Kitabı oku: «Were not were», sayfa 3
Memory of the future
In the future, when people achieve relative immortality and live almost indefinitely, and all carnal needs are satisfied through special personal androids, the process of reproduction will be extremely selective and put under strict control to improve human nature. Eugenics will be revived again, but under a different name, and the moral arguments that previously rejected it will become a thing of the past. People of the future will live in a world consisting of a strange mixture of permanent euphoria and hallucinations, and the main goal of their existence will be to acquire happiness: absolute pleasure, the manifestation of which will be either creative work or work to achieve moral self-satisfaction. In the light of practically achieved immortality, the attitude towards death will also change. It will now be considered the inalienable right of every person to freedom of choice, perceived as an opportunity to be freed from the duties of life: an act of final disobedience to society. Outwardly, people will change a lot, races and countries will disappear, everyone will live in their own hermetic little world. Love in its current understanding will die out, it will be replaced by friendship as an opportunity for a person to interrupt his own solitude for a while in free communication with others. Friendship will henceforth be valued as the most sincere and pure feeling, devoid of everything carnal, as a selfless principle in human nature. Inner nobility will become a new cult for all mankind, deprived, thanks to the achievements of technological progress, of all their basic natural instincts, which from now on will cease to influence human actions and behavior. It will be a new wonderful world in which there will be no place for people like us.
Happens to everyone
The entertainer announces: “Now the well-deserved and somewhere even popular, among all foreign rabble, our famous and beloved bath-and-laundry singer Razdvaplyuev will perform with his unfading hit “I messed up your life.”
A perky boy a la Basque jumps out onto the stage, dressed as a pastoral shepherd boy. He waves his arms, the orchestra plays an energetic overture and freezes. Razdvaplyuev turns his back to the audience, lowers his pants and, bending down, exposes his bare ass for everyone to see, from which he loudly blows gases. Hall applauds.
After speaking behind the scenes on the sidelines, Razdvaplyuev sincerely admits: “I did everything I could. There just wasn’t enough for more.” Fans applaud him and assure him that it was real art.
This is how it happens with everyone. You think it’s art. And look closely – one good thing.
That is how we live
Numbers are funny. It turns out that almost 2 people die every second, or rather 104 per minute. 6250 per hour, 150,000 per day. 54,750,000 per year.
At this rate of mortality, it will take 47.5 years for one generation to die and 142.5 years for humanity to be completely renewed. It turns out that we are not dying fast enough; thanks to progress, we begin to live longer and longer, which means that the achievement of active longevity is not far off, when you can live without old age: it is to live fully, and not to live out.
At the same time, one person produces 145 kilograms of feces per year, and all of humanity produces 1,131,000,000 tons of shit per year. We produce even more garbage – 3,120,000,000,000 tons. We all live in a huge landfill. Where we bury our dead. We bury or burn 4,106,250 tons of dead flesh every year.
In fact, our civilization is a civilization of garbage dumps. The thicker the cultural layer, the richer the culture. All our future we draw from the past. All our ideas are borrowed from previous generations. In the dustbin of history.
We are convinced of the progressive nature of our civilization, that it has a specific goal to achieve which it strives, while the universe around us demonstrates the aimlessness of its existence.
As Parmenides taught, the world is self-sufficient, eternal, has no beginning or end, and feeds on itself. Everything in it moves in a circle, from atoms to planets and stars. But man refuses to believe in the closed nature of world existence, he hopes to find the point of its beginning and the point of its end. In space and time.
All this is due to the fact that people live in a linear world, the personification of which is the cube. The cube is the antithesis of the ball. The cube has a beginning and an end. The cube is counted and measured. We strive to reduce any circle to a square.
This limitation of our thinking results from the limitation of human life, which has a beginning and an end in time. Which people refuse to put up with. The circle of human life is broken by the human mind. He refuses to believe that human death is the beginning of another human life. Man considers his own death as the greatest curse that must be rid of.
Man does not want to be mortal. Choosing between personal immortality and the survival of the entire human race, a person does not hesitate to choose the first. And this is very understandable. Does this remind me of something? Oh, right, I remembered.
The late architect Meyerson used to say, “I love every single person. But all together, humanity, I HATE. That is how we live.
Like lifeless
Two return from the funeral and share fresh impressions with each other.
– Gorgeous funeral. I would like to be in his place.
– And it seemed to me that the dead man did not look like himself. He lay in a coffin as if lifeless.
Lies like a navigator
I do believe in progress. Well, how could it be without him. There are different gadgets, all sorts of Google and Glonass. This is our everything! I get out, you know, from the house, I go to the bus stop and ask my navigator on the phone, like a progressive person: “When will the bus be?” He regularly shows: “In one minute.” I am waiting. A minute or two passes. There is no bus. I look at the navigator, and he regularly reports: “The bus has already been. The next one is in fifteen minutes.” And so every time. One of two things: either I don’t see the bus, or our “famous” Glonass… that still global ass! Now about all those who wishful thinking, I firmly say: “He’s lying like a navigator.”
Liar
There are people who lie as they breathe. They seem to be born to make any fiction come true. The only thing that gives them away is the details. After all, as the architect Fomin said, God is in the details. I knew one of those. He was always late for work and always found excuses: first one thing, then another. The masterpiece of his lies was the following story. Justifying his regular absenteeism, he fervently argued that he could not leave the apartment all day just because a counterweight from the elevator was put on the outside of his front door, which was changed to a new one that day. Here’s just one thing: his apartment was on the second floor, which for some reason he mentioned at the very end, trying to add credibility. But in vain. They almost believed him.
Everything ingenious is simple
A toddler helping his mother take care of his twin brothers is asked what their names are. The peanut frowns businesslike and points his finger at the brothers in turn:
– This one is called Uovka, and this one is another Uovka.
Everything ingenious is simple!
Still won
She was frighteningly beautiful and unhappy. In the depths of her blue eyes, crystals of pain froze, preventing her from smiling. Just six months ago, her husband left her and everyone at the table knew about it. Celebrated her birthday. She saw this and could not calm down, demonstrating to everyone the icy indifference of a wounded woman. Her whole appearance said that she was at war.
She had cut off her lovely frivolous curls and now sported a boyish half-box, and overly bright make-up looked like the war paint of an Indian about to scalp his enemies. Mostly relatives were sitting at the table, but this did not make it easier for her. Curiosity brought them all here to look at someone who was unlucky in love.
Only her grandfather, who did not have a soul in her, fussed around her, protecting his pet. And looking at the old trembling hands, which awkwardly tried to put a piece of “better” cake on her plate, she finally burst into tears. For the first time in six months. Love still won.
Meeting
Once, on Sretensky Boulevard, I met God himself. It was a nondescript bearded old man of a rather shabby appearance. Sitting on a bench with his eyes shut and his toothless mouth wide open.
He was overshadowed by a rose bush growing right out of his bald head. And bees flew in and out of his mouth, swarming around the multi-colored rosebuds on the old man’s spiked tiara. Amber gold of honey oozed from his eyes, and next to him, on a bench, lay a string bag with a bottle of cahors, a bible, and a loaf of bread.
“I never thought HE looked so ridiculous” was the first thing that came to my mind. I decided to see this MIRACLE of nature better and went closer to it. And unceremoniously stared at him, not at all worried that HE would notice me: his eyes were flooded.
Imagine my surprise when the old man unclenched his left fist, and in it was an eye that looked at me so that it immediately became clear that HE sees me.
“That’s what it means – self-existing and good,” – the only thing that came to my mind. I also wondered if Chukovsky snorted cocaine when he wrote his Moidodyr. There was an irresistible desire to grab the old man, the very Lord God, by the beard. In order to put into practice a well-known proverb in narrow circles.
But then the pigeons spoiled everything. And not one and white, as the iconography promises us, but a whole flock. Grey. They say about such: “Born to spoil can only fly.”
God, with his right hand, plucked a hefty piece of bread from the loaf and began to crumble it and throw the crumbs right in front of him. And then I felt these winged creatures mocking me. Organized seraglio rushed to feed.
A cloud of birds covered the old man, and when a gust of wind swept them in different directions, an empty bench appeared before my eyes. All in bird droppings. And a lonely bottle of wine, untouched by pigeons.
“Lucky, so lucky, however,” I thought, trying on a homeless drink. And then, as if hearing my thoughts, an old woman of the most domestic appearance hurriedly crossed the boulevard. And she expropriated the drink of the Old and New Testaments for her own benefit.
I had no choice but to go home empty-handed, surprised at what I saw:
“I wanted to grab God by the beard, but in fact he grabbed the devil by the shameful hair. However”.
That also happens.
Choice
The house was cold and hot. There was deafening silence in the street. The table was bursting with empty abundance. It was so bright you couldn’t see anything. I wanted to go and sit. My heart is joyful and bitter: so bitter that you laugh; so happy that immediately into the loop. Life flowed and stood. Nothing happened and everything changed. Sincerity or lies, what to choose? You don’t understand, but you have to. Is there a choice?
Nail
It’s strange, but it feels like a rusty nail is hammered into the head of each of our people at birth. Right in the hospital: so that he lives and then does not think about anything, as long as the nail in the brain rusts. At the same time, exceptions occur, one might say misunderstandings, which lead to the appearance of any undesirable intelligentsia among our people. Take, for example, a doctor-villain and, through an oversight or just out of some whim, he will drive in a baby instead of an ordinary galvanized nail, as if wishing him to brighten up his miserable life. And only then, poor fellow, he lives and suffers for the rest of his life. And, which is characteristic, the intellectuals from this everything goes into a rage and against the people. And all because this nail is galvanized: it glows, an infection, like a real antenna, receiving suggestive signals from abroad, and makes you doubt the correctness of the existence and structure of our state all the time. Instead of being like everyone else, with ordinary rusty nails in my head, I’m bullshitting and listening to the Chanson radio. Enjoy life.
Hero of our time
Her name is Zosia. A remarkable name in our unremarkable time. God deprived her of beauty and endowed her with a frantic temperament. She doesn’t walk, she dances. He does not speak, but recites. Not silent, but pauses before bringing down an avalanche of words.
Her irrepressible thirst for life is manifested in the fact that she constantly organizes poetry evenings, at which the same blissful obscenities like her jump over each other’s heads, and Zosia sings songs of the most obscene content to them, accompanying herself on a fairly out of tune toy piano, which always carries with it on a string.
She proudly calls these outrages mysteries, arguing that our whole life is one continuous mystery. Mystery Buff. From the outside, it looks like a real coven of all city wickedness, but she calls her evenings art. This is how she lives. Zosia is the queen of burlesque. Unknown hero of our time.
Gogol decided to listen
Here, in one restaurant, they decided to introduce the people to culture. And they began to broadcast Gogol’s stories. Through speakers. In the toilet! You come in, you understand, just to relieve yourself, and they read “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka” in such a soulful voice. To the accompaniment of running water. Somehow, after the innovation, two friends, with a difference of several minutes, visited such a corner of spiritual corruption due to small needs: the first closed himself in a booth, and the second, who later came in and did not suspect that he was not alone, attached himself to the urinal. He looks at the ceiling, murmurs so cheerfully and listens to how immortal prose is read to him. And then the door suddenly opens behind him and the first one, the one in the booth, loudly and reproachfully throws at the back of the second: “What, did you decide to listen to Gogol?” The poor fellow who peed had a heart attack from fright. They were taken away in an ambulance. They didn’t bail. At his grave, a friend who joked so unsuccessfully ordered an epitaph from Gogol: “You need to be honest with words.” And in the toilet, after this incident, Gogol was replaced with a mazurka. To stay away from sin.
Head
From childhood, there was a rumor that he had a bright head. Parents of the soul doted on him, they showed him to everyone as a miracle of nature. The father and mother were Jews, and they simply revered their son. First Saturdays, then kashrut, and everything ended with a synagogue, Tanakh, Torah and immersion in the Talmud. In his 20s, he acquired a reputation as a tzaddik and emigrated to Israel, where he took up the study of Kabbalah.
For the next thirty years of his life, he ruined the Sephiroth tree and the study of 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, earned a lot of money, a family and hemorrhoids, and ended his life with a lamppost. On the eve of his dizzying finale, he celebrated the Jewish New Year in a close family circle and served fish heads on the festive table, which amazed everyone except him with their repulsive appearance.
He did not attach any importance to this, pondering the mystery of deciphering the name of God, and the next morning he smashed his head to smithereens, crashing his bicycle into a lamppost. Evil tongues gossiped that damn fish heads were to blame, but no name, even if it is the name of the Lord God himself, is worth losing your head for it.
Voice
One woman decided to go to Israel. Just like that, for no apparent reason. You see, she had a voice that said: “Drop everything and run. To the homeland of your ancestors.”
She left her husband, son, and parents here. They did not want to go with her, because they did not consider themselves Jews. And on the contrary, they dissuaded her in every possible way. But the woman firmly stood her ground. She divorced her husband and accepted conversion. That is Judaism.
Before leaving, a neighbor came to her and asked her to repay the debt. Well, since they say, you are leaving, it would be good to pay off, otherwise it somehow turns out not humanly. And do you know what the woman said to her neighbor?
And about duty, you understand, her voice said nothing.
Hospitality
In the troubled 90s, one promising businessman Gosha calls his friend Lesha and asks: “Friend, shelter people for the evening. It is very important for me. And I will pay you well for it. Straightaway. When it works.” Lyosha, a purely Soviet person, readily agreed. After the Yeltsin reforms, he was as naked as a falcon, and any reason to serve someone has a chance of boredom. He fusses, goes to the market. Buys three kilograms of pork with all the money and sets the table. Guests arrive – 6 Chechens. Serious people. In essence, abreks. He feeds them a frying pan and two pots of tea. Puts to sleep. In the morning, for breakfast, the leftovers of fried meat are eaten, and when they say goodbye, Lesha from the bottom of his heart wonders if they liked the pork? In response from the abreks, icy silence. And until now Lesha does not understand why Gosha did not pay him. Disappeared suddenly, the devil, and no one knows where. Somewhere and in something, apparently, Gosha miscalculated in his business. Or maybe the devil beguiled. And Lesha? Everyone is waiting for a call from a friend. He hopes that all the same he will be paid for his hospitality.
Citizen and boy
The nameless hero enters Red Square on legs half-bent with fear and tries to scream at the top of his voice, but comes out somehow unconvincingly, almost in a whisper and for some reason in falsetto:
“I learned the truth about our government. It’s not real! We are ruled from abroad, and the main enemy is in the Kremlin. Do you hear me? Do you hear?
A citizen passing by stops and looks at the hero with surprise.
“Did you hear what I was shouting?” the hero shudders in fear.
“And then, every word,” confirms the citizen, “Every student knows this only. What are you so upset about? Do not believe? Let me prove it.”
He stops the first guy he comes across in punk clothes and asks:
“What do you think of our president?”
“Are you talking about this bald asshole in the Kremlin?” The boy spits at his feet with contempt, “So he is a bespontovy thief. I’d strangle the bitch if I could.”
And it goes on like that, as if nothing had happened.
“Well, I made sure that what you were shouting about is already known to everyone. So go home from here. Swell up and live like everyone else, pretending that everything suits you.
The disgraced hero leaves Red Square with his head held low.
And an hour later, the citizen and the boy stand at attention in front of the commandant of the Kremlin.
“Well done, comrade officers. Stopped an attempt at an unauthorized rally. Killed hope in another person. They prevented, so to speak, the birth of a hero in time. Well done.”
“We serve Russia,” a citizen and a boy shout at the top of their lungs.
Grimaces of nature
Imagine that you stumbled upon a deer at a watering hole in the forest. Surely this will set you in a romantic mood, you will immediately remember Bambi and all that: Disney rubbish. And if he also dies right in front of your eyes, taking his last sip of water before death, then this sight will surely break your heart. And you involuntarily shed tears. Think, I suppose, how tragic, damn it, what is there to hide. A kind of drama in nature. Immediately all sorts of philosophical little thoughts will come into your head, like here it is, the circle of life. And so on. But here’s what’s amazing. Cockroaches, like deer, also come to drink before they die. But this somehow does not inspire anyone – the sight of a dead cockroach in the kitchen sink. Even somehow the other way around. Causes disgust. Maybe because the cockroach does not have branched horns and it lives with us, and not in the forest. But, in fact, these are two phenomena of the same order. As they say, before death you will not get drunk and you will not inhale. What can I say, grimaces of nature.
