Rabelais is more important for me than any sms. Old 'paper' dictionaries, used, also are good. I read Rabelais in a book sent to me from America, published in 1920s, translated from French into French, I mean French of 1920s. I to cut the pages with a knife, like Pushkin did in 1820s.
I don't know if Rabelais is 'banned' in America, or in France, but I couldn't find him in French in the Old Books shop on Shatz street, in Jerusalem. I found him in English, but it is much worse, not to compare with the original.
My Word 's got broken. My switching between Russian and English is no good for him (or her). But I solved this problem. I copied the file, pasted it into the new file, and continued my travail. It seems to me Bill Gates is jealously watching how I use his software, and he cannot stand my speeches, probably, it's not Bill Gates himself, just low-level security, though how writing about Rabelais can undermine someone's security, I don't understand.
Not all Petersburgers travel by SwissAir or their personal ' Peugeot' developed specially for them ( Russian roads, not yet developed for Peterburgers), these 'Peugeot' being very Praktisch und Gut(or, like me, using 'Endeavor'). Once, in Petersburg I got into a crammed bus with a conductor. I was crammed there, my knapsack being trod upon, politely fulfilling everyone's requests about checking the electronic card with a checker, when people began to leave the bus, the conductor said to me: "Freedom! Put your knapsack a bit higher." She said people are given freedom and people don't know yet how to use it, and invited me to come again .
For four years I get up , drink my coffee, and sit at my computer to write whatever comes into my head. They said I don't have anyone to speak to, so I write. That's true. Though, in my childhood I dreamt to become a writer. In Russia, there were colleges incubating new writers, I don't know if they are alive now, but I don't believe in this. A writer must have a different school.
Lilia likes to raise her head upwards and count how many floors are in high buildings. Now they are building twin towers in Ashdod , 50 floors or something, and Ashdod would get higher than Petersburg (the main ambition of the contemporary Russian youth, in words of Basilashwili, the Petersburg actor, is to get on roof of the highest skyscraper in New York to spit on pedestrians).
I don't aspire to skyscrapers. CocaCola zero, I see my life in quiet, uniting with Nature.
Historical life of Israel was in Jerusalem, 'in mountains', though these mountains are not that high. But historical Judees did not spend their vacation on a sea resort, they did not like to sunbathe. And even nowadays, I watch religious Jews come to the beach, all the family, father, mother, and many small children, equipped in full clothing, man in the suit, and sit by the sea, never getting naked, never to dip in the water.
But I like Jerusalem mountains. They are seen almost from the coast, when you go by bus there, you see bluish ridge on the horizon. When you go from Jerusalem, the bus drives for a twenty mountains, twisting and turning, on the serpentine road among green hills.
'School's out for summer, school's out forever!' I hate school, but I like to study.
Сhildren in West are much more mature than they were in the Soviet Union. They know the value of money, they learn to earn, even small sums, from the early age. Though Lilia complained her children grew up as 'old people' in Israel, when they got here, at age 2(or 3) and 6.
I use 'the machine' to download 'Rage Against The Machine', paradoxically.
I've read an Abook on history, and its authors explained the causes for the WWI by 'unimaginative' behavior of the politicians.
Сlimatology is the nost political of all sciences. Its data are objective but screwed according to political bias of scientists. Lately, I've read the level of water in the World Ocean has risen 1 foot in the last 100 years. It was measured in New York region but everywhere it's the same which fact some seem not to understand. The temperature has risen 13 degrees Fahrenheit in 100 years, the last seven years of 10 are the hottest in history of measurements. The temperature rises in the U.S. two times quicker than on the whole planet.
Ancient Persian wisdom: Fools like to fight, wise men seek peace.
Hollywood frightens people with its thrillers. We with Lilia stayed a weekend at her friends in Jerusalem. The friends( a couple) went to sea that time.Upon arrival back, Lena switched on the computer immediately, found an American movie with Russian translation, and they began watching another catastrophe wiping out the humankind, on a new TV, with a gigantic screen. I couldn't get asleep.
Andy Worhl, with recorded IQ of 86, sold pictures for tens of million dollars. What does it mean? You must be a Down to succeed?
America bought goods for 59 billion dollars in the Black Friday, or Wacky Wednesday, or how they call it. Are they short of goods, are they not enough of them? I don't understand the sense of this economics, to produce to buy to throw away to increase the temperature of the Earth.
I woke up at 4 a.m. Drank coffee in the kitchen, looked in my window and saw yellow-orange full, immense, super-Moon, with black spots on her, descended into the black-blue sea, the color of the sky.
Jews fought nature throughout the course of their history. But nature takes revenge on Jews( like on Americans, take Sandie storm for example).
Over a million of the French write novels. Is it possible to read a million books?
Lena Bonnair, the widow of Academician Sakharov, the famed dissident, began to read 'Heckleberry Finn' shortly before her death. I don't know if she finished. I myself read it in my childhood(like her and many other Russians), and tried to read it recently, in English.
Jewish professors milk the Jewish cows. The Jewish cows are champions, but I like milk in Russia better.
Lillian said war is more honest. She thought Democrats would destroy America. She said I do you nasty things you present me flowers in turn.
I met a requirement, a goal for a student of English, in one manual that you must learn 'to make yourself understood'. To understand Englishmen is not so important as that Englishmen understood you ( terrorist? spy? rich man?)
Lillian had kept an unwieldy folder for her 'papers', documents, magazines and newspaper clips, her poetry, bills, what not. There were about two hundred plastic 'departments' in it. I helped her to sort all this out. This folder was like a coffin - whatever got there never came out, I never saw her looking at it. Once I lost a small empty plastic folder. Lillian scolded me for a long time for this, and I had to buy her a new one.
I don't know if anywhere there left traces of Lillian, her poetry, etc. I looked up her name in the net, and found just two mentions, her working history and a scandal about her social apartment in New York. Next time I looked up, in a three years time lapse, there was just one mention, nothing of her books, of her life, and I doubt poetry is present in her working history.
I've got no talents anything I could boast on television (and I never would appear on television, I'm allergic to watching it not to say of starring in it). I inherited a literary skill from my father, and 'a literacy', the ability to write without grammar errors(in Russian, not in English, I once asked one Finnish girl how to write the word 'consciousness' in English - she correctly wrote it which surprised me because I had big problems with this word) from my mother. My father wrote long letters to my mother while they still studied in the Pavlov medical institute, and she still keeps these letters, they are really very funny, humoristic and stylish. I can write, but I would probably learn it when I'm 80 like Hokusai spoke.
The Academician Likhachev said the Russian literature is the most ancient in Europe. It's doubtful. The Russian literature has started in 9-10 centuries A.D., while in the West there were some things in 7 or 8. The West has never lost its touch with the antiquity, while Russia almost had had not contact with it (truly, from the 18 century). So Russia is young compared to the West, and it's unique in the West as a some kind of historic experiment (Galapagos archipelago and Darwin come to mind, but it's not so hermetic as in Galapagos where several tens of birds' species developed independently of the evolution of the rest of the world which fact young Darwin noticed while travelling round the world on the 'Beagle' ship). Russia is young and not exhausted yet, not fixed up.
'The Tale of Years of Time' is the first Russian chronicle. The dating is strange, 'Year 6367. Varyags from over the sea took tribute from Chud, and Slavs, and Vyatich, a silver coin and a squirrel from a house.'
The French chronicles, Iohann Froissart : 'Les grans merveilles et les beaux faits d'armes advenus par les grans guerres de France et d'Angleterre'.
My chronicle is not by years, just what I remember from my life, current events mixed with childhood memories switching to my college years.
I don't agree with Academician Likhachev in one more question. He says Russian intelligentsia must be European educated. But he is anti-Asiatic, he thinks the level of civilization gradually decreases with moving to the East. He is not impressed by the ancient Chinese culture, by the infinite spiritual riches of India.
I feel myself convict when I watch television.
I remember how I went to my job in Hamburg in U-Bahn. The train went over the earth, there were dilapidated , ugly buildings by the side, it was late autumn, November but it felt like September in Petersburg, the yellow and red trees, people in metro looking not very happy, worried. I miss autumn and winter in Israel, though Israeli winter I also like.
Dina Rubina, the Russian voice of Israel, wrote a book named ' The Petrushka Disease' ( 'petrushka' is parsley, the green vegetable added to many meat dishes, also a name in Russia, and an analogue of the French guignol, Stravinsky wrote an opera named 'Petrushka'). I did not read the book, but evidently, I have this disease as many others. The Chief Sanitary Doctor of Russia banned parsley because 'there are narcotic substances in it'. But I don't believe it. Strange, millions of toxicomans in Russia take hard stuff, and many are dying from it, and parsley got into the black list. If you're going to die, it would be not parsley who kills you. I myself don't take drugs and don't feel like it. Beer, cigarettes, and parsley are enough for me.
I'm not going to set order in Israel. It's impossible. Everybody here is possessed with the idea of order, but order eludes Israelites.
I'm not Max Gorky, 'the revolutionary poet'. 'Gorky' means 'sour' in Russian. Not that I'm so sweet. But I'm not sour, though sour comes often. But I'm not making a career on sour.
I don't care about college decision, I have not applied to any college. I don't believe in life as school. Too much work or study, you can't even have sex.
There appeared ' Chronicles of the Tsar Nicolas the Premier' in France.
I was garbage, I was thrown to garbage, then I worked for two days and a half on a garbage machine. I worked for a half of the day on my third day, then I missed my machine. I went too far forward, and the machine simple drove away. It was in another small town, I went about the town looking for my machine, it was nowhere found, and I caught a lift on a truck and arrived back home. I was never paid for this garbage job. The boss promised to pay, but never paid. I said to myself this is an experience, and it's helpful for weight control. I walked by feet about 30 kilometres each day, and my weight figures went sharply to the good( I'm not that fat American struggling all his life futilely with the extra weight, but I feel better if I'm losing kilograms).
Yesterday, we, Lilia and I, went for a walk to the street going along the sea, and watched the new houses being constructed . We like to enjoy the architecture, walking in the district of villas, we 'try them on', see which villa we like and which is ugly. The new houses in Ashdod, like the old, are beautiful and not so beautiful. But they are extremely expensive. I was denied recently a social housing so this my occupation of enjoying architecture is rather platonic.
I've read somewhere Larousse 'Histoire du monde' falsifies history. I couldn't read Larousse itself, I couldn't find it in the net. I found 3 volumes of UNESCO 'Histoire du monde'. Concerning the Russian Mongol-Tartar 'yoke' which is central to Russian ancient history, the national shame and cause of Russian 'retardation', UNESCO( to be more concrete, some Third World historian) writes briefly 'it made possible the traffic of goods and services in Eurasia.' It doesn't write the third of Russians were killed or sold to slavery, it illustrates history from 'another' angle, the angle of Tartars.
But Larousse is biased to the other side. It takes biblical story as a real history, the Bible is the source of the history of Egypt and the rest of the Middle East.
I was exposed to American propaganda since my early childhood. Somehow, several tens of "America" magazine issues of the end of 60s and beginning of 70s found their way to our Leningrad three-room apartment on the Science street. I've learned many interesting things from it, and even used this magazine as a source for my 'political informations' which I was assigned to present before my class in the beginning of 80s( which were listened to by my classmates with deadpan faces, they were not impressed by my 'rosy', 'objective' presentations, moreover, their main interest was math and soccer, the class team where I was not admitted by my class teacher and the captain). We 'd had a picture from it stuck to the side of the cupboard in our minimalist kitchen ( which had a size of 4 or 5 metres, where we managed to eat and spent there much time talking). The picture was a 'nature morte' of American food, fast and slow, with a great packet of potato chips, my favorite food. They were a 'deficit' in Russia, and I ate them on rare occasions.
Russians and Americans have a huge difference in interpersonal distance. Russians got used to 'communalki', the big apartments where ten or something families lived, each in their room, sometimes 5 or 6 people in one room. Russians 'like' to gather in big companies, squeezed like sardines in a can. I preferred the American distance of 4 feet on which an average American talks to another average American. I've heard the space in American 'Apollo' is 6 times bigger than the Soviet 'Soyuz'.
But, of course, Russians have their advantages.
Our class soccer team captain, Volodya Shatkovsky( I, probably, am disclosing a military secret, mentioning his name, for he may have big problems after that and I will be called a traitor, nobody cares about my own person taking for granted I am a dead man anyway, and mythical, that is I am purely virtual and don't exist, and any slightest hint on my physical, moral, or any other existence is prohibited and punished according to law, in countries of the Eastern bloc, as well as in the 'free world'), had some conscience of Western rock music, and I remember his mentioning a 'Beatles' song about 'Maxwell'. I don't know if he meant me, or any of the other two Maxes in our class. He also talked about just released 'The Wall' of 'The Pink Floyd', specifically about the school part of it - 'We don't need no education', which for our elite math high school soviet minds sounded rather strange, we had a quite different relationship to our teachers and physical punishment was unthinkable in our school(like in any other school), and we thought of continuing our education, not quitting it. We did not consider ourselves 'bricks in the Wall' and this album was quite foreign to us, and I really got to listen to it only years after I served in the army.
Later, he became a commercial ship officer, a mariner. I don't know what he is up to just now.
Larousse history falsified, UNESCO history doesn't notice Russian hundred-year humiliation and disaster thinking of it in positive terms, the Soviet-made General History is also not satisfactory( vulgar sociologism, interpretation of all world events from the Marxist class struggle point). Walking through Jerusalem I found some more books in English on a Rosy Hill just lying on the pavement waiting for me to pick them up. It was an American history of civilization, in 2 volumes, and also American-written history of Britain, since 1830 to 'our days', that is to the beginning of 90s. But I did not like them neither. Writing about Ancient Greece, the American historian briskly run through all Greek dramas and art, and philosophy, and literature, and religion, in 50 pages. Probably, it's all ruins, like Parthenon, and 50 pages for Greece are enough for Americans spanning the world civilizations, but for me it was not enough. Concerning Britain, it was more serious, but also was centered around the British Parliament, highlighting mainly the struggle between British parties and their slogans and real measures.
I am not a historian, I am not writing a historical work. But history interests me, I am reading books on history while writing my own history( not to determine my own place in History, just personal archeology goes well with reading books on history).
'I am Tom, I like to Type, do you like That?' Laptops are for wimps, they say. Probably, I am a wimp, I like to type, and the world grudgingly listens though would rather have me grown adult or grow sane, change identity, disappear somewhere( a ghost story that lacks ending, they want an ending, they don't like me appropriating the English language, using All-American superhighway, coast to coast, for spying on American technology and intentions for Russians and probably Chinese)
Lately, they wrote why we are so unhappy? I am evidently the person called to make them happy. Undergoing psychiatric treatment, I should have some notion about happiness and unhappiness, and be a shrink. That's 'intuitive', not 'counterintuitive'. They've made me unhappy, I in return should make them happy. That's intuitive-counterintuitive logic, I don't know(and they the less) which is which, am I a patient or a doctor?
Ashdod is the Russian capital of Israel, along with Rishon Le Zion, 'Russian le Zion'. The northern entrance to the city, Palm trees, nice lawns, tidy pedestrian paths, and the big graffity on the wall: '666 Vika Levina Is A Bitch'(in Russian, of course).
One of greatest memories that I have is about fishing in Estonia, on Chudskoe Lake. Present meets the past, last year I went fishing in Finland but it was nothing compared to my childhood fishing, and the fishing rod I rented for 10 euros, got broken in my hands.
Though I've read a book on " L'Universalite de la langue francaise", I don't think one distinct language might be universal. Everybody speaks his own language, and wants everybody else to speak this language, 'his' or 'her language', though I've met polyglots and read about people speaking five, seven, thirty languages, most of the people cannot master a single, 'mother-tongue' language in their lives.
I don't ape humanists of the Renaissance encyclopedic in their scope. It's impossible to know all. But I am not aspiring to specialization,' a specialist is similar to a bloated tooth.' I don't confine myself to Humanities or Exact Sciences, or Medicine.
One sailor whom my mother treated on tuberculosis presented me several LPs. One of them was 'Love' album of 'The Cult'. Strange occupation for a medical student to listen to 'The Cult'.
He also presented me Phil Collins where there is an air 'In The Air Tonight', 'Excursions Beyond'. Here, I listened many times to 'In The Air Tonight' on the radio. But they never play Russian groups as if they don't exist.
I was in Peter and Paul Fortress before, many times. It occupies the whole little island on Neva River, right in the centre of Petersburg. From this fortress Peter I founded the city in 1703 and made it the Russian capital. The high spire of the cathedral is seen from afar, and on the opposite side of Neva is the Winter Palace, the Tsar's home, now Hermitage, the art museum, and millions of tourists can see the fortress out of its windows.
In the end of 1987 our group with the 'parallel' group(there were about ten students in each) came to a party to one of apartments in an old house in Peter and Paul Fortress. I liked the place and decided to live there and work as a janitor. There students from other places, not Petersburg, lived and worked, it was a hostel. I lived there for three weeks, swept the streets in the fortress, cleaned the pavements from snow, then I was dismissed and thrown out of the fortress. But I continued to visit the place, there was a company there, and many people came to the fortress to drink with students-janitors(even movie directors).
Father of Katya was a programmer, her mother worked in some experimental medical institute. They lived in a tiny two-room apartment on Sapyorny pereulok(the small street) , not far from Lyteynyi avenue, in the central district, where my family lived for many years before moving to the new district, to the north-east of the city. Her father was a bald, bearded lover of books. I found in his library an old, pre-Revolutionary volume of Russian religious philosopher Soloviev, and tried to read him. Her mother was a thin, nervous, bird-like Jewess. We had had a talk with him(me and her father) about Nobel laureates on literature. I was not so proficient in this topic then, I knew about eight of them, and read even less. But he knew over 50, and was very proud of it. Her parents very quickly understood I was not a suitable husband for Katya, and did a honest job of dissuading her from relations to me. But for the time being, we were in love, and were having our honeymoon.
I had just finished my second year of the medical, she'd graduated from Polytech. It was summer, and I temporarily was without occupation, just my love. We went to the beach; we went to a Neva's bank, near the Finnish Bay. We celebrated my birthday. The first and the last time in my life I was in the restaurant of 'Europe' hotel. Once I took her to Krepost, and we made love on the second floor of the apartment mounting wooden stairways leading to a small place where two lovers nevertheless could make their business. I remember she was worried for the first time about getting pregnant after that, and I bought condoms and tried to use them, but I had no experience with that, and the condom got torn, and I never tried to put it on again.
Then, strangely, we parted. She was to go to Crimea, to a camp, and I had to stay in city for my medical practice, it was a scheme of her parents, no doubt, I could send my practice to hell and go with her but this thought occurred to me when it was too late. She sent me three despaired telegrams begging for me to come, and I already was about to come to Crimea when she sent another telegram saying she's returning, through Moscow where her relatives lived. When she returned, she was different. She was not in love with me anymore. I don't know what happened, in Crimea or Moscow, she only told me they had to wait for their postponed flight in the airport for three days and how she suffered there, but she told me 'I used to be so calm, so tranquil before, why I'm worrying so much, why I lost my temper', and we did not see each other till her birthday, I think in February or March.
Though I studied in the same school with Alfred Nobel, I haven't got the Nobel. Iosef Brodsky who lived on the opposite side of the street with me(though I was only 3 and had not the honour of knowing him personally, he was sentenced about time I was born), succeeded in getting this Nobel. His house looks much more imposing, the house of the Nobel laureate, you see it instantly, 'my' house though restored looks like 'poor relative' compared with 'Brodsky's though the family of Brodsky did not own, of course, this big, 19 century, old six-storey building or even a ten-room apartment in it, like its previous owners, Brodsky remembers about this place as 'a one room-and-a-half'.
While working in 'Literaturisch CafИ' in Hamburg, one waiter invited me to the medical faculty where he studied. One rainy morning I got out of U-Bahn and stood waiting near the newsstand. The student wasn't appearing, I began looking at papers and magazines. I had several Marks and bought a 'Playboy'. He appeared finally, we walked to the University and came to the anatomic theatre. I was dressed in a white doctor's coat and slippers, we went to the corpse. There was another guy and a young nice-looking girl there. They asked me how what was a name of a muscle on the corpse belly, I said it was musculus obliquus externus(though I had my exam on anatomy 4 years ago, I still remembered the name of this muscle though much water has flown). Then I grabbed the skull with beastly smile on my face but they took it as a joke which it really was(medical students have jokes of their own). Then they invited me to a lecture, I agreed, then declined, they talked of something very long in German, I did not understand, then I said assertive 'no' thinking how I would understand the lecture and not wishing to see the whole faculty ( I was in the process of applying to an American university, waiting for my answer and had no plans to continue studying medicine in Hamburg), the guy said to me 'have a nice day!' in English, and I went home, that is, home of Oliver who was kind enough to host me in his family for three weeks.
I write in English improving(as I hope) by that my English, and it seems to me a 'groovy' thing to write something in English, in an 'alien' tongue, I liked Nabokov though I like his early, Russian novels more and wouldn't like to write a 'Lolita', I am not so erotically turned author( if I wrote 'Lolita', they would sterilize me before killing off). And also, I don't trust the translators. One translator wrote an article about 'treachery of translators', admitting his own treachery concerning his translations. He wrote he could tell Brigit Bordeau' story much better than Brigit Bordeau herself so he included in her memoir one romance she did not write anything about( and had her reasons not to write but he did not care). Then, he met thousands of different fishes in Jules Verne 'Twenty Thousand Lieu Under The Water', not wishing to bother to find their proper English names, he 'aristocratically' wrote everywhere 'fish'. Probably, he hated Jules Verne, hated he was forced for money to make a hack job, thinking Jules Verne himself and his writings some foolish French 19 century fish, but I believe the job of translator is to translate accurately, at least, and not be a critic of what he is translating, moreover another author superimposing his ideas on written work.