The Dialogs
To my teachers, the Kiev’s University Linguistics Department Professors Tatiana Evgenievna and Natalia Borisovna. To my family. To my friends and all I was blessed to know and talk with.
It was business from the very beginning in 2014, and I’ve dropped all personal as much as it was possible. It’s all about and for the one I’ve never seen or heard, or always seen and heard in all I talked with. It’s more this one than me, whose supposed initials gave me the letters to sign my ‘wordings’, which accidentally got the meaning if typed in Russian, МЫ, us.
It started with a question ‘do you know how the piano was invented?’ I ventured ‘someone dropped a harp and had his Eureka?’ Word after word, I answered ‘try me’ to that ‘epitome of challenge’ and was offered a piece in Hindi to “translate”. Being a translator by education, I took the task and with the Google Translator and other unfathomable help and means, for I’ve never known no Hindi, I had done what I could…That piece triggered the rest, a chain of talks and encounters, or the beads of jams rather. I’ve written them down as verses and short stories, thoughts and questions. What I was, a sheep, a flute, paper or a pen or any other tool? I don’t really know.
My birthday gift to my son. He turned 32.
12.10.2024, Moscow
Acceptance.
The pond is strewn with stones. Some boy just got overexcited with the process of contemplating waves he deemed to be the sole Creator…
Alas, there is no pond, no more, but water found her way with grace: in tinkling rivulets, went up, turned into clouds, came back as rains, joined seas, and oceans, no hurts and no regrets…
***
We ever are on different shores and never plunge. It’s always about reasons…
What are we to each other? “Lesson vs blessing”, some books of exercises, or coaching dolls, afraid of getting soaked… whatever.
Someday I’ll turn myself into a river, into a calm, and slow one with lots of curves and turns. Oh, let me mirror beauty of the Earth, blue sky, and birds, and clouds of all colors, and stars at night. I’d breed some mermaids in my depth.
Let me behold your face… My wish is to reflect your whole life, your friends, and family. And laughter of your kids, I wish, would ring between my banks. Just promise, you’ll come often, I want to see your smile.
***
November fogs… they come and shawl all nooks and crannies of the Earth.
Her face gets white and smooth; she looks as if she was just born.
Sometimes I wish they'd shroud all those bloody wars, all tears and fears, all ugly and polluting structures and machines, and midday winds would wipe it all without a tiny trace.
Sometimes I crave those winds would carry me away wrapped tightly in that foggy shroud with all my silly, childish dreams and hopes…
Please, let me this weak-kneed confession.
***
Лицемерие… Hypocrisy in Russian sounds like changing faces, or trying them on, like masks.
***
Three Parkas mastered their task through eras. One weaves, the other measures, and the last one cuts the thread of life. Their work is pure improvisation, no attachments. One eye for all of them sees closely to it.
The thread, the matter of your time is in your hands from birth. What will you do with it? Knots to remember, or a shroud for your grave, clothes for your children, bright and safe, a shawl to put on the shoulders of your mother, or gifts for your beloved, and friends? Or a canvas to paint the world you dream about and use all colors…
***
It happened on a train. We never even talked. We were just looking into each other eyes all night which seemed to last for ever. We were so young…
Our ways just touched and ran in different directions. We knew we’d never meet again, and never would be able to forget each other.
And maybe then I chose to dwell here often, on my little station, just seeing off and meeting trains.
My friends and my beloved would come, bring new ideas, trends.
Sometimes I wouldn’t recognize their faces, but with a cup of coffee and a talk I’d find that they are same, the way I loved them once. And they would always leave.
Well… here I am, enjoying silence, contemplating new thoughts, and concepts I was left with. I’d send my thoughts into the sky amazed at how they fly, how play with winds and draw sophisticated patterns around the Sun, or Moon at night. I swear that nothing could distract me from being awed by the process, all seasons are my friends, all weather, or conditions, even pain. And now pondering on thoughts which I unwrapped once as your gifts… yours are the first I can set free. I will remember how they soar.
***
What should be taught at schools?
We are the fields where all wars start. We’re stuffed with definitions of what is good and evil weaved tightly into nets of morals, ethics, politics, religion.
But what is evil here turns into good across the country border, sometimes across the fence of our neighbors.
We grow up appreciating our borders, not our differences though.
***
I wonder how we will sound at our premiere…
For now, I guess, it’s still a dress-rehearsal dragging on and on. We've got transfixed with polishing our parts, not listening to our neighbors…
Will we be ever ready to the words announcing our opening night, all soffits turning slowly to our conductor?
We’ve just forgotten in his hands we will be confident and safe…
***
Here on the floor next to my sleepy cat which won’t be stirred by words spirituality, philosophy or art, reality unfolds to all his senses without editing or censorship, my eyes against the 3yo mark made by my father on the doorpost…
It’s not a place of happy choice, indeed. Yet, it might be the closest to the level of unmarred perception of childhood, where I can hear the silence and recall what was forgotten long ago, forgive, let go, cry over, and accept, jump to my feet again and run to share with the whole world my heart and soul!
***
Sometimes you have to live for half of a century to realize the things you’ve lived for years with: NOWHERE IS EVERYWHERE, NOWHERE MEANS EVERYWHERE!, and fall in awe of such simplicity and beauty, and feel so thankful.
***
Some authors choose to deMONSTRate the others.
Well, work is paid, booked, filmed, staged, Pulitzered and Oscared.
We’d better deMONSTRate ourselves.
This process is quiet, far from entertaining.
But the results! Might add to positive statistics.
***
It’s such a pleasure travelling without luggage! Our “here and now” are so ephemeral possessions… The moment we forgot it, we’ve lost the art of flying.
Jailed by weak bodies, chained with thoughts, surrendered to our hearts, we are left here with a gift of our ever flying, dreaming, and creative souls, birds singing in a cage. And look at some of our creations, listen to our songs… Are not them beautiful?
***
How do you know, that all those shades of winter grey are melted by the Sun alone? Can you be sure, that birds can’t hear us talking to our kids, “Soon very soon my boy they will be back! Soon… swallows will be graffitiing the skies and nightingales accompanying our dreams with their soothing songs in May”?
And maybe rivers, and forests are longing for our laughter, and fields are eager to ripen their crops for harvesters?
Who knows what turns this world around, who knows?
I don’t, I’m simply contemplating…
***
– Please, tell me, river, you are not the same you were an hour ago?
– Says who?
– Says everyone for ages!
– It doesn’t matter seems, how many times you say same words, they won’t be a truth. I feel as young as born today and hope we don’t discuss my age here. So, what about you?
– Don’t know yet…
***
To make a painful choice and deal with a consequence, which never fails to follow. Stay face-guard down, or go with the flow, with somebody’s advice, for shelter?
Remember Amazons? Those used to mutilate right breasts to be the best at aiming.
Hard choice or just the only way to go?
***
My answer used to look like turning of my head, brisk talk over my shoulder while walking, light on foot.
And now… it looks like a maneuver as elegant as that of an aircraft carrier, the time of turning reasonably used to load an answer.
***
Those moments when daylight is spreading wings still young and weak, unsure of own powers, yet making light of streetlamps just… excessive.
And in the evening, fading into twilight, it kindles golden spheres to life again along with windows, candles, hearths of our dwellings.
I love them all and wonder with a cup of coffee in the morning, if that is just routine of working shifts to them, or still the meeting they are looking for?
No need to know for sure, though… Let stories of tomorrow be slightly new again.
***
I wish I knew a lullaby to soothe all hearts deprived.
I wish a mere candle light could warm them all at night.
I wish we felt how sunlight melts all our fears.
I wish we knew that wind with time will dry all our tears.
I wish we could believe in power of simple words,
And had the faith that we can live without wars.