"I'm a fool! A fool! A fool and a vile gelding!" I shouted at the entire stadium. I'm the country's all-time Greco-Roman wrestling champion on the internet.Little Red Riding Hood once went to visit her grandmother in the woods, grabbing some liver pies as a treat. So she's walking along the path, and as usual, the Big Bad Wolf comes out to meet her. The Big Bad Wolf was so gray in every sense of the word, and Little Red Riding Hood so red, that there was no way to avoid a collision.
(from A Brief History of World War II)
"I'm a fool! A fool! A fool and a vile gelding!" I shouted at the entire stadium. I'm the country's all-time Greco-Roman wrestling champion on the internet.
How I screamed! How I hit myself in the chest with my short, but massive, beef-like shank of a hand! Such grief...
- Idiot! He should have broken his back, but I dislocated my toes! Do you hear me? My toe! Fr-r-r-r, and my toe snapped. Ah...
The one whose back I should have broken instead of his toes—a skinny black man from the Congo—smiled shyly and, his white enamel flashing, muttered something about the friendship of peoples. His babbling in Babinga-Bakwe spoke of peace and friendship, damn it all! After all, he was clearly implying the very imminent triumph of the black race over the white race and, of course, over all the rest, the yellow races. Well, you can't do that, you can't be jealous of everyone and everything in the female pack!
How wrong I was! I'm still wrong. Brothers rabbits and sisters hares—I'm wrong. After all, I didn't have the heart... Although, I don't have it now—no, to be right. I'm lonely, and not all of me has dried out yet. I don't have... But I don't have anything else either.
"And in the morning it snowed..."—well, that's not true, I wasn't the only one mistaken—the snow fell behind the mountain range, and I had the sun. The few clouds brought neither rain nor hail. And that made evening all the more terrifying: the sun hung at its zenith, its glassy rays only occasionally trembling and swaying slightly. I closed my eyes, but I couldn't help but see that sun. And only then did I realize that I had died long ago, that there was no glassy sun around me—only darkness, and only the sparks of moments blazing in the disintegrating segments of my brain. It was true, that notorious God...
- Here, take this Golden Ring, sell it and you'll have enough for now.
- You think I'm Alphonse? I'd rather die.
- Don't be silly. There's nothing wrong with that. It's just friendship, after all, can a friend help a friend? A friend should help, that's what a friend is. Who else?..
- There can't be friendship between us. Between a man and a woman, there can be no friendship at all without love...
- But why?
- Either love or nothing. If not this, then neither is this. Without love, there is nothing, not only between a man and a woman, but also between anyone. Do you love me?
- No... But...
- Then no. Then there's an abyss between us, a distance, a boundary!
- Well, as you wish...
All people spend their entire lives searching for self-justification for the meaninglessness of their existence, or idleness, or fear, or, or, or (no, probably not all – speaking for everyone would be too presumptuous. Most, or ALL).
I found one of the most remarkable self-justifications for myself – “I’m a poet. A writer.” An avant-garde poet, an unrecognized writer of “smart” novels. The fact that I’m not recognized doesn’t at all indicate the presence or degree of my talent. Do I work? Yes, I work. Are my works not in demand? Well then... It’s not my fault. I can write, but I don’t know how to push through. And that’s perfectly natural. But many see this as my excuse. The excuse is different.
Anyone can write, but only a few realize that it’s the best, the very best excuse not to struggle. An excuse not to pick up a shovel and build LIFE. This excuse is creativity. This is just one of the few excuses that encompasses all the causes of failure, but, contrary to the consequences, doesn't lead to a dead body. This excuse is the cause itself.
I have nothing in my life that brings me happiness. No joy, beauty, love, kisses, family, children, health, etc. Why is this not there? Consider all the reasons that gave me such a brilliant excuse. But you won't have enough time...
Another, with different excuses, struggles all his life; he works 12 hours a day to feed his family, watches his every word and gesture so as not to scare away, but to attract as many little girls as possible to his flame; another jogs in the mornings... to avoid getting sick, and is treated by famous doctors – if he is already ill.
I don't need all this. Why? I am a Poet.
You are a poet, which means you haven't lived your life in vain. Even if you never wrote anything, even if your life turned out to be very short. Even if in these few years you've seen only bad things...
Then they say to me—who?—it doesn't matter—they say: "We need to change something, we need to move forward somehow, we need..." What do they mean? This: eliminating the reasons that gave birth to the poet in me.
These reasons are Life.
So, is this the end?
©Mikhail Dmitrienko, Alma-Ata
1994
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