From the author: About time, the highest meaning and the beautiful meaninglessness of human existence... and something else about children Never mind... What good is a person if he acquires all the riches of the world and then still dies . And what good is it if he understands the world, and knows the secret forces that lurk in it, and comprehends the very essence of existence, and then dies like a dog. And what good is it to earn the love of the most beautiful of women, since it’s the end anyway... Who knows. What now, should I not live or something... WHAT NOW One day you pick up a book... and from its pages the great secrets of existence are revealed to you, and simple and complex destinies go before you in an endless stream, generations replace each other, and empires fall into the dust... to arise again and not learn any lessons from what happened to them. Then you close the book, go to bed, and in the morning you get up, go to work and don’t remember anything. Life has deceived you by handing you a life preserver... which you don't need at all. There are already enough problems in your life to think about and take to heart the mysteries of the universe and the secrets of the origin of the world. When you come to work, you wait eight hours for everything to be over... and if you are persistent, purposeful and strive to achieve the maximum, you will figure out how to increase the period to ten or twelve hours. In order to spend the money you earn in a couple of minutes... and buy some wonderful garbage. Now you are truly happy. The day is over and you have the cravings you desire. The one for whom you worked so hard, got up before dawn, burned gasoline, bought a car to get to work faster... and sit for eight hours, waiting for the torture to end. Now you are free and can dream of a wonderful life. There must be some meaning in your days... OLD WANDERER Sometimes God comes to you. He pounds on your door like an annoying woodpecker, but you don’t open it, but chase him away with a filthy broom. You will start to persecute him as a damn sales manager from another Canadian company. You have no time, you need to pay the loan, raise children and comprehend life. Then he comes to me and stands at my door for a long time, silent, frozen and sad like a beaten dog. As always, I will take pity on him and let him in... and we will drink hot tea in the kitchen, and he will warm up, become insolent and get into his soul. Then he will decisively master me and begin to speak in my language. A stream of words, meaningless, instructive and bitter, will fall from my lips and disappear in the darkness. Soon the obese deity will realize that all his work has gone to waste and will seat me at the keyboard. The Logos will flow, bouncing, rattling and burning the verb into the hearts of people... but fortunately most of them do not have hearts. Actually, you don’t have a God either, just like I don’t. What I call God, I call it that way solely for your convenience. Because you will not understand other words, just as you will not understand that it is meaningless to say whether It is a man or a woman, a person or an animal, a real fact or a figment of fantasy. But you have children. They are your god... CHILDREN'S COURT First you fall in love, then you have children... and then you realize that you have made a terrible mistake. The most tragic and terrible of all that you can imagine... but between both, enough time passes to enjoy life and experience the joy of simple human happiness. Then you will get used to it... and the habit will blossom with your new love. Actually, you don't have much choice. Either you fall in love with what you are destined to live with... or you will have to kill yourself. Either someone else and go to jail, or go crazy... which can hardly be called the right choice. So, you are in love again. You've done well and you've deceived yourself... and your life is filled with meaning and happiness... but you're unlikely to be able to deceive your children. With some kind of animal instinct, these gentle, timid lumps of life feel and know... they know that all you need from them is to see your reflection and feel power. That's why they take revenge on you. They take revenge on your sleepless nights, they take revenge on teenage rebellion, they take revenge on the sacred childhood dream of growing up and killing you... or at least destroying all your plans and never becoming…