In the winter I met Lilia, in Eilat on the Red Sea, snow fell in Jerusalem. It falls not every year, and usually melts in a day or two. I remember it was Saturday, and I wanted to see Lilia, and I went by foot from my Armon ha-Naziv to her Kiryat Ha-Yuvel. It took me less than three hours, it was snowing and raining, and I came to Lilia's place completely soaked. Lilia was afraid of my initiative still welcomed me and gave me dry clothes. Since then, it was not snowing in Jerusalem. Lilia said I took the snow with me when I moved to Ashdod; but it's never snowing in Ashdod.
Americans claim the best bridge in the world is in America; probably; I am not in America, and I'm not the bridge, moreover the best in the world. But still I believe in bridges, not in real bridges located throughout the world, but in metaphysical bridges connecting people and nations. These bridges are not in any country, they are between countries, and you may go on a bridge by reading a foreign book, or talking to a stranger or writing about yourself. I have still my copybooks, and I have more in my head. Moreover, I noticed the current events overwhelm my memories and opinions, but only for a time. There need to be a break from current events.
Current events are not in the news only, recently the army remembered me(probably, me), this time the Israeli army. They have heard about my peaceful inclinations, about the 'Mir' station, and decided to correct this state of affairs. I, Sebastian Shinkman, is to be present 29.02.2012, at 8 A.M., at the Ziporin, or something like that, opposite the Jaffa Gates. I successfully completed the first stage of preparation for the service in unknown to me tikshuv forces, and have to come there to decide if I am eligible for the course. I am Sebastian, that's more or less correct, but am not Shinkman, Sevastianov is my surname, my name is still Maxim, and I'm nearing 47, while the army in Israel claims her victims till 45, I was told. So I left the message ignored, till they grab me, give me the uniform and call me Shinkman, or whatever.
Jewish perfectionism, they aren't content with anything, rain, snow, sun - but, from the other side, they like to ski on Hermon, the mountain on the north of Israel where snow is somewhat more frequent than in Jerusalem, they care for 'fulling' Kinneret, winter rains which 'full' it, they are more content with life than most of the nations ( according to polls), they live longest in the world (if not perish from the hands of terrorists or in a car crash). The life here is among the safest, crime is low, streets are green, every day there are 'improvements'. I wouldn't say about myself 'I'm writing with my own blood', that would be unfair. I get full concern of human rights organizations, if ever I get a bit more tired there is an outcry, if not in Israel, then in Russia or America, trade unions constantly on strike to better living conditions (and mine, in the long run, too), I get (almost) free medical service and supported financially by bituah leumi, national insurance service against which I vituperated, I work two, three days a week and free to do what I choose in the rest of time. I don't protest I wouldn't be admitted to Sohnut, the Jewish Agency for Israel; and really, what link between me and Sohnut? I'm not going to advertise Israel for Jews, Russians, or Americans. One of my mother's friends upon returning from Israel back to Petersburg told her' he felt so good back home' but my mother acclimatized in Israel, she has constant high blood pressure when visiting Petersburg, if she did not emigrate, probably, she were long dead already.
Talking to me, talking to you. I haven't talked much with people but anyone I talked to, was different, so I don't know, of course, if they clone people they would probably be the same though I'm not sure. Be a crowd for yourself. Talk to yourself. I like friends, but I have none. So I have to be a crowd for myself. Books are my crowd.
I mentioned here the novel by Mikhael Bulgakov 'Master and Marguerite' which I adored in my youth. I sometimes recall the scenes from it. Recently, I met in opposition internet paper a citation from the novel, about Judas, how the procurator of Judea Pontius Pilate tried to save Judas but had a premonition he won't succeed in this. As I try everything I read on myself, I tried to determine whether I was this Judas and who was the procurator of Judea and whether I should be killed soon. Earlier, I had an impression the Russian Orthodox Church treats me rather like one of her old, expensive, treasured icons though there is nothing iconic about me, I even was not baptized, moreover, live in Judean state and receive from it money for my sustenance. So I am in a fog about my status concerning Christ-Judas affair.
My mother hates winter in Russia; she says from November to May it's total 'mraz' on the streets, slush, rains, snow which in sea climate of Petersburg quickly becomes slush so you wet your feet, and the day is short. But I like the winter. I accustomed to it on the North, where I served in the army. There, the winter was 10 months a year. When I was young, I skied in the school competing with my classmates. I was the second or the first in the ski races on the big circle around our school and neighborhood. I remember once I came to play for the hockey team. They assigned me a goalkeeper. I remember the older kid to check me threw the bullet from the seven meters distance straight into my forehead. Automatically, I put out my arm and caught the bullet; otherwise I wouldn't be telling you this. We went to ski from the mountains in Kavgolovo, the suburb. There were the trampolines but we did not jump from them. We just descended the slopes, not very high, but enough for me to fall several times on the way down. On Saturdays and Sundays the 'electrichka', the electric suburb train, was crammed with skiers.
Once, when I had just entered my medical college, I bought a ticket to the college 'resort' in the country. There we also skied, and I remember one blonde girl, from our course, making passes at me. I also smiled at her, but I was busy with some other things so soon she made passes to another guy, a bearded (and so he seemed older than me) 'odnokursnik'. They soon made friends, and later married, probably, they are married today. And I also could be married now, but I doubt it.
I've heard the next talk of Zhvanetsky, the leading Russian humorist and ' responsible for the country'. Answering the question whether his irresponsible speeches spurred the emigration in Russia, he said 'these people' thought they would do nothing and be rich and when they found they have to work, they understood they were in the lose. And nobody hasn't come to them at the railway station and did not tell them:'Stay'.
He admitted later he has to answer 'that kind of questions', why he has to answer them. But still he answered.
As for 'these people', I also belong to 'these people'. And if they came to me on the railway station and said ' stay', I would still go my ways and not stay. For me, English and French, and, general, the world, was the way out, I did not want to spend all my life in Petersburg, among the eternal rain. I wanted the sun, I wanted to be 'closer to the source of sound', as I like the Western rock music. Though Lillian told me in America there is no freedom neither, for me the English was the language of freedom.
About job, I worked all these years I'm out of Russia, worked on lowly jobs and also worked to study books, to learn languages, to survive in this country. I don't have anything against work, I did not come here not to work, and I prefer lowly jobs to this high-positioned TV work, when they talk incessantly about rubbish in order to get high pay for that.
Zhvanetsky also admitted he was the best man, and myriads of women want to have a child 'from him'. I thought what the fuck, I'd rather be the worst man, and no woman would want to have a child from me, I prefer not to call me the best, not to fight for the first place, to stay low.
Yesterday, while going home from work in my 'razvozka' ( a company mini-bus getting workers to and from the work), I've heard the 'Shocking Blue' song, the song from 60s, I remembered I don't know why their other song 'never marry the railroad man, he only loves you now and then...' , one girl went from her job with us, she asked me whether the strange signal came from my rucksack, I said no, she asked me where I work, I asked her where she worked, and why there where less girls in the car this time, she said they stayed on job till seven, then she talked on her cell, probably, with her husband.
It's strange and completely absurd if people seek instruction from me. I'm not a teacher, not a coach. For instruction, go to college, go to gurus, go to sports coaches. I'm not ( and never was) a great sportsman or great anybody. I am weak in Christianity, in Judaism, in liberalism, in medicine, in English, in Hebrew, have not any profession, not wise with the money, bad actor ( never studied acting), simply a fool. I just think it's bad practice to use positive or negative feedback. It doesn't work with me. I am against punishments and awards. I don't believe chastising or lauding makes any sense. If they curse me, I don't get better, if they glorify me, I become vain as a festive gummy balloon.
Mikhail Zhvanetsky is a real whale of the Russian Soviet and post-Soviet history. He started in Odessa, he was an engineer, I believe, and worked some time in Odessa port. Then he discovered he had a sense of humor and began to perform as a stand-up( not really stand-up, in Russia there was not a thing like this), first in Odessa, then in Leningrad, then in Moscow. Like Vladimir Vysotsky, he was super-popular in Russia. I remember when I studied in the medical college, one of my 'groupmates', Gogol was his surname (which is very strange because 'literary' names are very rare in Russia and are mainly met in Western literature where Russian characters act), was a fond of Chinese martial arts and Zhvanetsky. He listened to his tapes incessantly (Zhvanetsky was making fun of Soviet realities), that time everybody listened to Zhvanetsky and Vysotsky ( a bard singer, also partly Jew), save me. That is, I listened to Vysotsky, but I did not care for Zhvanetsky. Not that I was pro-Soviet or was not interested in humor but I liked better the English mild humor of Jerome K. Jerome than Jewish Odessa humor of Zhvanetsky.
The snow gives the feeling of tranquility.
Bulgakov was a doctor himself, that's why he made Jesus a doctor, and he talks of medicine often in his works. He likes to paint a medical professor, a professional of the 'old school', he likes to talk of medical equipment, he adores Western, modern, sophisticated one.
I remember the snow in Russia. I titled this story 'Snow In Erushalaim' because this year it had been snow in Jerusalem. I wanted to come there but Lilia is afraid about bituah leumi, that they would come to her home with their check-up, and she worried I wouldn't be able to come back because of the transport. But Lilia did not like the snow this time. Buses did not go, and she felt depressed when I talked to her on the cell. But the snow lasted one day, the next day they already made a snowman and put a carrot into his head for nose. So the Jews are 'saved' this time, the snow was only one day a year. Bad weather continues, but soon it will be summer, and we'll suffer from the hot.
Here one example from my memory. Elena Bonnair, the wife of academician Sakharov, the famous dissident, in one of her last interviews admitted she was reading 'Heck Finn' by Mark Twain. I wonder why she choose this book which we usually read when teenagers.
Peter the First, Petersburg founder (he named it, it is said, not in his honour, but after the apostle, and named it on example of German burgs he visited. Sanct-Peterburkh, I don't know how to render in English this peculiar, early 18 century Russian transcription of the Westernised name of the city, it changed in Russian with time to become simply Peterburg until the WWI, when the Teuton sound of the name became unpatriotic for the city authorities and they gave it the Russian name of Petrograd which name lived for ten years, after the death of Lenin when everybody decided to give this Northern Venice, the jewel of Russia, the name of the great man, the idolized Bolshevist leader, Leningrad) envisioned the world urbanity for this new Russian capital, and he said : 'All flags will be our guests', but Petersburg somehow did not became the world capital. In the Soviet times, with transfer of the capital to Moscow, Leningrad quickly became a provincial town, and now its inhabitants' dream of fulfilling the Peter dream and make Petersburg the super-civilized city. While we with Lilia visited there, Lilia liked very much the timers on the traffic lights indicating how many seconds are left till the changing of light from green to red. Even in our, not so aristocratic district, these timers were present, I never encountered them before, in Russia, in Israel, or in any other place, but probably, it's the latest European fashion. They want to make Petersburg the capital of the world, like New York or London, but this dream is still incomplete.
They recall now perestroika-time movies proving 'every road leads to the Temple' but I remembered the pre-perestroika movie 'Irony of Fate' which was made in seventies and was shown often on the Soviet television in pre-New Year(Christmas?!!) hours. It's about a regular guy who is to be married, he goes with his friends to the 'banya', the public bathhouse, they get drunk there, and he is sent to Leningrad from Moscow instead of his friend.
In the 'Pulkovo', the Leningrad airport, he says to the taxidriver his address, gets to this address, finds his house in the snow storm before the New Year, finds his flat ( the street and the house is identical to his Moscow ones), opens it by his key, and finding no differences with his Moscow apartment, gets to sleep. He is waked up by some strange woman, in the process of the movie the irony of Moscow-Leningrad gets clarified, and they fall in love with each other. Returning, there is snow storm everywhere, and the poetry of Arsenyi Tarkovsky is spoken on the background of this snow storm: 'Don't part with your loved ones, not for an hour, not for a minute, you'll lose your love'. When I think about snow, I remember Tarkovsky and this movie, and this snow universe that happens in Russia every winter, and I wish to come to Russia in winter.
And here, just now there was snowing in Jerusalem, and now it's 30 C, the Arabian rockets fly over Ashdod, and we go out of our apartment to the corridor to listen to the 'boom' five times a day. Neighbors say Russia always supported Arabs, and probably she supports these rocket attacks. What can I do, say to Russia don't support Arabs what do they care? Russia has her own geopolitics, it happened to be opposite to American geopolitics. And we, the Russians in Israel, are between these competitors, waiting to be exterminated.
But what do I care about geopolitics, it's so stupid to link Russian movies and snow to Russian geopolitics, it's like changing Petersburg to Petrograd because it's not patriotic enough. Jews actually do business with Russians despite their support of the Arabs, it's just unpatriotic to say you're Russian in Israel. And America does business with Russia, but somebody put into her head she has to fear Russia and compete with Russia. Russians would actually make a second America out of their country, they are just too lazy for that. They don't see America as an enemy (except Putin, perhaps), they would like to see American movies and listen to American music and drink American drinks but somehow, they get bad news from America and their army opposes America in far-off places.
I don't know if these things are connected but I have one memory from the times when I studied artificial intelligence. Japanese wanted to make super-robots, computers of x-generation, but they choose an AI language PROLOG for their R&D. I met in the American literature very critical articles about this language. Maybe the Japanese troubles with their reactors are of the similar nature? I am in principle against nuclear energetics, for me it looks a bit like PROLOG, hierarchical deductive algorhythmic language. Maybe if Japanese choose LISP, they would be more successful?
My mother gave to Lilia a book to read, 'David Stein, the Translator'. Lilia asked why I don't want to read it too. I said I don't like translators. She said he was not a translator, he knew many languages. I said I don't like monks.
I've been active in American education telling of my misfortunes with the institutions I attended, and in answer to my futile knocking at their doors Harvard added a 'joke'(but it is not a joke, really, it was in full serious) that it would not give post-mortem B.A. to its expelled gay students for I don't know what transgressions. So after being expelled from three universities I continued my series by being killed at Harvard, being gay, and, of course, not being granted my degree, though I'm a dead man (I never was admitted to Harvard). America is very wary about granting me whatever favors, but I don't aspire to her kudos, I don't need a B.A. degree, I have enough trouble trying to earn money to be able to pay for my rented flat. But it seems the stars are against me, my work not only meeting recognition but somehow dangerous to the Israel's security.
India became America, there are 'tiger moms' in India too who specialize in producing Republican, abstaining from red meat, wunderkinds, who would lead India's corporations in the years to come. Indians proved money-greedy, like Chinese and Russians. Lillian, my fount of knowledge about American life, said Indians 'sold' themselves, they forgot their yoga and philosophy, their Himalayas, to become 'white' people. Whiteness, it's strange to think, is so irresistible. Imagine you taste exotic meals in the restaurants, you drive 'Toyota', you travel around the world, and you attend opera. India, the peaceful dirty poorest country, is raising these age-old Roman ambitions, it wants to rule the world too. And Indians grew as nationally intolerant as all others, they state to say jokes about Indians is 'bad taste' but to joke about Russians is OK in America. Petty enmities, competition. Where is Buddha, where is Sri Aurobindo, where is Rabindranat Tagor?
Mike Naumenko had a song about the gurus, where a guru sang 'Kharya Krishny' instead of 'Khare Krishna'. Kharya is something like a 'muzz' in Russian, face of an animal. The teaching of this guru was very much 'adapted' to Russian conditions, like the teaching of Zen Buddhism was in beating up your neighbor to give him the lights.
I once met in the American magazine 'America' a story how aliens put into a cage Earthlings who came to explore their planet. But once Earthlings caught some birds there and put them into the cage too. Then aliens began to try to establish contact with them. The crucial criterion of intelligence is the desire to imprison others so the story went.
Dutch, Danish? They both start with the letter D.
I always mixed up Dutch and Danish in English (but not in Russian because in Russian they, Dutch and Danish, sound quite differently).
Obama called for leadership of America. Russia also wants not to be left behind. So these geopolitical Powers get even more supermanly with each second, and inevitably clash with each other, in Syria, in Olympic games, in atomic race, in arctic shelf, everywhere. The result is known in advance, very sad. But I don't want to be a leader, somebody has to work, you can't have leaders only.
Talking about B, books, I remembered Chukovsky's account of Merezhkovsky. He said his novels are overloaded with things. He has many-pages descriptions of furniture and whenever he writes about something, things are lying there heavily encumbering the narrative. I noticed my mother is all about things, about operating them. She has many boxes in her kitchen, many plates and other utensils, and she is very strict about putting the right stuff into the right place. She and Boris measure regularly their blood pressure using the special apparatus for that, they are interested about the temperature outside, and they regularly watch the evening news. Their life is regulated to very high degree.
Boris is an engineer by profession, and he likes to collect electronic, technical, and computer things (he finds them in the garbage where Israelis throw their unwanted stuff). My mother, from her side, hates 'the iron', and regularly makes Boris throw some of the 'garbage' away. Boris likes systems, and he likes politics which he finds over the internet, tv, and radio. Their system, my mother's and Boris', is fraught with conflicts, but they manage already 47 years together, approximately the time I was born (my father acquainted my mother with Boris, his school friend, soon afterwards they divorced, my father continuing to live in the Extreme North where he got enormous pay for being a doctor, and my mother continuing to live in their common apartment(bought for the 'northern' money and abandoned by my father when they divorced) with me and Boris regularly visiting (he had a one-room apartment of his own in Pushkin, near Petersburg until a young wife whom he married shortly to divorce, has appropriated a half of it, also divorcing him and then, after the driving accident with the 'bandits' whose car he scratched on his old 'Zhiguli' , the other half of the flat went away in payment).
On the 9th channel they announced the movie 'Artist' was nominated for 'Oscar', and said one of its heroes was a wonder-dog, a dog-actor. Boris found out about this dog and shown some pictures to my mother who loves animals especially dogs. Then Boris downloaded the movie 'Artist' and asked me to translate it. During the translation, he expressed disappointment the dog played such insignificant role in the movie (she belonged to the main hero and accompanied him everywhere). Still, at one point she saved the hero's life. But I'd like to talk about this movie which I did not like so much. The idea was that a silent movie actor was laid out of job when talking movies appeared and began to drink and getting an underdog until a heroine who loved him found ('Mentos') a solution to star together with him in dancing shows. The movie metaphor, its getting a voice after being silent, somehow resonates with me. Maybe I was a silent actor myself (I never talked much only to myself) and now I began to express myself in writing (which doesn't somehow find a special favor and I would rather be silenced, for the general satisfaction). The difference (if we forget about the dog) is the artist in the movie could not make himself talk while I'm talking all right. And drink in the movie is a symbol of a fall, while I don't attach such significance to my own drinking (which I would not like to glorify and advertise, from the other side, and say to drinking I owe my independence). And the sign of the artist's final success in the movie is the satisfaction of the producer who approvingly smiles at the dancing pair. While I'm not seeking a satisfaction of this kind, and in my media, I don't need an approval of people like this producer (you can say a publisher would not publish me but nowadays I type and at the same time get published, without any publisher). If things are done so in America (and elsewhere) as in this movie, then I'll fail in America (and elsewhere).
Brothers Strugatsky whose hero (Maxim Kammerer) I partly hypothesized as a possible link to my early history were optimistic Communists in the beginning. In the mid of 60s they came up with an utopian novel titled 'Noon, 22nd Century' where they drew an ideal picture of the communist humankind united under the one government technologically expanding to the other worlds. With the years, their optimism waned. Something was wrong, with the communism or technology, but in their imaginary Earth of 23 century the Earth is ridden with deep conflicts and eventually most of the population is left behind save a few select chosen ones who join the superhuman civilization. They weren't the only ones who disappointed in technology. Heidegger, the German philosopher, also disbelieved technology. Though, he expressed it in virtually impossible to understand verbal constructions.
In the West, the slogan 'Back to Nature!' was invented by Rousseau. But I don't like Rousseau, I don't like his Nature. The word 'nature', like the word 'freedom', has become overloaded and given multiple contradictory meanings. How you get 'natural' in the contemporary world, moreover in Israel, where Culture for thousands of years tried to subdue Nature, Nature is seen as evil, beastly, to be conquered; 'natural' means something nasty in slang English. And 'natural products' sold here and elsewhere, are actually very 'unnatural'. I want to be simple, but not a simpleton, not 'simplified' anything. 'Simplified' means stupid. Simplicity is not stupidity. But naturalness is seen in the art, when they say about a masterpiece, that it is natural, artless, meaning it's not seen as artificial. This is more like the nature I pursue.
They cut me off the internet, and I have privilege to watch a TV program Boris is watching (while my mother sleeps) about the Soviet censure how they kept socialist realism, put to prison dissidents and did not publish non-Orthodox works. But I thought Internet was not subject to the Soviet censure, in the year 2012.
I was incriminated with two-facedness (a cat with two faces). Actually, I have many faces, as Linda Goodman put it in her Cancer article, Cancers can represent a thousand of people, as the Moon's phases change. But essentially, it's the same person.
'LA Times' on psy - doesn't exist. Three social psychologists for the whole day checked it out - it doesn't work. The theory of probability and no-miracles science triumphs, only 'Nescafe', the instant coffee company, does wonders (nes is 'wonder' in Hebrew, I don't know if the company is Israeli).
Strange, America is such a superpower, it spends trillions of dollars for its defense, it has drones, intelligent bombs, superplanes, satellites,etc and it goes from debacle to debacle fighting underdeveloped poor countries in its 20 century history. It seems these 'barbars' are stronger than Germans whom it overcome together with the Soviet Union in the WWII ( main human force and main battles were on the 'Eastern front', Americans came to Europe when the war was 'decided' in Russia's favor and there arose a danger of her taking the whole Europe as a war prize). In the 60s and 70s it was Vietnam, in the 2000s it was Iraq and Afganistan, now it's going to be Iran. American force defeated the Iraqi army in the first day of fights, but it took Americans 10 years of fighting to realize futility of it and to decide to withdraw.
Vladimir Kozlovsky on RTVi, avowed 'militarist', has made his calculations and decided 'it was not worth to fight in Afganistan'. But I'm sure he will continue his comments from the New York studio urging people to fight Iran. I recently read an article in the 'NY Times' about 'the other 1 per cent', namely, the American military who has to follow the orders of politicians and face it out in the desert or mountains, among hostile population. They all have 'psychological traumas', they commit suicide three times more frequently than the rest, they don't believe in the worth of wars they're fighting. And I'm sure with Iran it will be the same story as with Vietnam, Iraq and Afganistan, with the difference that Iran is a rich oil populous country with a strong militarist flavor and access to modern technologies, and the outcome of this war might be even more catastrophic, for Americans, and the rest of the world.