a place, but poems will become interesting only if it is known and documented that their author has two x ... I or that he, at worst, able to read them with his ass. Why, I thought, why does any social cataclysm in this world lead to the fact that this dark redneck floats up and forces everyone else to live according to their vile and conspiratorial laws?

Success in some way intoxicated me. I thought that real art differs from fakes in that it knows how to find a way to the most calloused heart and is able for a second to lift into heaven, into a world of complete and unrestricted freedom, the hopeless victim of the world's infernal trance.

Love, in essence, arises in loneliness, when there is no object nearby, and it is directed not so much at the one or the one you love, but at the image built by the mind, loosely connected with the original. In order for it to appear for real, you need to have the ability to create chimeras.

What are you thinking now? she asked. - Just be honest.
- What am I thinking about? I said putting my hands around her neck. - That the movement to the highest point of happiness is literally like climbing a mountain ... Yes, it looks like a risky and difficult climb. While the most desirable is yet to come, all feelings are absorbed by the very process of ascent. The next stone, on which the foot must step, is a bush of weeds, which you can grab onto with your hand ...
Yes, the goal gives all this meaning, but it is completely absent at any of the points of movement. In essence, the approach to the goal is itself higher than the goal.
“Yes,” I continued, throwing back my head and closing my eyes, “but the most important thing here is that as soon as you have climbed to the top, as soon as the goal is reached, it disappears at the same moment. In essence, like all mind-created objects, it is elusive. Think for yourself, Anna: when you dream of the most beautiful of women, she is present in the imagination in all the perfection of her beauty, but when she is embraced, all this disappears. What you are dealing with comes down to a set of simple and often rather crude sensations, which, moreover, you usually experience in the dark ... But no matter how they excite the blood, the beauty that called to itself a minute ago disappears - it is replaced by something something to strive for something was ridiculous. And this means that beauty is unattainable. More precisely, it is achievable, but only in itself, and what the mind, intoxicated with passion, is looking for behind it, simply does not exist.

I can tell you what it really is - the secret freedom of the Russian intellectual.
"If it takes a little time, do me a favor," he replied.
- A year ago, it seems, in St. Petersburg, there was an interesting case. You know, some Social Democrats from England came - of course, they were horrified by what they saw - and we had a meeting with them at Basseynaya. Through the Union of Poets. There was Alexander Blok, who spent the whole evening telling them about this most secret freedom, which, as he put it, we all sing after Pushkin. Then he left, and the British, who, of course, did not understand anything, began to ask what it was - secret freedom. And no one could really explain until some Romanian, who for some reason was with the British, said that he understood what it was about.
- That's it, - said Kotovsky and looked at his watch.
Don't worry, it won't be long. He said that there is a similar idiom in Romanian - "haz baragaz" or something like that. I don't remember exactly what it sounds like. These words literally mean "underground laughter". The fact is that in the Middle Ages, all sorts of nomads often attacked Romania, and therefore their peasants built huge dugouts, entire underground houses, where they drove their cattle as soon as a cloud of dust rose on the horizon. They themselves hid in the same place, and since these dugouts were perfectly camouflaged, the nomads could not find anything. The peasants, naturally, behaved very quietly underground, and only sometimes, when they were completely overwhelmed with joy at the fact that they had deceived everyone so cleverly, they, holding their mouths with their hands, laughed softly and quietly. So, secret freedom, this Romanian said, is when you sit between stinking goats and rams and, pointing your finger up, giggle softly. You know, Kotovsky, it was such an accurate description of the situation that I ceased to be a Russian intellectual that same evening.
Laughing underground is not for me. Freedom is not a secret

“Tverskoy Boulevard was almost the same as it was two years ago when I last saw it - it was February again, snowdrifts and haze, strangely penetrating even daylight. ...

* - What are you doing?
“Oh, you can’t explain right away. A lot of work, even too much. One, another, third - and all the time you try to be in time. First there, then here. Someone has to do all this.
— In the cultural part, or what?

* Listen, life is a theater. The fact is known. But what they talk about much less often is that a new play is shown in this theater every day.

* A good psychiatrist should avoid drugs - they are... Well, how can I explain it to you... Like cosmetics. They do not solve problems, but only hide them from prying eyes.

* With Russia, it's always like this - you admire and cry, but if you look closely at what you admire, you can vomit.

* - If you were a philosopher, - said Chapaev, - I would not put you higher than cleaning manure in the stable. And you're in command of my squadron.

* - How to chop with an elephant with a saber? It will be inconvenient.
- It's inconvenient, because that's what she's doing.

* - Let me tell you one last thing. Perhaps the most important.
— What?
“About where the person who manages to ascend to the throne, which is nowhere, ends up. We call this place "Inner Mongolia".
— Where is it, this place?
- That's just the point, that nowhere. It cannot be said that it is located somewhere in the geographical sense. Inner Mongolia is not called that because it is inside Mongolia. It is inside the one who sees the emptiness, although the word "inside" is completely inappropriate here. And this is not actually Mongolia, they just say so. What would be the dumbest thing of all is to try to describe to you what it is. Take my word for at least one thing - it is very worth striving for there all your life. And there is nothing better in life than to be there.

* Love, in essence, arises in loneliness, when there is no object nearby, and it is directed not so much at the one or the one you love, but at the image built by the mind, loosely connected with the original. In order for it to appear for real, you need to have the ability to create chimeras.

* A person's personality is like a set of dresses that are taken out of a closet one by one, and the less real a person really is, the more dresses there are in this closet.

* Unfortunately, this task is too simple for such attempts to be successful.

* You and I, of course, are old friends, but even so, I could help.

* As for progress, I can briefly explain to you what it really is.
To put everything you've been talking about in a nutshell, it turns out that some people adapt to change faster than others, and that's it. Have you ever wondered why these changes are happening at all? I will tell you. I hope you will not argue with the fact that the more cunning and shameless a person is, the easier it is for him to live?
And it is easier for him to live precisely because he quickly adapts to changes.
Now, there is a level of unscrupulous cunning at which a person anticipates changes even before they happen, and thanks to this he adapts to them much faster than anyone else. Moreover, the most sophisticated scoundrels adapt to them even before these changes occur.
So that all the changes in the world occur solely thanks to this group of the most sophisticated scoundrels. Because in fact, they do not foresee the future at all, but shape it, crawling to where, in their opinion, the wind will blow. After that, the wind has no choice but to really blow from this place.
After all, I explained that I was talking about the most vile, nosy and shameless scoundrels. So do you really think that they will not be able to convince everyone else that the wind is blowing exactly from where they crawled? Especially since the wind in question only blows within this idiom...

* I hardly understood the meaning of his words - if we assume that he was.

* When you have to speak with the mass, it does not matter at all whether you yourself understand the words spoken. It is important that others understand them. You just need to reflect the expectations of the crowd. Some achieve this by learning the language spoken by the masses, while I prefer to be direct. So if you want to know what "zaruka" is, you should not ask me, but those who are now standing on the square.

* - I did not like their commissar, this Furmanov. We may not work together in the future.
"Don't fill your head with things that have nothing to do with the present," said Chapaev. - In the future you are talking about, you still need to be able to get. Perhaps you will find yourself in a future where there will be no Furmanov. Or maybe you will find yourself in a future where you will not be.

* I'm just trying to be a pleasant conversationalist. Actually, I'm thinking of something else.

* The person is somewhat similar to this train. In the same way, he is doomed to forever drag behind him from the past a chain of dark, terrible cars inherited from no one knows who. And he calls the meaningless roar of this random coupling of hopes, opinions and fears his life. And there is no way to escape this fate.

* I thought about how hopeless the fate of the artist in this world. This thought, which at first gave me a kind of bitter pleasure, suddenly seemed unbearably false. It was not only in its banality, but also in some of its corporate meanness: all people of art in one way or another repeated it, separating themselves into some special existential caste, and why? Did the fate of a machine gunner or, for example, a nurse, have a different outcome? Or was there less agonizing absurdity in them? And is the immeasurable tragedy of existence connected with what exactly a person has to do in life?

* Several consecutive conclusions flashed through my head.

* Everything we see is in our minds, Petka. Therefore, it is impossible to say that our consciousness is located somewhere. We are nowhere simply because there is no place where we can be said to be. That's why we're nowhere.

* The intellectual, especially the Russian, who can only live on the content, has one vile half-childish trait. He is never afraid to attack what subconsciously seems to him righteous and lawful. Like a child who is not very afraid to do evil to his parents, because he knows that they will not put him further than a corner. He is more afraid of strangers. The same with this vile class.
The intellectual, no matter how he mocked the foundations of the empire that gave birth to him, knows perfectly well that the moral law was still alive in it.
... if the moral law in it would be dead, he would never dare to trample on its foundations with his feet. ...
... an intellectual is not afraid to trample on shrines. An intellectual is afraid of only one thing - to touch on the topic of evil and its roots, because he rightly believes that here he can be immediately taken away by a telegraph pole.
It is pleasant to flirt with evil, there is no risk, and the benefit is obvious. That's where the huge army of voluntary scoundrels comes from, who deliberately confuse top with bottom and right with left, do you understand? ...

* The assortment was large, but somehow second-rate, as in the elections.

* We are distinguished from animals only by those rules and rituals that we have agreed with each other. Breaking them is worse than dying, because only they separate us from the abyss of chaos that begins right at our feet - if, of course, the blindfold is removed.

* By its nature, Russian people are not inclined to metaphysical search and are content with that godlessness mixed with alcoholism, which, to be honest, is our main spiritual tradition.

* We in Japan do not disturb the universe with unnecessary thoughts about the cause of its occurrence. We do not burden God with the concept of "God". ... We in Japan make the best TVs in the world, but that doesn't stop us from realizing that a TV is just a small transparent window in a spiritual garbage chute. I didn't mean those unfortunate people who stare hypnotized all their lives at the endless stream of slops, feeling alive only when they recognize the jar from familiar canned food. We are talking about those people who are worthy of mention in our conversation.

* ... and the other two had small plastic harmonicas in their hands, making a piercing eerie sound - which was quite natural, because such harmonicas are produced not at all for the purpose of anyone playing them, but solely in order to give rise to a feeling of happiness at children's matinees.

* As a matter of fact, it was possible to understand that these were Red Guards only by their shabby appearance - they were dressed haphazardly, mostly in civilian clothes, from which it followed that they preferred to equip themselves with the help of robberies.

* The world we live in is just a collective visualization that we are taught to do from birth. In fact, this is the only thing that one generation passes on to another. When enough people see this steppe, grass and summer evening, we have the opportunity to see it all with them. But no matter what forms were prescribed to us by the past, in fact, each of us still sees in life only a reflection of his own spirit. And if you find impenetrable darkness around you, it only means that your own inner space is like night. ...
Just do not think that this is something humiliating for you. Very few people are ready to admit that he is exactly the same as other people. Isn't it the usual state of a person to sit in the dark near a fire lit by someone's mercy and wait for help to come?
...
Inner Mongolia is just the place where help comes from.

* ...harder than cleaning shit out of a corrugated sole.

* - And as for his advice to leave the madhouse, in my opinion, you simply can’t say better. ... Indeed - instead of being horrified by each new nightmare that gives rise to your inflamed consciousness at night ...
- Excuse me, I didn’t understand that my inflamed consciousness gives rise to a nightmare, or consciousness itself is a product of a nightmare?
- This is the same. All these constructions are needed only to get rid of them forever. Wherever you find yourself, live by the laws of the world into which you find yourself, and use these laws yourself to free yourself from them. Get out of the hospital, Petka.

* I don't think he's in a position to control them. He remains their commander only because he constantly gives the exact orders they want to hear. If he makes a serious mistake at least once, they will quickly find a new boss.

* However, I never really understood my poems, having long guessed that authorship is a dubious thing, and all that is required of someone who picks up a pen and bends over a sheet of paper is to build a lot of keyholes scattered around the soul into one line - so that a sunbeam suddenly falls through them onto the paper.

* Only something obscene can arouse the keen interest of this public.

* Why does any social cataclysm in this world lead to the fact that this dark redneck pops up and forces everyone else to live according to their vile and conspiratorial laws?

* You know, problems can be solved in different ways. You can just get drunk in the smoke, and they will disappear for a while. But I prefer to deal with them before they deal with me.

* The English, who, of course, did not understand anything, began to inquire what it is - secret freedom. And no one really could explain until some Romanian said that he understood what it was about. …
He said that the Romanian language has a similar idiom - "haz baragaz" or something like that. I don't remember exactly what it sounds like. These words literally mean "underground laughter". The fact is that in the Middle Ages, all sorts of nomads often attacked Romania, and therefore their peasants built huge dugouts, entire underground houses, where they drove their cattle as soon as a cloud of dust rose on the horizon. They themselves hid in the same place, and since these dugouts were perfectly camouflaged, the nomads could not find anything. The peasants, naturally, behaved very quietly underground, and only sometimes, when they were completely overwhelmed with joy at the fact that they had deceived everyone so cleverly, they, holding their mouths with their hands, laughed softly and quietly. So, secret freedom, this Romanian said, is when you sit between stinking goats and rams and, pointing your finger up, giggle softly. You know, it was such an accurate description of the situation that I ceased to be a Russian intellectual that same evening. Laughing underground is not for me. Freedom is not a secret.

* - Just at some point it becomes clear that this is a dream, and that's it. When it gets too uncomfortable, you suddenly realize that there is really nothing to be afraid of, because ... because there is where to wake up.
- Where exactly do you sleep?
- I do not know.
- Well done. That's right there. As soon as you are caught up in the stream of dreams, you yourself become part of it, because in this stream everything is relative, everything moves and there is nothing to grab hold of. When you are sucked into a whirlpool, you do not understand this, because you yourself are moving along with the water and it seems to be motionless. So in a dream there is a feeling of reality. But there is a point that is not fixed relative to something else, but is absolutely fixed, and it is called "I don't know." When you fall into it in a dream, you wake up - or rather, first you wake up in it. And only then,” he waved his hand around the room, “here.”
But this same point exists in life, absolutely immovable, relative to which all this life is the same dream as your stories. Everything in the world is just a whirlpool of thoughts, and the world around us becomes real only because you yourself become this whirlpool. Just because you know.

* — What are you, Petka, afraid of something?
- A little.
- And what?
- Of death. More precisely, not herself, but... I don't know. I want to save my mind.
- Well, you give, Petka. Didn't expect from you. Did you go on the attack with such thoughts every time? It is as if a piece of newspaper lay under a lantern and thought that he wants to save the light in which he lies. And what do you want to save consciousness from?
— From nonexistence.
— Isn't nonexistence an object of consciousness?
Sophistry has begun again. Even if I am a piece of paper who thinks he wants to save the light he lies in, what difference does it make to me if I really think so and all this hurts me?
“Why, a scrap can’t think. It just says in cursive: I want to save the light of the lantern. And next to it is written - oh, what pain, what languor ... Oh, Petka ... How can I explain to you ... This whole world is an anecdote that the Lord God told himself. And the Lord God himself is the same.

* Fear always attracts exactly what you are afraid of. And if you are not afraid of anything, you become invisible. The best disguise is indifference. If you are truly indifferent, none of those who can harm you will simply remember and think about you.

* There is only one freedom - when you are free from everything that the mind builds. This freedom is called "don't know". ... You know, there is such an expression: "A thought uttered is a lie." ...an inexpressible thought is also a lie, because in any thought there is already utterance. ...
Once I know, I'm no longer free. But I'm absolutely free when I don't know. Freedom is the biggest mystery of all.

* In no case, do not come up with any answers in advance, because he may not ask any of the questions for which I will prepare, and I will definitely give out one of my blanks at random. You could only rely on luck and chance.

* - What are you going to do in civilian life?
I was slightly taken aback by his question. I knew from long experience with the soldiers that shameless discussion of the intimate aspects of life in the lower classes of society performs about the same function as talking about the weather in the upper classes. But Zherbunov, apparently, was immediately going to enter into the nuances and discuss the details.
- I can't say that I especially missed your fellow citizens, Zherbunov.

*Without the Browning in my trouser pocket, I felt like a bit of a charlatan.

... At first, only blue dots of lanterns cutting through the frosty air were visible through it, but we drove faster and faster - and soon, soon the sands rustled around and the waterfalls of Inner Mongolia, dear to my heart, rustled.”

I am fascinated by this book, with its style, openness and at the same time unobtrusive St. Petersburg snobbery, which is subtly ridiculed in the same place. Irony, antitheses and colors are everywhere.
The book is like an experiment of a writer who folds right before the eyes of the reader, like a colorful veil of assorted shreds. I like the stylist, a lot of tricks, allusions, and at the same time something primordially ours - Russian, but already new Russian, changed by the West, with foreign words, which in the book, as in life, seem alien and out of place.
A lot of themes, the alchemical marriage of Russia with the West in the image of Mary and Arnold the Terminator, and the alchemical marriage with the East, where Japan is our standard and friend. The theme of emptiness and non-existence, where there is "nowhere", "thing to itself" - which over time Kant does not give anyone peace, the theme of beauty is most fully expressed in the quote "is beauty aware of itself, and can it remain beauty, realizing itself in this capacity ". Although these are not even topics, but questions. Oh yes, and consciousness, as the most mysterious mirror of the world, or still its creator.

"Oh, to hell with this eternal Dostoevism that haunts a Russian person! And to hell with a Russian person who only sees it around!"

"His left eye was slightly narrowed and expressed a very clear and at the same time immeasurably complex range of feelings, among which were love of life, strength, healthy love for children, moral support for the American automotive industry in its difficult battle with Japan, recognition of the rights of sexual minorities, slight irony about feminism and the calm realization that democracy and Judeo-Christian values ​​will eventually defeat all evil in this world."

"Better Standing Than Kneeling"

“The bust of Aristotle was the only thing that kept my memory when I came to my senses. However, I’m not sure that the expression “came to my senses” is quite suitable. From childhood I felt some shameful ambiguity in it: who exactly came? came? and, what is most entertaining, where? - in a word, sheer twitching, like at the card table on the Volga steamer. As I grew older, I realized that in fact the words "come to your senses" mean "come to others", because it is precisely these others explain to you from birth what efforts you must make on yourself in order to take on the form that pleases them.

"- I, Vasily Ivanovich, think that the love of a beautiful woman is in fact always indulgence. Because it is simply impossible to be worthy of such love.
– Chivo? Chapaev asked, frowning.
“Enough of the clown,” I said. - I'm serious.
- Seriously? Chapaev asked. - OK. Then look - indulgence is always from one thing to something else. Here's how in this ravine. Where does this indulgence of yours come from?
I thought. It was clear where he was heading. If I had said that I was talking about the condescension of beauty to the ugly and suffering, he would immediately ask me the question of whether beauty is aware of itself, and whether it can remain beauty, realizing itself in this capacity. To this question, which drove me almost to madness during the long St. Petersburg nights, I did not know the answer. And if it meant beauty that is not aware of itself, then what kind of indulgence could we talk about? Chapaev was definitely not simple.
- Let's just say, Vasily Ivanovich - not condescension of something to something, but an act of condescension, taken in itself. I would even say ontological indulgence.
“Where does entological indulgence take place?” Chapaev asked, bending down and pulling another glass from under the table.
I'm not ready to speak in that tone.
"Then let's have another drink," said Chapaev.
We drank. For a few seconds, I looked doubtfully at the bulb.
- No, - said Chapaev, wiping his mustache, - tell me where it happens?
- If you, Vasily Ivanovich, are able to speak seriously, I will tell you.
- Well, tell me, tell me.
“It would be more correct to say that there really is no condescension. Just such love is perceived as condescension.
– Where is it perceived?
“In the mind, Vasily Ivanovich, in the mind,” I said sarcastically.
- That is, in a simple way, in the head, right?
- Roughly speaking, yes.
Where does love take place?
- There, Vasily Ivanovich. Roughly speaking.
“Here,” Chapaev said with satisfaction. “So you asked about how it is ... Is love always condescension, right?
- So.
- Love, then, happens in your head, right?
- Yes.
“Is that condescension, too?”
- It turns out, so, Vasily Ivanovich. So what?
- So how did you, Petka, come to such a life that you ask me, your military commander, whether what is happening in your head is always what is happening in your head, or not always?
“Sophistry,” I said, and drank. - Sophistry of pure water. And anyway, I don't understand why I'm torturing myself? After all, I already had all this in St. Petersburg, and a beautiful young woman in a maroon velvet dress also put an empty glass on the tablecloth, and I reached into my pocket for a handkerchief in the same way ...
Chapaev cleared his throat loudly, drowning out my voice. I quietly finished, addressing it is not clear to whom:
What do I want from this girl? Don't I know that you can't go back to the past? You can skillfully fake all his external circumstances, but you can’t return yourself to your former self, you can’t ...
“Oh, and you are healthy to lie, Petka,” said Chapaev and grinned. - Glass, dress.
“What, Vasily Ivanovich,” I asked, restraining myself with difficulty, “have you recently re-read Tolstoy?” Decided to get laid?
“We don’t need to reread Tolstoy,” said Chapaev. - And if you grieve because of Anka, then I will tell you that every woman needs her own approach. You're dying for Anka, aren't you? Guessed?
His eyes turned into two narrow sly slits. Then he suddenly slammed his fist on the table.
- Yes, you answer when the divisional commander asks you!
I definitely couldn't shake his mood today.
- It doesn't matter, - I said, - let's have another drink, Vasily Ivanovich.
Chapaev laughed softly and poured both glasses.
I vaguely remember the next few hours. I got very drunk. It seems that the conversation went about the war - Chapaev recalled the First World War. It turned out to be quite plausible for him: he talked about the German cavalry, about some positions above the river, about gas attacks and mills, on which machine gunners sit. At one point he even became very excited and shouted, his eyes flashing at me:
- Oh, Petka! Do you even know how I fight? You cannot know this! There are three Chapaev blows in total, got it?
I nodded mechanically, but listened inattentively.
- First strike - where!
He slammed his fist on the table so hard that the bottle nearly toppled over.
- The second - when!
He again slammed his fist down on the boards of the table.
- And the third - who!

"Where is the Earth?
- In the Universe.
- Where is the universe?
I thought for a second.
- In itself.
“Where is this one in itself?”
- In my mind.
“So, Petka, it turns out that your consciousness is in your consciousness?”

"I broke off. Yes, I thought, that's where he's going. If I use the word "reality", he will again reduce everything to my thoughts. And then he will ask where they are. I will tell you what is in my head, and .. Gambit You can, of course, indulge in quotations, but after all, any of the systems to which I can refer, I suddenly thought with surprise, either bypasses this semantic gap, or plugs it with a couple of dubious Latinisms.Yes, Chapaev is not at all simple. Of course, there is a win-win way to end any dispute by classifying the interlocutor - it doesn’t cost anything to say that everything he is getting at is perfectly known, it is called so-and-so, and human thought has long gone ahead.But I was ashamed be likened to a self-satisfied female student who, in the interval between caps, leafed through a philosophical textbook a little. And besides, didn’t I myself recently say to Berdyaev, who started a drunken conversation about the Greek roots of Russian communism, that it would be more correct to call philosophy sophology?

“No,” Kawabata continued, opening some large folder. “The point here is rather a desire to elevate even the most remote activity to art. You understand, if you sell a batch of machine guns, so to speak, into the void, from which you if you sell the same batch of machine guns to people you know that every time they kill others, they must repent to the three hypostases of the creator of this world, then the simple act of selling rises to art and acquires a completely different quality. Not for them, of course - for you. You are in harmony, you are in unity with the universe in which you operate, and your signature on the contract acquires the same existential status ... "

“Firstly,” Kawabata said, “the very fact that the word ‘God’ is printed through a stencil. This is how it enters the mind of a person in childhood – like a stencil print, the same as in a myriad of other minds. And here a lot depends on the surface on which it falls - if the paper is uneven and rough, then the print on it will be fuzzy, and if there are already some other words, then it is not even clear what exactly will remain on the paper in the end. Therefore, they say besides, look at the magnificent rudeness of these letters - their corners just scratch the eye. It's hard to believe that it could occur to anyone that this three-letter word is the source of eternal love and mercy, the reflection of which makes life in this world is partly possible, but, on the other hand, this imprint, which most of all resembles a brand used to mark cattle, is the only thing a person can rely on in life.

"Of course, I mean the strips of emptiness left from the stencil. It would not be difficult to paint over them, but then this work would not be what it is now. That's right. A person begins to look at this word, from the appearance of meaning passes to a visible form and suddenly notices voids that are not filled with anything - and there, in this nowhere, one can only meet what these huge ugly letters are trying to point to, because the word "God" indicates what to point to It's almost like Eckhart, or... However, it doesn't matter. Many people have tried to put it into words. At least Lao Tzu. Do you remember about the wheel and the spokes? Or about the vessel, the value of which is determined only by its inner emptiness? And if I I will say that any word is the same vessel, and everything depends on how much emptiness it can contain? "

“Kotovsky held out his hand to me. I noticed that his palm was trembling slightly.
“For some reason since the morning,” he said, raising his clear eyes to me,
- I think about what awaits us behind the coffin.
Do you think there is something waiting for us there? I asked.
“Maybe I put it poorly,” said Kotovsky. - To tell
simply, I think about death and immortality.
- Why did you have such a mood?
“Oh,” said Kotovsky with a cold smile, “essentially speaking, it
does not leave me from one memorable event in Odessa ... However, it does not matter.
He folded his arms across his chest and pointed his chin at the lamp.
“Look at this wax,” he said. - Keep track of what
him happening. He warms up on a spirit lamp, and his drops, having taken
bizarre outlines, rise up. As they rise, they cool down; how
they are higher, the slower their movement. And finally, at some point they
stop and begin to fall back to where they first got up, often
without touching the surface.
“There is some Platonic tragedy in this,” I said thoughtfully.
- Maybe. But I'm not talking about that. Imagine that frozen drops,
ascending the lamp are endowed with consciousness. In this case they have
immediately the problem of self-identification arises.
- Without a doubt.
- This is where the fun begins. If any of these
lumps of wax believes that he is the form he has taken, then he is mortal,
because the form is destroyed. But if he understands that he is wax, then
what can happen to him?
“Nothing,” I replied.
“Exactly,” said Kotovsky. - Then he's immortal. But the whole focus is
that it is very difficult for wax to understand that it is wax. Recognize your original
nature is almost impossible. How to notice what has been since the beginning of time
before your very eyes? Even when there were no eyes yet? So
the only thing the wax notices is its temporary shape. And he thinks
that he is this form, do you understand? And the form is arbitrary - every time it
arises under the influence of thousands and thousands of circumstances.
- Magnificent allegory. But what follows from it? I asked
remembering our conversation yesterday about the fate of Russia and the ease with which he
switched her to cocaine. It could easily be that he just wanted to get
the rest of the powder and gradually led the conversation to this.
- And it follows that the only way to immortality for a drop of wax -
it is to stop believing that it is a drop, and to understand that it is wax. But
since our drop itself is able to notice only its own form, it is all
his short life prays to the Lord Wax for the salvation of this form, although this
form, if you think about it, has nothing to do with it. At the same time, any
a drop of wax has the same properties as its entire volume.
Do you understand? A drop of the great ocean of being is this whole ocean,
shrinking to a drop for a moment. But how, tell me how to explain it in pieces
wax, most feared for their fleeting form? How to bury in them
this thought? After all, it is thoughts that rush to salvation or death, because
salvation and death are also, in essence, thoughts. Seems like the Upanishads
They say that the mind is a horse harnessed to the carriage of the body...
Then he snapped his fingers, as if an unexpected
thought, and looked at me coldly:
- By the way, since we are talking about carriages and horses. You do not
find that half a can of cocaine for a couple of Oryol trotters ...
A sharp roar that hit my ears made me recoil. Lamp,
standing next to Kotovsky exploded, dousing the table and the map with a waterfall
glycerin. Kotovsky jumped off the table, and in his hand out of nowhere, as if
magician, a revolver appeared.
Chapaev stood at the door with a nickel-plated Mauser in his hand. On it was
a gray tunic tied with a harness, a hat with an oblique moiré ribbon and
leather-lined black riding breeches with triple stripes. Glittered on his chest
silver pentagram (I remembered that he called it the "Order of the October
Stars"), and next to her hung a small black binoculars.
“Well, you spoke, Grisha, about a drop of wax,” he said in a hoarse voice.
tenor, - just what are you going to say now? And where is your ocean of being now?
Kotovsky looked dumbfounded at the place where she had just stood.
lamp. There was a huge fat spot on the map. Thank God wick
the spirit lamp went out during the explosion - otherwise the room would already be on fire.
- Form, wax - who created all this? Chapaev asked menacingly. -
Answer!
"Um," replied Kotovsky.
- And where he? Show me.
“Um is a lamp,” said Kotovsky. - Was.
- If the mind is a lamp, where will you go when it is broken?
What then is the mind? asked Kotovsky, bewildered.
Chapaev fired again, and the bullet turned the woman standing on the table
inkwell in a cloud of blue splashes.
For some reason, I felt instantly dizzy.
Two bright red spots appeared on Kotovsky's white cheekbones.
“Yes,” he said, “now I understand. You corrected me, Vasily
Ivanovich. Corrected it well."

“You know,” he said, “problems can be solved in different ways. You can just get drunk in the smoke and they will disappear for a while. But I prefer to deal with them before they start dealing with me.”