From the author: You must first read parts 1 and 2) Part 3. “The noise and din in this terrible lair, And all night long until dawn I read poetry to prostitutes And with Bandits fry alcohol. My heart beats more and more often, And I say out of place: I’m just like you, lost, I can’t turn back.” Sergei Yesenin. We still made it to Arkaim... From the Canary Islands to Moscow, then a flight to Chelyabinsk and, having paid three thousand to some already sleazy taxi driver, meandering and not really knowing the route, Rita and I burst into the secluded hermitage of my old friend in the midst of New Year's Eve Father Innocent, who had already been defrocked for ten years, having left the bosom of the church; under my influence, Kesha, as I continued to call him, despite the fact that his worldly name was Vsevolod, remained at heart a believer and a very respectable man, although in ninety-seven, when we first met him near Chelyabinsk, I was excited by Grandfather, and just then we traveled with him all over Russia, crushingly knocked out from under the feet of Father Innocent the solid support and faith in the infallibility of the Christian and especially the Orthodox Church, in those days I performed such tricks with many true believers as well as all kinds of esotericists, spiritualists seekers, later I became convinced of the futility of such activities, since those who believed in something, after a slight shock, found refuge in some other convictions and beliefs; I knocked out the supports from under the unfortunate - seekers are very rare after I left Grandfather, and then only for the sake of courage; So Kesha was inspired by the ideas of the Anastasievites[1], created a small eco-village not far from Arkaim, and he earned his bread and butter by taking the sufferers on excursions around Arkaim, generously flavoring his stories with legends about ancient pagans who worshiped the Great Mother; He didn’t actually know who they worshiped, but he had heard a lot of myths about the Great and the Terrible from me; I visited Arkaim for the first time back then in 1997, and I can testify that this place is indeed very unusual and strong when you wander around the settlement, and Arkaim is the ruins of an ancient city, built in the form of concentric circles - archaeologists are inclined to versions that it was left by some unknown people four thousand years ago - so, when you wander around the fort, sensations of enormous strength and density arise and move in your body, it seems that you are about to either fly up or explode in some incredible ecstasy, In short, it blows your mind, beware, apparently those ancient people were really difficult; we went to Arkaim again, the three of us, me, Rita and Kesha, on the second of January, when it was deserted, and, having gotten rid of Kesha under some pretext, Rita and I managed, despite the frost, to make love: I really don’t like this phrase , but for Rita and me it couldn’t be more accurate; in the very center of the fort, where the space was already electrified with ecstatic and orgasmic flows, our experience was extremely successful; we had never experienced such all-pervasive unity, dissolution and scattering of myriads of sparks, and it seemed to us that these sparks were stars, and you yourself , or rather, we ourselves are the whole universe or that same invisible god who is blissful in his non-existence; We spent New Year's Eve drinking two bottles of the famous Spanish Rioja, which we brought from the Canary Islands, which even the reluctant and reluctant Kesha still tasted, being very pleased; the company was the most boring: in the community created by Kesha, there lived eight more people, including three married couples of thirty to thirty-five years old with small children, whom I did not count, and who were born in their time, as it should be in these circles , in the water, with all the accompanying rituals and “kamlaniya”; we sat by the hot Russian stove, the kids were running around the room in short shirts with bare butts, no one except us and Kesha, naturally, even took a sip, righteous seekers of enlightenment, taught tostupefied by the books of Osho Blavatsky and Kryon, they tried to drag out the conversation about lucid dreams and leaving the physical body: with particular fervor, a bearded guy of about twenty-five who lived here, exhausting himself with severe asceticism and, according to Kesha, observed celibacy, tried to talk about leaving the body ; To be honest, I was completely indifferent to the fact that he was ruining himself, besides, this is still my point of view, but gods see, these words of his made me feel so dreary that I could not stand it and intervened: where did you come from? come out if you were never in the body? - h-how is this? - he even began to stutter from surprise, but that evening I didn’t want to perform tricks, such as lowering the kundalini, closing the third eye and landing levitating, so I just said: listen guys, who confused you so much that you’ve been here for several years already x ...toil with it and run away from life! – the young man literally exploded: how dare you swear in front of women! - Rita burst into tears: I’m also not a boy… but I calmly, clearly and without any hostility said: where is your vaunted spirituality? you are ready to kill me now, only your morality does not allow you to do this, the ascetic, barely restraining the impulse of rage, was breathing noisily, the others were also on edge, in short, the festive atmosphere was heating up from the struggle between the lower and higher natures of those present, well, I thought, ruined people's holiday; I remembered those several - four or... no - five New Years that we celebrated together with Katya, three New Years that I celebrated alone with Rita, finally, the New Year in Herat, I had just been transferred there from Kabul: we then drank a lot of vodka, smoked dope, of course everyone swore, from the new boys who had just arrived from training to Lieutenant Colonel Erofeev: the swearing, like smoke from weed, literally hung like a yoke, we were all on friendly terms, regardless of ranks and length of service, and all this was much sincere and more humane than the pompous speeches of esotericists claiming their spiritual exclusivity... I took Rita by the hand, she continued to laugh, already leaving the room, I turned around and said conciliatoryly: okay, never mind, all that you you’re doing the right thing, if only simply because you’re doing it, Rita was no longer laughing, only her eyes were beaming with a smile: what about the guys, maybe we’ll take a steam bath in the bathhouse? - no, you can’t do without us, we’ll come later - it was clear that the young man had managed to cope with the tension, the atmosphere had softened, but neither he nor the rest of the community members, who nodded in unison after his words, apparently did not want to face surprises , which only help to survive a new transformative experience, and which they expected from me, and in vain, to admit, they waited: I was already fed up with provocations here, it was no longer interesting to me... only Kesha began to fuss: - now I’ll help you heat... me and Rita left the company in order to let them enjoy the entertainment on the theme “we are good, and you are shit”, well, why not?, and, I admit, my girl and I had a very nice fuck, or rather, we loved each other: and so far Kesha heated the bathhouse, both in the bathhouse itself and after it... 2. I will allow myself a small digression to explain why with Rita, as well as with Katya, we did not fuck, but rather loved each other. Mental space, which otherwise can be called the soul, and about which it is impossible to say that it is inside or outside: this question in relation to the soul is incorrect, it is also inappropriate to try to find out where the gods and daimons live: in heaven, in the depths of the earth, or only in our imagination, this is not given to us to know, and no matter what we assume, everything will be just a belief, but experience suggests that they inhabit psychic space, that is, the soul; the soul, unlike the spirit, it seems to me, is not some kind of vector or ordered structure, it is like a labyrinth in which new paths are constantly born: the labyrinth is filled, and the desire of the soul is not at all the acquisition of some abstract meaning of life, but the experience of a new experience... every new experience is a newa path in the labyrinth, and the gods, that is, the eternal prototypes living in the soul, which we are not free to dispose of - they live lives independent of our consciousness, creating a bizarre fabric of dreams and reality, apparently, they want to someday unite into the One, into the World Soul, as the Neoplatonists called it, therefore, every point of the labyrinth strives to connect with all points... a new experience... an inescapable desire to get out of conditioning and the Eternal Return, the inexorable Kronos strives to return us to the same thing, limiting, constraining, placing us in a closed circle of healing depression, healing, because the insatiable thirst for new experience does not make it possible to organize what has been experienced, to review and reevaluate - the gift of Kronos is limitations: loneliness, prison, illness, that is, some, paradoxical as it may sound, new experience that makes the soul to suffer: after all, we are afraid of precisely this limitation in receiving new impressions, which bring with them the already listed and many other misfortunes; the very desire to gain new experiences, through travel, constant change of sexual partners, various kinds of extreme sports, desire for recognition, power and money, becomes invisible to us the same Eternal Return, and only those who do not run away from Kronos, but allow themselves to realize , even through excruciating pain - also, by the way, a new experience - that restrictions are a bitter medicine from restrictions, he receives the magical gift of Kronos: the opportunity to discover in the simplest everyday, ordinary things - in the same person, an eternally new unique experience; Katya led me to this through variety, Rita - through consistency, while Rita and I did not need to study any special sexual techniques or elaborate poses, all this is necessary only for those who want to assert themselves - to be known as sophisticated; we discovered each other anew in the same thing - isn’t this love? - there was love with Katya too, it flowed through external impressions, Katya changed partners, I changed partners, life rushed rapidly, like a kayak on a stormy river, a delightful, touching, frightening, ominous, beautiful, wild, chaotic, harmonious variegation of landscapes floated past us , all this was necessary then, not just necessary, but vitally necessary, it tore me out of the chains of my own slavery, as a result of which Kronos, after Grandfather’s Interpreter and the last, unexpected meeting with Katya in two thousand and five, gave me his inexhaustible gift a source of new experience that does not depend on any external restrictions... 3. Kesha accompanied us to Chelyabinsk in his broken-down Zhigulenka from 1975. It was still early, only five in the evening, and our plane was leaving around midnight, the route was deserted and picturesque : the endless expanse of the steppe, small hills, pine and spruce trees in fur hats, we chose a cozy place, Kesha took out the rugs from the trunk that he always carried with him, after breaking up some dead wood, we made a small fire and sat down to watch the fiery disk of the sun descend into the steppe , quietly, slowly, time freezes at such moments, and yet the sun disappeared, and a bloody glow spread over the steppe in a clear, increasingly thick blue sky; Rita was the first to break the silence: but in such quiet phenomena one can still feel the presence of Dionysus, a very subtle but all-encompassing ecstasy, especially if one manages to merge with the landscape - even Kesha agreed with this, who experienced it as a former priest - defrocked, and now a Slavic pagan , contempt for the Greek pantheon is still too solemn for Kvasura[2]... having decided to sit surrounded by this blissful landscape for another half an hour, we fell silent again, admiring how the first star appeared in the gradually darkening sky. About five minutes later, however, our solitude was violated: despite the immensity of the surrounding expanses and the abundance of picturesque places, it was twenty meters from us that a jeep stopped, the doors slammed, and a noisy company pulled out a small barbecue and opened the trunk so that the whole area shook withto the rhythm of some techno song with ridiculous words, she began to prepare for the barbecue; Kesha spat in his hearts: it’s always like this, as soon as you find a pleasant place, all sorts of rednecks immediately start to come, and even the fashion has taken to open the trunk and turn on the Mouzon at full blast,... no, tell me, they don’t have this kind of music in the city is it enough? I think so, if you come to nature, then listen to nature, otherwise what’s the point of coming here if you deafen yourself with such music? “But they can’t live here without music, they can’t stand the silence,” Rita answered, “it’s from such assholes that I left for my village!” - Kesha got excited, - thereby completely breaking with society... well, let's go? - Wait! - I stopped him, - there are still six hours before the plane, and there are only about a hundred kilometers left to go, - so what, you propose to sit here and listen to this crap? “We’ll drive about three kilometers, we’ll find another place,” “rest assured,” Rita grinned, “the same story will repeat there,” “why is that?” “Society is catching up with you, Kesha, from which you are so stubbornly running, maybe, of course, in a few kilometers no one will drive up with an open trunk, from which Russian chanson will rumble,” Kesha winced, “but the fact that they drove up here, oh says something! “What do you think about this,” Kesha nodded at the neighbors, “are you calm about this?” You over there, Rita, were talking about a solemn experience, about Dionysus, this and that, why didn’t these goats break him off? “It was really unpleasant for the first minute,” I admitted, “but then I realized I just stopped wasting energy internally arguing with these guys, and this sound design stopped interfering with the wonderful landscape again, - what about your Dionysus?” - well, firstly, he is ours just like yours, the roots of our civilization are the same, and, secondly, imagine that Dionysus teaches us to receive pleasure in any conditions, no matter how it’s strange to the roar of rap, it’s because, Kesha,” Rita smiled again, how I loved her at such moments, my smart girl, “that Sanya and I really left society, and although you moved to the village, you took society with you, and now you’re sitting butting heads with him... the location of the body doesn’t matter at all, most hermits take their entire social environment with them - I admired Rita: who is she so wise beyond her years? - in this she is very similar to Katya, my teacher, because by creating a lot of unpredictable, sometimes dangerous plots for me, involving me in adventures, she slowly but surely broke all the threads that connected me not only with family and friends, but with the social mechanism in general, it is unlikely that anyone will voluntarily undertake such a harsh experiment, because the social mechanism is not only all the “charms” of megacities, bustle and environmental crisis, it is also what our need for recognition, approval, desire to be depends on valued, significant, good and correct, and, most importantly, useful, because it is the feeling of one’s uselessness and uselessness that often drives people to despair and suicide; Rita was right, although Kesha went to live in the wilderness, but, like many similar hermits, he remained in the very thick of society; for me personally, the operations that Katya performed on me, to knock out supports and cut off all sorts of ties, were successful later, blood, tears, hysterics, horror, despair, jealousy, hopelessness and other gentlemanly assortments, but I still haven’t been able to understand where such amazing girls like Katya and Rita come from, although I’ve only met two of them, but they are two were worth thousands of others with whom I met and even lived for a week or two, they were all “not the same,” as the heroine of Chekhov’s “Ivanova” said, Katya and Rita were different, but both, nevertheless, were the embodiment of everything fullness of femininity and wisdom, and Katya also had an amazing ability to teach, perhaps this happened spontaneously, but I was often surprised to note that even Castaneda’s Don Juan did not reach such mastery of building learning situations, and at least ninety percent of themwere created with the undoubted participation of Eros and Basilisk... 4.- Yes, I want to be useful, I want to contribute to changing this world for the better, I built an eco-village, created a community, do you want to say that this is bad? - Kesha waved his hands excitedly, - no, Kesha, this is neither good nor bad, just don’t say that you have broken with society, it keeps you very tightly on the hook of usefulness, for which you receive an assessment, or at worst, self-esteem as good and correct,” I wanted to add “boy,” but resisted, I didn’t want to offend Kesha, and the phrase “good boy” would probably have offended him, judging by our past conversations, “even though you call yourself a Slavic pagan, but, in fact, excuse me, you have remained an adherent of monotheism, because only the imposition of monotheistic religions, mind you, in all cases violent, forces a person to highlight a single center in his psyche, the ego, projecting it onto God, or projecting God onto him, and therefore, using unambiguous assessments of good-bad, good-evil, hence the desire to save the world, I believe that nature created and isolated the ego from the unconscious only as one of the chess pieces of life, and by no means a queen or a king, the soul is not a Christian , as Tertullian argued, she is polytheistic, she has many contradictory views on the same phenomena and what is good for Dionysus is bad for Apollo, and what is good for Ares is absolute evil for Hephaestus or Hera - listen, I'm sick of it you me with your Greeks! “We can just as well call the names of Veles or Dy, Kitovras or Khors,” Rita supported me, but I continued: “we can remember any mythology to see how the gods who make up the essence of our soul: fight, steal, rape, they kill, they are jealous, and the Judeo-Christian Yahweh, in general, is a model for criminal psychiatry, except that Athena seeks to call everyone to a certain norm, but she is only one of twelve Olympians, and, according to the Gaussian probability distribution, the “norm” in the person of Athena herself is found on the tail of the probability curve, that is, it is abnormal and pathological - what are you talking about? - Kesha shrugged, - but to the fact that the desire to be normal, correct, good and useful, from the point of view of the soul, is just as normal and at the same time pathological, as is the opposite desire for chaos, destruction, villainy, so are you a hero or an anti-hero : what difference does it make... - all this is verbiage, take you: you, Rita, are studying to be a doctor, which means you want to bring benefit... - why benefit? - Ritka interrupted him, - maybe I’ll become a pest doctor? - You won’t! - Kesha raised his index finger up, apparently the priestly habits were still strong in him, - his conscience will not allow it... but to take you, Sanya, you have a company, which means you also participate in the life of society, and how, by the way. , what do you do? - I personally make a profit, and the company produces equipment for geological exploration - yeah! - Kesha perked up, - oil and gas seem to be good for society, but I think that strengthening society is the most harmful activity, any technique without proper application is a dilemma: a knife or a scalpel, let’s say you made a knife, so what, do you care how it will be used? - I chuckled: have you ever seen a manufacturer or seller of knives who eagerly asks the buyer how he will use his products? the buyer, use it as he needs, and if the buyer needs to cut someone's throat, he will do it anyway, only a rusty and dull piece of iron will take longer and hurt more than a razor-sharp blade... this is what the knife seller does not do, his wuwei, as the Taoists said, non-infliction of benefit and harm... - Kesha thought for a minute, so did I, and I remembered my recent words about Athena, as a zealot of order and norms, in Rome she was called Minerva and it was believed that people were under her protection hospitals,post office, court and many other pillars of cities, maybe in those days a certain order really reigned there, but already remembering Gogol’s “The Inspector General” with masterfully sculpted freaks: Lyapkin-Tyapkin, Strawberry, the postmaster, that is, just those who a century ago, what can I say, and in our time he rules the main city institutions, because since the time of Gogol little has changed in them, and who, in theory, should be in the service of Athena-Minerva, but the fish rots from the head, so you wonder if it really such a norm is normal, which, nevertheless, is declared the norm, really, there is something to run from, and here Kesha is certainly right, but his flight, like that of many others, is largely unconscious and, most importantly, only external, because from internal The Lyapkins-Tyapkins, Zemlyaniks and the guardians of the city, that is, state perverted norms standing behind them, cannot be easily escaped, except into outright pathology, into neurosis, psychosomatics, and even psychosis - there are even more such “fugitives”, but is this the way out? – The interpreter has said many times that completely unbearable internal discord is proof of our true life, and life without internal contradictions is either only half of life, or life in the Beyond, which only angels live... wait... what do I want to prove to Kesha? Why did you start this argument? Am I really driven by the same desire to prove my superiority and advancement? prove, of course, not only to Kesha, but, above all, to yourself? Hasn’t Katya yet cured me of the need to seem like someone, to prove something and generally play roles? Oh, I remember many of her lessons very well; after the first few meetings with her, I, despite jealousy and a lot of other conflicting feelings, very I was afraid of losing her, first of all, I believed that this could happen because I was a much less experienced lover than most of my competitors, I rushed to study the literature on sexology, including typewritten translations from foreign publications, there I found confirmation of my thoughts that sex life is a manifestation of a kind of “role-playing skill” that can be learned by learning the many lessons that were offered in these books: a variety of positions and sexual techniques, sexual intercourse became for me, and as I later realized, and for the overwhelming number of men and women, in fulfilling the role, his goal was the desire to impress his partner, Katya first of all, and not to express his feelings for her, and what feelings I could express - jealousy, envy, torment of conscience, I after all, I couldn’t say unequivocally that I loved her, even despite her mysterious phrase on our first night: there is no sex without love - I will understand this phrase much later thanks to the Interpreter, but more on that later; at that time I formed a belief, of course, based on fear, on the same fear of the Great and Terrible, and it consisted in the fact that the desire to satisfy a partner is more important than one’s own needs, that is, if you look at it, it turns out that the desire to approve my “I”, to be perceived as a good, sophisticated lover was more important than feelings, sensations and, in fact, life as such: being sophisticated was more important for me, and for many people it remains more important than being real; Having read all sorts of instructions, I rushed to put them into practice. Katyusha, of course, immediately noticed this, and my attempts only made her laugh: are you sick or something? I also found an expert on the Kama Sutra! I told you and I will repeat again that I love you, so you better take care of getting the greatest pleasure with me, so that it touches you to the bones, so that you light up all over with joy that you are close to me! - I can’t say that these words immediately healed me from the fear that I would not satisfy her and lose her, I began to try from then on to look satisfied and happy, if this was what was important to her, and, although any intimacy with her was magical in itself, I still really had tonamely to seem happy, since jealousy, envy and hatred, although they faded away every month and year, still, until the very end of our meetings, prevented me from experiencing real, complete, unclouded happiness - what I now experience with Rita ... now I remember another episode, it was already in the summer of eighty-two, when it became clear that I would fail the session, and I would be expelled from the institute, but I already dived headlong into the pool, into an unrestrained Dionysian round dance with my unfaithful lover: Katya is then quite she harshly taught me to accept the love of other women and, what is most painful, her love for other men through group sex, in someone’s apartment the four of us had an orgy: Katya with her friend from the dorm, me and some guy about thirty-five, we were in the same room and, while I was busy with Katya’s girlfriend, I, no, no, cast glances full of anxiety, jealousy and poorly suppressed rage towards the second couple, the man tried his best, it was just some kind of unstoppable acrobat performing unique knees, until suddenly Katya pushed him off her: listen, why are you showing off here? – she was clearly annoyed, and the man’s eyes widened in surprise, he became nervous: how, well, I want you to have multiple orgasms! – Katya changed her anger to mercy, she was apparently amused by the reaction of this man and his words: I will take care of my orgasm myself, you take care of yours! lie on top of me, without any you..bons, and enjoy, a woman like me will not come across you soon, so take the opportunity! - this was not said out of false pride, it was the pure truth, Katya exuded such vibes of pleasure that sometimes she did not need to do anything, neither scream, nor move, nor take fancy poses, it was enough just to look into her during this eyes radiating with love, passion, insane tenderness and affection, and she became incredibly sweet and desirable; the man had a stupor, and then he simply lost his erection and he, ashamed - of course, Katya loved him at that moment without an erection, and without the need to get an orgasm with him, he hurried to leave, but Katya’s words had an effect on me the opposite action, I jumped on her like a lion on its prey and enjoyed her three times in a row, and this was the first time I tried for myself and was really happy, and she, of course, too, she knew how to be happy; then I again became a performer of the role, contradictory feelings again flared up in me, but I at least partially learned the lesson, and later, when, with the help of the Interpreter, I also realized it, then, it seems to me, I began to apply what I had learned not only in sex, but and in other types of communication, friendly, comradely, business and, of course, adventurous; So, am I really trying to assert myself now at the expense of Kesha? - not quite, or rather, having reflected on our conversation and giving way to my memories, I realized that although a small desire to establish myself was still present, it was not the main thing, Hermes was leading me, and I already saw where our conversation was heading; Kesha, meanwhile, also came out of his reverie and asked: what’s the point of living when you cause neither benefit nor harm? 5.- Any knowledge, Kesha, is targeted and historical, it is always aimed at a certain circle of people living at one time or another, perhaps even an era, but nothing more, this means that every event and every fate, from events woven, we cannot consider separately outside of historical contexts, and there are many such contexts: this is an era, a century, and how it used to be, the five-year plan, and, of course, a specific day, sometimes one day can completely change the context, in which we consider knowledge about something - oh, I knew this perfectly well, how many such days were there in my life, starting with that ill-fated and fabulous evening on Pesochnaya Embankment, after which my knowledge and ideas about life began to collapse, then , although my life outwardly rolled downhill, metamorphoses took place in it, no less than those about whichwrote Apuleius, metaphorically, both robbers and terrible witches, and turning into a donkey, why was I not a donkey? - all this, and especially the parallels with the story of Cupid and Psyche, only which of us with Katya was in the role of Psyche, and who was Cupid or even his insidious, but who brought Psyche invaluable experience, mother Venus, aka Aphrodite emerging from the stump of the sea , Great Mother, and Psyche is still not just a girl, but a soul, and Cupid is the Eros who creates her, I am writing these lines, and only now am I beginning to see the still fragile connections between the myth and the tests that my soul went through at the will of Katya-Aphrodite , who was Eros? - no, I am not able to solve this problem now with all the unknowns, it is only clear to me that the myth about Cupid and Psyche played out in my inner world, however, just as it probably plays out in any soul, and maybe not like that, because interpretations of the same mythical story are almost innumerable, I will return to it, to this mythical story unfolding on Sand Embankment, in attics and basements, in dorms and apartments, in Kabul and Herat, Isfahan and Paris, in the room of the Interpreter , trains and planes, in which I was catching up with Grandfather, the story ended exactly as it was intended, Eros fertilized my soul after I met Rita, or rather, when I last saw Katya, however, this is a separate big story and I’ll return to it, now I’m trying to remember our conversation with Kesha, I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the presentation, although it happened just a few days ago, I’ve already managed to edit a lot, correct something, somewhere try to present myself in a favorable light , and somewhere to pat, I have not become perfect, despite the union of Eros and Psyche inside me, many other deities play with my perceptions and desires, and Basilisk is not the last of them, I have not yet been able to integrate him, find a place for him in all of my life - perhaps this is an insoluble task, but I will try to solve it, there, on the way to the airport, I talked about the contextuality of any knowledge, about what I lived, although for Kesha, apparently, my experience, clothed in scientific words, is not was convincing, but it seemed to me that we were locked in an unequal verbal duel, because my unique experience, mental wounds and flights and all that... Kesha didn’t believe it, and why should he believe me? - he continued to advance: - all this is philosophy and abstraction, but I asked a specific question: what meaning does life have when you bring neither benefit nor harm, especially benefit? – go and explain to him, because benefit is definitely a benefit, isn’t it? - but I also hoped that even if Kesha didn’t understand, then maybe at least I would come to some kind of unified view, which is unlikely, and why do I need a single paranoid view? - but he was needed, needed for some reason, and I made my move, trying to carefully select my words, knowing that it was in vain, but still..., the gods see, I did not want to lecture my friend, but I did: This is what I mean, there are eras in the context of which neither the benefit nor the harm brought by both an individual person and an entire nation have any meaning either for specific people or for society, nevertheless, the possibility of meaning always remains, - well So I separated the concept of meaning from the concept of good, it was obvious to me, but Kesha did not give up under the onslaught of abstract exercises of my mind: - give examples! - I laid out the first image that came to me, hovering on the surface of my imagination, without thinking that it was completely unconvincing: - the collapse of the Roman Empire, when the barbarians approached Rome, any action of a Roman that would previously have been considered useful or harmful, be it construction, trade , growing crops and the like no longer made sense - well, I fell into my own trap, I just separated benefit and meaning, intending to lead to the fact that something that has no benefit can have an undoubted meaning, but he himself mixed it up, okay, although Kesha didn’t notice it and hooked me: - what about the treatment of the sick and wounded? - yes, I took it upon myself to simply explain the relativity of benefit and harm, which seems to be commonthe truth is for people who have seen the world, but dig it deeper - will you get out? - I understood that I was getting stuck, that I didn’t have enough arguments, which means I’m not that “seasoned”, my thinking is chaotic and disorderly, but I didn’t give up: - not a single sick or wounded person survived, but what can I say, and only a few healthy people survived... - Well done, Kesha! attack, come from the flanks, destroy my defenses, how I got entangled in them... but no! - something that I intuitively feel like I’m right doesn’t give me peace, and even if I’m confused, I’ll suddenly clear it out, because, in fact, so many times I relied on the god of chance, and every time I received support,.. I remembered An anecdote about a soldier's ingenuity: a soldier sits in a trench and sees the enemy advancing in front, enemy tanks behind, artillery hitting him from left and right, and he is alone and all the ammunition has run out: “fuck...!” - the soldier realized, - the soldier’s ingenuity did not fail... that’s how my arguments ran out, and Kesha really comes from the flanks: - no, you’re wrong, even if they all knew that they would die, but alleviation of suffering to the last, prayer, appeal to the gods for the salvation of the soul, here is an example of actions that bring undoubted benefit even in the face of imminent death, in the end, we know in any case that we are mortal, and let the Huns not stand at the gates of the city, and not a day or an hour is allotted to us, and sixty or seventy years, what difference does it make, we still fill our lives with meaning by doing some useful things, in one Apocryphal Gospel there is the following phrase “nothing is built on stone, everything is on sand, but it is human duty to build as if the stone was sand,” - a wonderful phrase, although I had not seen it in the apocrypha, but now I had found my friend’s vulnerable spot, I triumphed, slowly, almost syllable by syllable, pronouncing the next phrase, winking at Rita and receiving in return the most charming smile from my girl , full of love, support and understanding, somewhere in the corner of my consciousness I understood that I was somehow distorting the cards, but at that moment the adventure itself was important, the taste of victory, I again stood on the rails of Grandfather’s philosophy: - but no, this depends, of course, not only on time, but there can be contexts in the destinies of entire nations, when the difference between several hours, days, or even years or even decades is colossal, so you are talking about healing and saving the soul, about healing suffering , and you claim that these values ​​are absolute, no matter how much time is left, and in this very question you, thereby, take the point of view of a physician, theologian and lawyer, that is, the point of view of our contemporary society, and we again Let's return to the fact that you are firmly rooted in society, even if you go to the North Pole - “bravo, Sanya, great move!”, I read in the eyes of my beloved, I myself was glad of such a graceful turn: yes, indeed , we rely on the postulates of theology, medicine or jurisprudence, they are driven into the subconscious, and I, it seems, have come very close to exposing this falsification, this monstrous substitution, Kesha also became embarrassed, confusion appeared in his gaze, the advantage of the party was determined: - what what are you suggesting? What then remains if you completely leave society? and is it really possible to get out completely? “Grandfather, damn Grandfather triumphed in me when I carelessly said: “game,” - crushed by this carelessness, Kesha could only mutter: “I didn’t understand,” I myself only understood that Grandfather was speaking through me, or rather not he himself , and the one who stands behind him is Hermes in all his glory, I loved Hermes, I knew that this cunning man patronizes me, has been patronizing me since his youth, but why exactly did he enter the arena now, why is it his trump card that beats all the cards in that the moment when I am looking for an opportunity to expose the depths on which theses about the relativity of good and evil, benefit and harm, meaning and nonsense, which have long become banal for me, rest? – I could not dive into the depths, to the secrets kept by Hades and Persephone, Hermes, although he himself had access to their world, pushed me to the surface, grinning roguishly,and I was carried: - when everything is collapsing and it is useless to twitch, then you can, for example, externally or at least internally take, so to speak, a place in the stalls, and watch dispassionately, with interest, with passion, boredom, or admiration, the play of a plan unknown to us forces, the scale of which we cannot even imagine, this position, by the way, is perhaps the only one that can really save the soul, if expressed in theological language, the game of the diocese of Hermes, and it is he who is the guide of souls to another world, so what if You will be at one with him, you see, and you will be saved! - I uttered the last words with undisguised irony, I paid tribute to Hermes by mentioning him, thereby trying to outwit the god of adventure by appeasing him with respect, but I had long since moved away from Grandfather’s philosophy, I perceived Hermes only as one of the many figures of my soul, no longer the most important one, as it once was, and I never believed in the immortality of the individual soul, although I did believe, to be honest, in the Game, thanks to which, as I believed, even during physical life the soul can to dissolve in a single world soul - only it will no longer be you or not quite you... the game as a universal transition into the transcendental beyond the boundaries of life, death and individuality is wonderful, but where the hell is the depth, why do I feel like I can’t dive- yet in the secret of the secret, and talking about the Game, I am floundering on the surface, Kesha has completely wilted: - why do you think that now is just such an era? - I nodded meaningfully, I continued to show off: - yes, but, as it seems to me, the world will not perish, although it will change beyond recognition, to such, Kesha, unrecognizability that it is impossible to predict what those values ​​\u200b\u200bthat we now consider useful will be ... before this transformation, which may affect the entire planet, there is, of course, not a day or two left, but a year, two or five, maybe ten, but you can already take places in the stalls... now you’ve left the city, great, Were you guided by the fact that you were performing a highly spiritual act, or did you simply want to live longer due to the conditions of purity of natural nutrition and the absence of stress? We won’t discuss this, I’m not your judge, someone shares your beliefs and follows you, for some the temptations of megacities are of great value, and asking who is right is just as stupid as deciding who is more right: a natural resident Artemis or the patroness of cities, Athena... - I stepped on the sore spot of my interlocutor, and he again began to get excited: - but the residents of the cities and the government, first of all, do not understand that the environment is being violated, and sooner or later we will all die as a result of the development of industry and megacities, - all that remained was to put a full stop, putting it in its place: - but this question is not for us to decide, the forces are already at work here, the unimaginable scale of which I have already spoken, and it seems to me that we will not die because of the environment, but at least many, those who are honored, whether by their own will or under the coercion of those same forces, really break all ties with society, that is, stop playing social games and enter the Game on a larger scale, because while we are going to treat and change someone, we are building healing and environmental programs, we want to save someone and someone even dreams of saving the world, we continue to play the same social games... - oh, Kesha, Kesha, protect yourself from a “Zarathustra” like me, or better yet, be ashamed of him, be maybe he is deceiving you, because like Nietzsche, my practice of argument is expressed in the fact that I attack things that are victorious and recognized as correct, things against which I have very few allies, where I only compromise myself... I notice in In this conversation, as, indeed, in many ways in life’s position, Nietzschean notes, in fact, I prove to myself what was written by the classic more than a century ago: “what humanity has so far seriously assessed were not even realities, and simple chimeras, lies born from the bad instincts of sick, in the deepest sense, natures - all these concepts are God, virtue, sin,the other world, the truth, in which they sought the greatness of human nature, its divinity... all questions of politics, social order, education were completely distorted by the fact that the most harmful people were mistaken for great people, that they were taught to despise small and seemingly ugly things, therefore, the basic conditions of life itself,” here my thought, attached to the last phrase, is ready to launch into a scattering of associations about the contempt of Basilisk, Pan, Aphrodite, even the most life-affirming Eros, but I will hold on to these associations for the time being, I will return to Kesha, who did not read Nietzsche, but I read Blavatsky, the Roerichs and a dozen mediocre modern esotericists - why do I now despise him for this, look down on him? – perhaps there is a little, to deny it would be an outright lie, and here I am in the Nietzschean aura of “one against the crowd”, trying at the same time to stay within the framework of a friendly conversation - what a stupid farce! - and yet, despite this, I continue to search, to search for myself, lost and perverted, and my friend’s questions, perhaps, only contribute to this goal, like this one: - Why not do anything at all now? - and I answered seemingly worthy, but no matter how eager I was to go to the depths, I never got there, and was left floundering on the surface: - why not do it, here I am, as you aptly noted, I sell knives, but I don’t worry about who and why would they be used, this is a way out of society, I don’t need to be good or bad, I just do what I can and what there is a demand for... - but Innokenty did not let up, he firmly grabbed my thesis, trying to squeeze me in the corner, good fellow: - what about the Game? - I, again, could only get out of this corner with the help of Grandfather’s lessons, even though I lived them to the fullest, but I didn’t want to admit that they contained an exhaustive explanation, there was something else, something... something very important, but I stalled and answered with what I myself considered only part of the real answer: - and the Game is that I do something, but not because I want to change or cure someone, but simply because What’s interesting to me is that I can even get involved in the same social games, but at the same time keep a fig in my pocket and, thanks to this fig, that is, an additional point of attention, make completely unexpected and unpredictable moves, no, I didn’t feel satisfied with my answer, but I did not answer mechanically, with every word I painfully searched for the truth, but found only half of it, but I needed to search, and my opponent seemed to feel this, trying to help reveal new meanings, I underestimated him, but he turned out to be now wiser than me - just out of interest? - a simple question, you say, but how many subtexts there are in it! - Certainly! - alas, my intonation and the innermost feeling in this “of course” did not in any way resemble an exclamation mark, but oh well, I put it, and Kesha sensed this dissonance: - I don’t like this position, this is some kind of extreme egocentrism, a little Isn’t it solipsism - no, I felt, I couldn’t dive deeper today, all that remained was to once again at least strengthen myself in Grandfather’s philosophy, although it is half the truth, it is half worthwhile, and delving into the next phrase, as it pronouncing, I again, as before, was convinced that Grandfather was far from a fool, however, my consciousness floated, I was inspired and again sank, realizing that I was being false, in order to perk up again the next moment: - why, in this position there is a lot options, you can be a spectator, and a loving, hating, passionate, indifferent spectator, or you can be a player, the player does not just watch, he plays for any of the opposing teams, no matter whether for the one that is trying to maintain the status quo, or for that , which destroys this very status quo, as long as there is a fig in your pocket, that is, the awareness that you are playing, and not identification with the desire to win, the player tests the strength of his destiny, betting on one of the opposing forces, in fact, we can say that only the player is the fate, or “not fate” if he bet on the wrong card, the rest, except the spectators, of course,live according to social scenarios, I’ll probably stop here, otherwise reflections on this topic will lead us into wandering around the question that Hegel and his followers tormented all their lives: about the Master and the slave, about the one who has fate, and the one whom fate has, - well, I didn’t miss the opportunity to show off my erudition in order to slightly drown my interlocutor again, but he seemed to ignore it: - no, wait, I seem to understand where you’re going, but I can’t agree with you, no matter what the cataclysms they weren’t expecting us, even in the near future, this doesn’t give me the right to renounce the belief that God is love, I hope you don’t call this faith social? - Wow! - right on the most painful callus, here self-criticism and all reflection receded, I became inflamed, this was “my strong point”, just as the difference between the skull of an Eskimo and the skull of a black man was the strong point of Conan Doyle’s Doctor Mortimer from “The Hound of the Baskervilles”: - the very thing there is no social belief that arose in the Christian and near-Christian environment, as a compensatory fantasy generated by fear of the uncontrollable affects of the god Yahweh, you remember the Old Testament, in order to appease the Father’s anger, they took and castrated God like that... of course he is love, but also hatred, and fear, and disgust, and delight, and shame, and interest, and surprise, and much more, besides, let’s not forget that God and the gods are inhabitants of psychic space, manifesting themselves in it as one of condensed coordinate systems, describing phenomena of varying degrees of synchronicity, and even asking a question inside or outside them is pointless, just like asking a question inside or outside the psychic space itself: wherever we go to look, inside or outside, we will find ourselves in the paradox of bad infinity, - I said all this passionately, I lectured my opponent, completely forgetting that I just wanted to refrain from teaching, but Kesha was not blind: - well, you know, this is just Jung’s point of view, there are and other descriptions, I was trying to get out of my own way, as if in a frying pan, and what’s worse, I understood it, but I couldn’t stop, although, in the end, I was saying not things I had read, but things I had lived through in my gut, but I could get rid of the feeling that my the arguments are one-sided and I couldn’t grasp their source, I couldn’t: - of course, and none of them, including Jung’s and, by the way, not only Jung’s but also postmodernism, which sounded in my words, is the ultimate truth, just like in mathematics, if you have a problem, you select the most convenient coordinate system to solve it, so I chose this one to solve my life problem, choose - I chose, but I still keep the fig in my pocket, Kesha already grunted: - you’re like Mata Hari himself was probably confused about which intelligence service you work for; she, if you remember, in the end, got so lost in her figs that she finally hanged herself - here I was forced to make a move demonstrating a retreat: - so I you I’m not calling you to follow me, I made a challenge to my destiny, you to yours,” then my beloved, who was listening attentively to our conversation, suddenly intervened: “Sasha didn’t lecture you now, but told you about his attitude to life, by the way, you’re very into Jung.” I remembered the topic, he has one phrase that I even memorized, it so brilliantly reflects how I feel about life itself, or as Sashka just explained to you verbosely, here it is: “I’m surprised, I’m disappointed and I’m pleased with myself, I’m unhappy, depressed and I look to the future with hope I - all this is together and I am not able to put it together I am not able to explain the ultimate benefit or uselessness I am not given to understand what my value is and what the value of my life is I am not sure of anything there are no definite convictions about anything and no absolute certainty, I know that I was just born and that I exist, that this stream is carrying me, I cannot know why this is so, and yet, despite all the uncertainty, I feel a certain strength and consistency in my independence and in one’s being,”Kesha relaxed and began to smile: “It’s well said, you can’t argue with it, but I still don’t agree with you Sanya.” Did I want to persuade him to agree or not? - yes and no, everything is so confusing and contradictory, everything is exactly as Jung said, but for some reason I began to justify myself: - praise be to Allah, I didn’t intend to convince you, thanks to this conversation, Kesha, I at least translated it into words something that I just intuitively sensed, the first attempt to formulate a thought and, you know, not everything is calm in the Danish kingdom, I myself am not entirely happy with what happened, something is missing - I was disgusted and disgusted with myself by this moment, - “that’s it,” Kesha nodded, “that’s why I feel that everything seems to be going smoothly, but no, there’s some kind of catch, but you also stirred me up,” I smiled strained: “that means we sat with the benefit that according to my words, it’s meaningless at the moment, - and this is already sophistry, you’re my favorite philosopher, - Rita said touchingly and reached out to kiss, - wait a minute, - trying to open our protracted embrace, Kesha began to fuss, - since such a waste has gone, and intuition began to turn into words, maybe you can try to tell me how you see the apocalypse? - Mischievous lights sparkled in Rita’s eyes: “Yes, there will be no apocalypse, at least according to St. John’s scenario, there really are intuitive guesses about this, and what is intuition if not the ability to take in the situation from a broader scale than everyday life and see emerging trends - so how can you tell? - Rita and I looked at each other, after which I looked at my watch and thought that if I was already stuck in contradictions, then why not drown in them completely, die, like with music, I said: - why not try, we still have plenty of time … 6. - Our planet undoubtedly possesses something that can be called consciousness, and there is no need to compare its consciousness with human consciousness, other scales, other mechanisms of perception, other ways of responding... in one thing only an analogy can be drawn: similar to human , the consciousness of the planet is probably also fragmented and contradictory... perhaps it is also on its way to integrity, but while this very integrity is still very far away, a lot of things are mixed in the consciousness of the planet: the fragmentation of continents, elements, the consciousness of people and nations, especially large ethnic groups , which influence what is happening in a complex planetary organism, the logic of which, alas, we have not yet been able to comprehend, but we can still trace individual trends, and, in our own, human way, comprehend them, in a certain way to a degree, adapting planetary processes to our way of thinking... we can highlight in them the opposition, unity and struggle, well, let's say, the masculine and feminine principles... all these relationships between different climatic zones, landscapes, east and west, north and south are described in a rather original way by Leo Nikolayevich Gumilyov, although he does not use the concept of “consciousness” in relation to all these phenomena, - Ritka was on fire, I admired my beloved, of course, we discussed much of what she said more than once, now her eyes sparkled, however when they didn't shine? - even during the languor of love, right up to the onset of orgasm, she often did not close her lovely eyes, and with my gaze I drank the sweetest nectar, which filled her eyes with pleasure, jubilation, magnetism, the acuteness of the experience of a moment that seemed to last forever, sometimes , all this was mixed with a furious frenzy, no, not hatred, not bestial bloodthirstiness, but precisely a furious intoxication with life, a frantic desire to live, and now, in the sparkle of her eyes, I found these glares of Dionysian ecstasy, that ecstasy that so excites me, that many times scattered into myriads of fires, igniting the Basilisk in both of us, a living, ancient instinct as the world, revealed in all its primitive purity and power... Kesha, undoubtedly, also felt this call of life, the call of a woman, the call of love, he could not withstand my beloved's gaze, stared to the side and, apparently, experiencingawkwardness, inserted my “three cents”; - I read from Gumilyov about the Great Steppe, - my delightful girl noticed that she had led the former priest into temptation and continued a little less fervently, even changing her intonation: now it seemed that she was giving a report at a conference: - well, the easier it is we will understand each other... in the foreseeable history of mankind, well, this is several thousand or tens of thousands of years, we can see a clear confrontation between at least two planetary forces, onto each of which we naturally project some kind of human qualities, these are East and West, irrational, wild, unbridled, mesmerizing with the heady feeling of freedom and permissiveness of the East, which is most clearly manifested precisely in that very Great Steppe, nomadic Asia in which the forces of destruction, chaos, spontaneity and, at the same time, reign , liberation... there is no hierarchy and ordered structures, boundaries, everything is blurred and is in constant motion, this force is opposed and not only opposed, but also, as it were, complemented by the West, with its rationality, sedentism, order, laws, restrictions, hierarchy, patriarchy, centralized structures... - watching Rita, I forgot my recent torment and reflections, dissolved in the melody of her voice, in which, at the end of the phrase, as again in the sparkle of her eyes, mischievous and inviting, inspiring and seductive notes sounded, but it was a temptation emanating not just from a specific woman, but from Life in general, only Rita, and even Katya, of everyone I knew, could reach this level of impersonal temptation, impersonal passion..., Kesha fidgeted again: - I think I can guess , what will you say next, namely, that in history there have been periods of cyclical changes in the dominance of the East and the West and now, judging by your hypothesis, the transition of the cycle is again planned and the dominance of the decaying West should be replaced by the “wind from the East”, like Mao Jie Doon said: “the wind from the East will overcome the wind from the West,” did I understand correctly? “Yes, Kesha,” she was about to continue, but the interlocutor interrupted: “Then it’s unclear why the West is rotting and rotting for decades, and even a century, and for some reason I personally don’t notice any blows from the East, you said that some drastic changes should happen in almost two or three years, I can’t understand this - to be honest, I also didn’t quite understand this point in my beloved’s reasoning, the logic here stalled, but I, in Unlike Innocent, I listened not to logic, but to the impulse of her soul, and she burned, called, beckoned, leaving me no opportunity to argue and protest, I was at the mercy of her spell, perhaps it was the spell of Asia, about which and in whose name Rita said: “How come you don’t notice the blows from the East?” - oh, Kesha stepped on her favorite callus, and indeed, she became flushed, which was visible even in the twilight, in the weak light of the dying fire: - no matter how hard all these white-collar workers try to cheer up, who have become a symbol of our days, the avalanche has been brewing for a long time, indeed several centuries, and now all it takes is just a small shake-up, and it could be anything: a fall in the value of the dollar, another ethnic conflict, or maybe even something insignificant at first glance, how the West will collapse, it is fed up, the speed of technology development , the absurdity of various legislations, all this has already reached the limit, and the breath of the East is that in Russia, for example, and not only in it, the number of people is rapidly growing who sometimes, even despite wearing a white collar, carry in themselves the spirit of Asia... Even Dostoevsky surprisingly accurately saw this spirit in his heroes, such as all four Karamazovs, Grushenka, Svidrigailov, Raskolnikov... Kesha was sincerely surprised: - and what is Asian about them? - and indeed, at first look, in all the listed characters there was nothing heroic or villainous, the spirit of Genghis Khan was in no way associated with the unfortunate neurasthenics dying outdregs of society, everything was so, they were both neurasthenics and dregs of society, but my girl, in love with the Russian classics, with the contradictory abysses of Dostoevsky’s soul, was able to see through that hidden layer that escapes with a superficial glance and even with a deep look, here it is necessary had a special vision, and Ritka had it developed like no one else, so she parried Kesha’s surprised question as if he had not seen something so obvious that was looming right in front of his nose: - like what? their spirit, in which a new ideal is discerned, threatening the very existence of the European spirit, it is expressed in a completely immoral way of thinking and feeling, the ability to discern the divine, necessary, fateful, in what the West considers evil, ugliness, destruction, the ability to honor and bless all this , and this ideal of the Karamazovs, Svidrigailovs, Raskolnikovs, seeps into Europe, begins to devour the spirit of Europe in order to return to the Foremother, to return to Asia to the source of everything... and not only in Dostoevsky we find this spirit, but also, for example, in Gogol’s Khlestakov , Tolstoy’s Pozdnyshev from the “Kreutzer Sonata”, Chekhov’s Platonov and Ivanov, many heroes of Kuprin, Bunin, and even modern classics: Shukshin, Dovlatov, Vampilov, Venechka Erofeev, this ideal seeped even into modern French philosophy and literature, and a little earlier permeated many stories and stories by Herman Hesse, Kafka, Joyce... - Kesha didn’t understand or didn’t want to understand, most likely he didn’t want to, because I saw the little devils sparkling in his eyes while Rita said: - and still I don’t understand, what ideal are you talking about, the characters you listed seem to me just people with an unbalanced psyche, and also weak people, unable to do anything serious and somehow influence the state of things in the world: “pathetic insignificant people,” as Panikovsky used to say, anti-heroes... - my beloved was not at all embarrassed by this passage of our friend, she began to be carried away again: - the fact of the matter is that the concept of neither heroes nor villains, clearly outlined by Western thinking, is not applicable to these people, the same Hermann Hesse even has a small essay , which, it seems, is called “Karamazov’s Asia”, I don’t remember exactly, but it talks about the fact that the Russian man, through whom I see the manifestation of the spirit of Asia, cannot be reduced to a hysteric, a drunkard or a criminal , neither a poet nor a saint, in him all this is combined together, he is at the same time a murderer and a judge, a brawler and a gentle soul, a complete egoist, a cynic and then a hero of self-sacrifice, you recently argued with Sashka, and he appeared before you as an egoist and a cynic, but this is not so, this is only one part of him, he is the real Karamazov, or rather all four of them Alyosha Mitya Ivan and even their father, Fyodor... - completely unexpectedly I heard these words from the lips of the woman I loved, damn it, she, my beautiful girl, seems to have hit the nail on the head, she, it turns out, knew, she saw, understood and accepted my whole torn, contradictory, restless soul in its entirety... how well she knew me, saw me, and, most importantly accepted all this in me, I recalled dozens, hundreds of moments in our relationship, where I was harsh and rude, gentle and affectionate, touchy, angry, voluptuous, cold, stubborn, flexible, stingy, gave in, afraid of losing her, was adamant, sometimes ready to destroy our relationship because of some little thing, some disgusting principle, he was greedy, and the next day he was reckless, and so many other contradictory, impermanent, disastrous and reborn things... waking up from my thoughts, I heard my beloved everything hotter and more penetratingly she unwound a tangle of intuitive insights: everything that we have repeatedly talked about, and which only now took shape in a very large-scale coverage of our individual thoughts: a Russian person is essentially an Asian and is becoming more and more so, despite the fact that everything is Asian , spontaneous, and irrational Western civilization tried to drive into the shadowthe invisible side of his personality, this is a man who is torn away from opposites, from everything definite, from morality, he is ready to dissolve, return back to the bosom of the Great Goddess and, at the same time, break free from it completely, he loves nothing and loves everything, he is nothing is not afraid and is afraid of everything, he does nothing and does everything, this man is again primordial material, an unformed clot of spiritual plasma, he is steadily moving towards death, towards destruction, and rebirth, yes, that was me, including: and I could not resist, got into the conversation, interrupted my beloved: - do you remember how Svidrigailov told Raskolnikov about ghosts and the possibility of another world, a possibility that opens only when the natural order of life of the body is disrupted, he, Svidrigailov, rushes towards disastrous ecstasy, like Vysotsky, like Yesenin, reading poetry to prostitutes in taverns and brothels, combining the incompatible, incomprehensible and unpleasant to a decent person, the West has been trying for many centuries to domesticate man, ride his instincts, make him predictable and controllable, now the limit is coming, the dam of pent-up feelings and instincts is about to break through, in the souls of people arise impulses that have no name, which, based on the concept of morality, should be recognized as bad, but which, however, are capable of speaking in such a strong, such a natural, such an innocent voice that every good and evil becomes doubtful, and every law is unsteady, and in each of us they are ready to wake up, and in some they have already woken up,” Rita gave me a loving magical look – hypostases are suspicious, dangerous, unreliable... we have strange whims, a strange conscience and dishonesty, we contain a lot of threat, we grab people by the gills, we pick out souls, expose secrets and, rushing towards madness and destruction incomprehensible to the mind, we affirm life! - ugh, how it burst through me, with this final chord my girl fell on my lap, I covered her burning cheeks with my eyes and lips with kisses, and Kesha, no less mesmerized by our ideas, mine and this little cheat, sat without moving, fixing his unblinking gaze on the smoldering coal: “yes,” he finally drawled, “that’s how we talked... in the end I realized that some kind of avalanche is really ready to break, and no matter whether Armageddon is big or small, those of us who will go through its crucible will most likely become nomads again, as in prehistoric times... - and this does not necessarily have to manifest itself externally, I thought, roads surround us not only outside but also inside, as well as unexpected intersections, turns, accidents, losses, unexpected treasures... while we were driving to the airport, I remembered the Asian women I had ever been with close... at first it happened that Katya brought them to me for love, the three of them: in Kabul, in Isfahan, Paris... there was something wild, primitive in them, just like in Katya herself, only, unlike Katyusha, Asian women, like It seems to me that there were not enough developed upper floors of the soul... I especially remember one of them - Gulnara, the daughter of a major official from the government of Babrak Karmal, whom Katya, in some incomprehensible way, managed to drag into my UAZ while I was waiting for Colonel Medvedev at Amin’s palace... I still can’t understand how Katya was able to leave the unit’s location, much less how she found that devil Gulnara and persuaded her to come to me, in front of the guards marching near the palace, the three of us spent an unforgettable half hour, Gulnara was a Uighur, Uyghurs are a people living at the junction of Kazakhstan, China and Mongolia, and their women, it seems to me, are the most beautiful and sexy of Asian women... in Guli’s slanted eyes I saw Tamerlane’s cavalry, endless steppe expanses, and all this was a symbol of life and deaths, intertwined in an amazing and incomprehensible dance... When we boarded the plane, Rita bowed her head on my shoulder and quietly said: “You can live without orgasms, you can probably live without sex at all, but you can’t live without love, without that naturallove that arises in us along with the awareness of ourselves in childhood, the world is alive and we love it only for this, we love our simple friends of that time, to whom we owe nothing and from whom we expect nothing, we love the bug and the butterfly in the country, the pebble and a trickle with whom we talk just like that, without expectations, we love our mother, grandfather, little brother... although later we will have a thousand reasons to hate them, but this is no longer from there, do you understand me? – I nodded silently, stroking her hand, a few tears ran down my cheeks, then I dozed off...7. Arriving from Chelyabinsk, in three days I painted a picture with tempera paints, where I captured an image that had been periodically appearing in my dreams for several months; I learned to draw in the early nineties, and the Interpreter pushed me to this, mainly so that I could express the figures of my dreams and visions in paint; for six months I took drawing lessons from one of her patients, at that time this led, of course, to a rather complex and confusing relationship with my teacher, nevertheless, I somehow learned to draw and now I’m looking at the creation of three sleepless nights: frozen in the street of a medieval, or even an ancient city, of numb immobility, however, the entire street is not visible, only two buildings creating perspective, with porticoes, columns, arches... the cold, dispassionate Apollonian light gives this landscape a slightly eerie atmosphere of unreality, the metaphysics of a dream in which time seems frozen, the shadows are long enough, from which we can conclude that time stopped at the mark between seventeen and eighteen hours, I especially loved this time - in recent years Rita would come home from classes, and we would go frolicking around the city and, if the day was sunny, then , it was precisely in this interval that my consciousness suddenly seeped into some kind of gap between the worlds, the ordinary, fussy world and the world in which sometimes, to the point of goosebumps all over my body and my pulse quickening, I suddenly remembered something incredibly close, but which seemed to be happening not with me, at least not with the me that I knew and remembered, it lasted for a moment, and those flashes of insight instantly disappeared from memory, like water absorbing into sand, only a taste remained - the taste of another world, all this happened as if according to Svidrigailov’s words during his first visit to Raskolnikov about ghosts and the possibility of other worlds, if, of course, the “normal order of things in the body” is disrupted, such phenomena happened to me very often after Afghanistan, after Katya and I - Having incredibly escaped from captivity, we crossed, without bumping into anyone, the border of Iran, where one rich Persian, amazed and inflamed by Katya’s charms, took her as his concubine, and, only thanks to her requests, he hired me to clean the shop of a spice merchant in Isfahan, how was it not possible to violate the “normal order of things” in my body, how was it not possible to open up to the possibilities, albeit elusive, of other worlds, and now, it seems to me, I managed to capture on a small canvas some echo of this other world, however , now I guess that the plot I depicted is nothing more than the Shadow of the Basilisk, because everything in this world is potentially holistic, everything, even the gods, has its shadow side; two figures are depicted in my drawing, one is female, she is almost invisible - a woman sits at the far wing of the building, near the arch, the expression on her face cannot be seen, she is one of many, infinitely many, she embodies millions of women who exist and when -or existing between two poles - Katya and Rita, poles insanely close and, at the same time, infinitely distant, perhaps these are not even specific women, but an archetype, now I would call it the Temple Prostitute; in the ancient Mediterranean, in the middle of a city, usually a port, there was a temple dedicated to Aphrodite, and every woman in the city had to at least once not just visit, but work there, because Aphrodite is nice and kind when people make love; so, at least once in her life every womancity ​​must do service to Aphrodite, come to this temple, sit on the steps in front of the arch that serves as the entrance to the temple of the Goddess of Love and surrender to the first man who approaches her for this... I remember the Interpreter said that in some cultures a girl could not get married, without performing this ritual, and the explanation for it seems to be quite everyday - people in these cities were suffocating from closely related interbreeding and thirsted for fresh blood, that is, the sperm of those who sailed on ships, and there were even special laws declaring sacred children who were born from such services... obviously any woman is involved in this archetype, and to understand this, try to imagine on these steps... the Virgin Mary - yes, the archetype of the Temple Prostitute is absolutely matriarchal, the role of the man in the whole ritual is as small as it can be, he should not have any virtues and even the name itself, he is everything and no one, someone completely faceless... anyone... the holy spirit... and here she is faceless, he is faceless, everyone and no one... on the bed of love it is not Masha and Vanya who meet, but He and She, Anima and Animus, that's why Aphrodite doesn't care whether we - already concrete people - sleep in the same bed for half an hour or fifty years, this is in the competence of other gods, it is important for her here and now... from this point of view, the woman in my drawing can be not only a woman, but also a man, maybe me... I’m sitting in the same way on the steps of the Temple of Aphrodite, and passing women, Katya, several hundred almost nameless ones and Rita choose me... maybe everything is completely different, but now I, who have comprehended with the help Interpreters have the art of capturing the secrets of dreams and fantasies, I see this figure exactly like this in the Shadow of the Basilisk, frozen in timelessness, for his Shadow, no matter how active, so inexorable in its revealed side, is imagined by me to be devoid of the attributes of time. In the center of the picture, on the square where the street opens , standing with his left foot resting on a stone and holding a human skull in front of him in his right hand, a man of about fifty-five, at the very zenith of his spiritual powers, he is dressed in a torn tunic, over his shoulders is a travel bag, in which, apparently, there is nothing except for a loaf of bread and a flask of water; It seems to me that this is exactly how I imagined Socrates, and maybe even, most likely, Faust at the very end of his life, at that moment when he already realized that not only knowledge and fame, but also not power, not wealth, not even the possession of the most beautiful woman, bestows a truly supreme moment of existence and gives life the highest fullness, when “only he who has experienced the battle for life deserves life and freedom”... The image of Faust has been attractive to me since my youth, even before the army I read the immortal Goethe’s creation, then I was struck by the very possibility of a person to be fearless before the truth, not to be seduced by illusions and to see with ruthlessness how limited the possibilities of both knowledge and sensory experience are, how incommensurate are the mysteries of the universe and nature with the possibilities of knowledge and experience; over the twenty-five years that have passed since the first reading of “Faust”, like Socrates, with every year, or even month, I became convinced that the richer my experience, the less I know, my perception of the world is built on a sense of the conventions of any there were descriptions and coordinate systems... of course, not knowing how it all “really” is and whether this “thing itself” exists is accompanied by tension, a feeling of discomfort; I observe many people who, trying to get away from this discomfort, try to turn every hypothesis into dogma... I know Faust and Socrates would understand me... the man in the center of my drawing looks into the eye sockets of death itself, the only absolute reality in life, the only guarantee and truth, it is perhaps the only state that all life should take into account, maturing, developing and striving towards death - its goal, we live in order to die, life and death are contained in each other, complement each other, are understandable only in terms of each other, life acquires its value through death, and the desireto death - the kind of life that Socrates chose, that Faust chose... if only the living can die, only the dying is truly alive! associations at the sight of a man holding a skull: “poor Yorick”, a painful reflection on the unknown after death - this is not what is depicted here, here the words of Borges are much more appropriate: “these roads, sounds and prints, women and men, deaths and Sundays, nights and days, vigils and nightmares, every moment of what you have lived and everything the world has experienced, the happiness of reciprocity, words found, Emerson, snow and so much more in the world! now they can be forgotten, I’m going to my focus, to the final formula, to the mirror and the key, I’ll soon find out who I am””; a man looking through the eye sockets of death knows who he is and, at the same time, knows nothing, this is also me - that me about whom I know nothing, being still too young, perhaps a little older than Hamlet, someday and the whole amazing plan with the help of which I invited the Basilisk into my life will be revealed, launching a drama with hundreds of characters: dear, beloved, hated, episodic, Katya, Rita, Interpreter, Grandfather, myself, finally living through life, comprehending it secrets, loving and beloved... 8. But now the time has come to tell about my last meeting with Katya. May two thousand and five; I’m returning from the hospital, where I visited my old friend, and one Pushkin line can’t get out of my head: “our days are not numbered by us; the young man blossomed in the evening, and in the morning he died, and now four old men are carrying him on hunched shoulders to the grave”... our days are not numbered by us... and, perhaps, not only days, but also ups, downs, revelations and regressions - the Interpreter has repeatedly warned me that, at times, a person who has gone through the most difficult path of individuation, filled with seemingly unbearable, inhuman trials and having gained insight into his Self, can suddenly, in the blink of an eye, regress to the stage of extreme infantility, the dominance of the Great Mother, semi-conscious uroboricity... Ananke - this is the name she was given ancient goddess of fatal necessity... Plato has a line: “even the gods are forced to reckon with Necessity”; the name of this goddess can not often be read or heard: people are still trying to find any cause-and-effect explanations for what has no explanation; I was destined to meet with such a case of the manifestation of the blind forces of fate, the inexorable Ananka, that morning: yes, truly, human life is “vanity of vanities and all kinds of vanity”; my friend, whom I visited in the hospital, was a completely extraordinary person: from the age of fourteen he devoted himself to the practice of yoga, a healthy lifestyle, and until recently he was an example of powerful health - at forty-seven years old, he had long since suffered even the most trifling cold , his eyes invariably beamed with wisdom, more than once he participated in extreme expeditions: he made mountaineering alone, rowed across the Black Sea from Sochi to Odessa, courage, fortitude, physical and mental health were tightly connected with the image of this man. - Kolya Zaitsev and now - at forty-seven years old - a heart attack; the very news of his illness stunned me, it seemed to me that in terms of health and good spirits he would give odds to any of the people I knew, and I knew many eighty - and even ninety-year old men and women, not to mention those who did not lead a healthy lifestyle , but daily ruining their bodies with alcohol, tobacco, toxins, destructive emotions and, nevertheless, managed to reach a ripe old age without such formidable diagnoses, and then... Ananka... the second shock awaited me when I saw Kolya in the hospital: where did the seemingly already inextricably fused with him was the presence of spirit, the courage with which more than once in his life he conquered numerous difficulties and trials? - from a conversation with the attending physician, I realized that the heart attack was not severe, and the chances of a successfulthe outcome was very great, but, my God! I saw in front of me a man who had aged twenty years at once, crying, capricious, with shaking hands - the contrast was so striking, and I was so stunned by what I saw that I needed a long walk and a hundred grams of cognac to somehow drown out some deep-seated mental pain associated with experiencing the extreme fragility of human destiny; Perhaps I was also worried about myself: how would I be able to perceive and survive some unexpected blow of fate, a meeting with Ananke? - oh, how scary, how painful it is to fall, not when you have just begun to rise, but when, having overcome many obstacles, paying for it with sweat, blood and tears, you have already approached the cherished peak!.. our days are not numbered by us... from the Mariinsky hospital on Liteiny, where Kolya Zaitsev was lying, I walked along Vladimirsky Prospekt, went out onto Zagorodny, drank a glass of cognac at Five Corners and wandered along Rastannaya and Mayakovsky to the Obvodny Canal without any purpose; the cognac warmed me, from shock I moved on to a philosophical perception of reality, in which even existential-dramatic notes appeared, they say, here he is - a man thrown into this world, capable of experiencing, as Castaneda wrote, both horror and admiration from his lonely presence before unknown forces of the world; it was the end of May, the weather was warm, in some places lilacs were already blooming, filling the dusty city streets with fragrance; for some reason I decided to take a shortcut and walked across the yard: “young man, can you buy me a cigarette?” someone’s hoarse voice called out to me; two homeless people of indeterminate age were sitting on a bench, more precisely, a homeless man and a homeless woman; a man called out to me; a woman was sitting with her back to me. , I didn’t see her face, and what kind of special face could a homeless woman have... I don’t smoke and I don’t carry cigarettes with me, but some impulse, perhaps related to the mood of that morning and thoughts about human fate, made me stop and rummage through my wallet: I wanted to give five hundred rubles to these unfortunate people, although who knows, maybe in some ways they are happier than many of us; Once upon a time, in the year ninety-eight, having completed the epic with Grandfather, returning to St. Petersburg and organizing a small company that operates to this day, from my first profits I acquired a fairly good video camera: I then had the idea of ​​​​making a small amateur documentary about homeless people , I even had a title prepared: “Summer is a little life,” and I conducted two “interviews” with such residents of the nearest courtyards, one turned out to be a former doctor of philosophical sciences and enthusiastically talked about the philosophical maxims of Jacques Derrida, washing down curly quotes with cheap wine , the second read me poems that he had written even when he was living on the street, the poems were naive, but touching, almost childish: the sun, trees, birdsong and, oddly enough, dreams of some distant stranger, the man was for sixty, he was constantly coughing, the summer was cold and it felt like this was really his last summer, I no longer took “interviews” with homeless people and the idea of ​​​​making a film was not allowed to come true... and in May two thousand and five - I remember this day well - Thursday the nineteenth of May, I handed out five hundred rubles to the homeless man who called to me and came close enough, trying not to breathe - the characteristic smell completely overwhelmed the aromas of lilac, the woman was wearing a headscarf, several dirty blouses dressed one on top of the other, her legs were disfigured by elephantiasis, she looked to the side, leaning her hand on plastic bags with homeless belongings, I gave the money and was about to leave, the man muttered: “Thank you, dear man, God bless you,” he turned around, took a few steps and, suddenly, heard a woman’s voice, a voice this one was changed almost beyond recognition and only some notes in it and the words themselves made my heart tremble: “thank you Sanya,” I turned around sharply, my heart was pounding in my throat - almost like then, on Pesochnaya Embankment in the front door... Katya... only eyes, tired, swollen, almost faded, notradiating, it seemed, nothing but indifference, but these were HER eyes, I would have recognized them even in this form among thousands of others... a silent scene... I barely remember what happened next, my disgust instantly disappeared, I only remember that I grabbed her by the hands, without ceasing to mutter: “Katya, Katyusha, how can this be?” she didn’t resist, the man tried, there was something to say, I hastily slipped him a couple more thousand, then I dragged Katya, dragged him in the literal sense of the word , because she walked with great difficulty, to the nearest bathhouse on Dostoevskaya, curious passers-by looked after us, but I didn’t care, in the bathhouse, to the amazement of the bathhouse attendant, I ordered a separate room, but I also didn’t give a damn what he thought, Katya didn’t resisted - when I pulled off her clothes and threw them into the trash can, I tried not to look at her body, already disfigured by the lifestyle she led: numerous bruises, smudges, painful swelling, sagging skin - no, none of this was important , I rushed downstairs to the bathhouse attendant, without haggling, paid several thousand so that a masseuse and hairdresser were invited to the office where Katya was, gave them the order to steam, wash, comb and bring into at least some divine form the woman who had once... then she made a man out of me, then I ran out into the street in search of a women’s dress store, simultaneously dialing the number of a real estate agency - I urgently ordered today, for any money, a two-room apartment in any area of ​​the city; a few hours later, with bags full of groceries, I was already taking Katya, washed and changed, but aged, decrepit, internally empty, this, alas, there was nothing to patch this up, to a rented apartment; I don’t know what I hoped for, what I wanted, apparently I still had hopes of getting her out of the swamp in which she found herself, finding her a job, or, in the end, just laying down the contents, calling in familiar doctors to cure her, though from some illnesses that could be discerned in her appearance - in short, to bring back to life the one who once brought me to Life; all evening and all night we sat with Katya in a rented apartment, drank tea, I cooked something light vegetable, cooked some porridge, offering her small portions so that the stomach could cope with the new food for it, talked about my life: about everything that happened after our parting, I tried to get her to talk, but in response she just shook her head and said: “fate, Sanya, everyone has their own destiny, and you’re trying in vain now, it won’t do any good, my path has already gone down a long time.” downhill, and you understand, Sanya, it has to be this way - why should it? - I did not let up, and began to enthusiastically draw possible prospects for her future life: after all, teeth can be inserted, legs can be healed, I have money, a sanatorium, a foreign resort or a clinic, then I can buy an apartment, I have connections in large companies “It won’t be difficult to find a well-paid, dust-free job, just live, Katya, just live,” I was so discouraged by what happened that I didn’t even call Rita; naturally, there could no longer be any talk of any kind of relationship with Katya as a woman and, first of all, because I had Rita, but after her Katya was the dearest and closest person, just a person... I remembered and told a lot that night, in the morning, I put her to bed: apparently, it had been a long time since she had to sleep on clean, starched linen in a quiet, comfortable apartment, but I myself, as soon as morning came, rushed to the shops to make numerous purchases for Katya’s new life; when he returned, the door was not locked, Katya was not there, and on the table, on a piece of newspaper paper, a note was scrawled in barely legible handwriting: “thank you, Sanya, I was very touched by your concern, I’m generally happy that you were in my life, all these years you have been with me in my soul, even when I had already sunk to the last line, but don’t try! my dear, my dear Sanya, all your efforts to save me are in vain, my world and my life are out there on the street, goodbye”; I wanted to gnaw the ground and roar like a beluga, I walked around the city again, went into -