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Poems 2
The Tale of How Zhu-Hua and The Upper Sphere Met Their Ends
The very red sun emerged from the upper sphere and glided towards the horizon. There were still some stars in the sky, seven in all. The night was almost over. Such was the trajectory of the sun-midget with red hair. And Karl could stop, descend, freeze, and change direction at will. Such was Red-haired Karl, the ruler of the upper sphere and the terror of the entire Earth up on high, and about him we spin our tale.
- - - - - -
This story happened a thousand years ago.
The Chinese emperor Zhu-Hua traveled to the remote Smoky Mountains; he wanted to climb them and, with any luck, to reach the upper sphere. Back in the olden days, “upper sphere” was the name people used for the sky—except it wasn’t the same sky as today’s. You could touch it with your hand, and it reflected the heavenly earth, but not in its entirety, so nobody knew exactly what thing reflected the earth, its mountains, its forests, its rivers, its grass and flowers, and sometimes even the clouds. The “thing” could have been water, a mirror, ice, metal, and god knows what else. More on this later.
So, Zhu-Hua, along with one frend and two gierls headed toward the upper sphere. So as not to burden himself with an entourage and the attendant hassles, the emperor escaped from his own castle, and did it masterfully enough to convince everyone that he had drowned. The road ahead was difficult. It wasn’t going to be an average moonlit walk in the palace park, when the sandy paths are still empty and the courtiers have not come around the corner yet, but the guard keeps vigilant watch.
Zhu-Hua and his frends made their way across the kingdoms of In, Tsin, Utsin, and simply N. When they were almost at the foot of the Smokies, they encountered a men, who was said to be a sage, and they asked him how to find the way to the upper sphere. Sagely Rdum told them how to get there and even what they would see on their way, and then he added another piece of wisdom: “From the highest peak, which is called Everishta, although the ancient peepl called it Harialungma, a rainbow path runs to the upper sphere. You have to get through it quickly because Red-headed Sun-Karl doesn’t let anyone pass on account of the fact that ages ago the Earth, also known as the Blue Mountain, stole the Moon, also known as the Lilac Light, who happened to be Red-headed Karl’s squeeze at the time. It angered Karl and made him thirst for revenge, so now he hops around the sky between the sphere and the earth, always trying to anticipate the emissaries of the Blue Mountain, for he knows: if anyone manages to make it to the upper sphere, he is doomed. He has incinerated many a people. Years ago, peepl came frequently and from all over the place, mostly from India and the Orient in general, but northerners came too; there was even a man from Greenland once. Yes, many of them burned to death. The farthest to travel was Indian yogi Brahmaputra, who was two-thirds of the way there when Karl caught up with him.” Thus spoke Rdum.
The very red sun emerged from the upper sphere and glided towards the horizon. There were still some stars in the sky, seven in all. The night was almost over. Such was the trajectory of the sun-midget with red hair. And Karl could stop, descend, freeze, and change direction at will. Such was Red-haired Karl, the ruler of the upper sphere and the terror of the entire Earth up on high, and about him we spin our tale.
- - - - - -
This story happened a thousand years ago.
The Chinese emperor Zhu-Hua traveled to the remote Smoky Mountains; he wanted to climb them and, with any luck, to reach the upper sphere. Back in the olden days, “upper sphere” was the name people used for the sky—except it wasn’t the same sky as today’s. You could touch it with your hand, and it reflected the heavenly earth, but not in its entirety, so nobody knew exactly what thing reflected the earth, its mountains, its forests, its rivers, its grass and flowers, and sometimes even the clouds. The “thing” could have been water, a mirror, ice, metal, and god knows what else. More on this later.
So, Zhu-Hua, along with one frend and two gierls headed toward the upper sphere. So as not to burden himself with an entourage and the attendant hassles, the emperor escaped from his own castle, and did it masterfully enough to convince everyone that he had drowned. The road ahead was difficult. It wasn’t going to be an average moonlit walk in the palace park, when the sandy paths are still empty and the courtiers have not come around the corner yet, but the guard keeps vigilant watch.
Zhu-Hua and his frends made their way across the kingdoms of In, Tsin, Utsin, and simply N. When they were almost at the foot of the Smokies, they encountered a men, who was said to be a sage, and they asked him how to find the way to the upper sphere. Sagely Rdum told them how to get there and even what they would see on their way, and then he added another piece of wisdom: “From the highest peak, which is called Everishta, although the ancient peepl called it Harialungma, a rainbow path runs to the upper sphere. You have to get through it quickly because Red-headed Sun-Karl doesn’t let anyone pass on account of the fact that ages ago the Earth, also known as the Blue Mountain, stole the Moon, also known as the Lilac Light, who happened to be Red-headed Karl’s squeeze at the time. It angered Karl and made him thirst for revenge, so now he hops around the sky between the sphere and the earth, always trying to anticipate the emissaries of the Blue Mountain, for he knows: if anyone manages to make it to the upper sphere, he is doomed. He has incinerated many a people. Years ago, peepl came frequently and from all over the place, mostly from India and the Orient in general, but northerners came too; there was even a man from Greenland once. Yes, many of them burned to death. The farthest to travel was Indian yogi Brahmaputra, who was two-thirds of the way there when Karl caught up with him.” Thus spoke Rdum.
And so Zhu-Hua and his frends got to Everishta and began their ascent. Red-headed Sun-Karl liked to hover directly over the rainbow path whenever possible, sometimes not going behind the sphere for days on end.
This time was no different. There he was, huffing and spinning in place, when he spotted black dots on Everishta’s snow cap and realized that those were people. His huffing became shriller, and he sent down a bunch of fiery sparks that reached the summit and melted some of the snow and glaciers. A damp cloud of fog enveloped Everishta, and the mens and the gierls disappeared into the frozen waterfall; it is not clear what happened to the gierls, (they might have vanished in an abyss), but the two mens, Zhu-Hua and his frend, found each other at the summit.
The fog dissipated, and Red-headed Karl descended lower; now he was spinning right next to the rainbow-path. Zhu-Hua shouted: “Hey you, Karl, bring it on, burn me!” He knew that the midget couldn’t come any closer because the earth would send Karl hurtling backwards and sideways. Then the Red-headed Sun-Karl decided that he’d leap away from the rainbow to trick the peepl into thinking they had a chance to quickly get past. “They’ll definitely go for it,” he thought. So he rolled back toward the sphere’s horizon, expecting the people to dash over the rainbow, but Zhu-Hua saw through the Red-head’s cunning scheme and figured out a way to make everything be ok.
The former emperor owned a purple-colored cape, which he had received as a gift from opium king Veign Opi Aya of the land of Opimia. Zhu-Hua wrapped himself in the cape and dashed along the purple stripe of the rainbow-path, while his frend, clad in a black cape, gingerly walked down the yellow. The guy on yellow hadn’t covered one tenth of the path when the purple was already past the midpoint. Red-headed Karl saw one dot on the yellow side of the path but couldn’t find the other one; apprehensive and anticipating something uncool, he rushed at the frend in black and soon after Karl had reached the end of the rainbow, a handful of ash floated away with the wind, to fall to the earth seven centuries later. Zhu-Hua honored his frend’s memory by shouting “Heya!” He was already at the upper sphere.
After his black, malicious deed was done, Karl looked back and realized his mistake. He croaked like a frog and leapt like a croaker, but he miscalculated. The last things that Zhu-Hua felt were the smooth surface of the sphere and the approaching fiery blaze. Red-headed Sun-Karl couldn’t stop in time and he crashed into the sphere, shattering it along with himself.
The Sun sprung from Karl’s bowels, and the sphere, which turned out to be made of polished clusters of small crystals, gave birth to the stars, and now there are not seven but many-many more of them. Of Zhu-Hua, the chronicles wrote that he eventually drowned.
This time was no different. There he was, huffing and spinning in place, when he spotted black dots on Everishta’s snow cap and realized that those were people. His huffing became shriller, and he sent down a bunch of fiery sparks that reached the summit and melted some of the snow and glaciers. A damp cloud of fog enveloped Everishta, and the mens and the gierls disappeared into the frozen waterfall; it is not clear what happened to the gierls, (they might have vanished in an abyss), but the two mens, Zhu-Hua and his frend, found each other at the summit.
The fog dissipated, and Red-headed Karl descended lower; now he was spinning right next to the rainbow-path. Zhu-Hua shouted: “Hey you, Karl, bring it on, burn me!” He knew that the midget couldn’t come any closer because the earth would send Karl hurtling backwards and sideways. Then the Red-headed Sun-Karl decided that he’d leap away from the rainbow to trick the peepl into thinking they had a chance to quickly get past. “They’ll definitely go for it,” he thought. So he rolled back toward the sphere’s horizon, expecting the people to dash over the rainbow, but Zhu-Hua saw through the Red-head’s cunning scheme and figured out a way to make everything be ok.
The former emperor owned a purple-colored cape, which he had received as a gift from opium king Veign Opi Aya of the land of Opimia. Zhu-Hua wrapped himself in the cape and dashed along the purple stripe of the rainbow-path, while his frend, clad in a black cape, gingerly walked down the yellow. The guy on yellow hadn’t covered one tenth of the path when the purple was already past the midpoint. Red-headed Karl saw one dot on the yellow side of the path but couldn’t find the other one; apprehensive and anticipating something uncool, he rushed at the frend in black and soon after Karl had reached the end of the rainbow, a handful of ash floated away with the wind, to fall to the earth seven centuries later. Zhu-Hua honored his frend’s memory by shouting “Heya!” He was already at the upper sphere.
After his black, malicious deed was done, Karl looked back and realized his mistake. He croaked like a frog and leapt like a croaker, but he miscalculated. The last things that Zhu-Hua felt were the smooth surface of the sphere and the approaching fiery blaze. Red-headed Sun-Karl couldn’t stop in time and he crashed into the sphere, shattering it along with himself.
The Sun sprung from Karl’s bowels, and the sphere, which turned out to be made of polished clusters of small crystals, gave birth to the stars, and now there are not seven but many-many more of them. Of Zhu-Hua, the chronicles wrote that he eventually drowned.
The End of the Black Wizard”
/mystery/
This story happened a very long time ago. Silly people used all kinds of names for him: wizard, sorcerer, and even devil. They believed that he could control the forces of nature, that he could bend storms and hurricanes to his own will, that he could instantaneously transport himself over enormous distances, to appear and vanish at will. They called him a wizard and a sorcerer, but in reality, he was a thief, yes-yes, a thief, albeit a very unusual one.
He never had a homeland. Born on one southern continent or the northern tip of another (or possibly in transit from one to the other), he never went back to the first or spend much time on the second. Nobody ever knew for sure whence came and where went this lanky tall man with a full head of tousled hair. The only place where one was likely to find him was a small seashore port town. He never visited it more than two-three times a year and never stayed for more than a fortnight. He had an “uncle” who lived in that town, although I know for sure that they weren’t actually related. It was this “uncle,” an old man with a perpetual smirk on his face who told me about how the Black Wizard met his end.
“Nobody knows where, when and how Black Wizard picked up such a dangerous vocation. Believe it or not, even I have no clue. He was not a lover of gold, and his hands did not tremble at the sight of the sparkling yellow metal,” the man took a drag of his hand-rolled cigarette, exhaled a thick cloud of smoke, gave another inexplicable smirk, passed me the cigarette and continued, “He was a very odd man, he loved old castles—you know, in Europe you can still probably find many of these old stone fortresses that once were inhabited by knights and kings. Sometimes he brought me back postcards of these fortresses: some of them were nothing but piles of stones, with narrow cracks for windows—I’ll show you later. Anyhow, Wizard always chose demi-abandoned castles, whose owners would spend no more than a month or two there in the summers, and not even every year. He would sneak into the castle in the middle of the night, spend a couple of days there and leave, taking a few things with him. But the most fascinating part was that while the Wizard was at the castle, he would change the room interiors in his own taste; he rearranged, rehung, reorganized and reshuffled things--paintings, armoires, armchairs, decorations, tables, blinds, and everything else. He would change everything and would even collect and dump in a remote corner of the castle some of these things that someone else had deemed useful,” the old man smirked. “Can you imagine the surprise and the ensuing horror of some nobleman, count, lord, or baronet, who, having decided to relax amid nature in his ancestral castle, discovered the results of such redecoration?”
Anyway, the Black Wizard learned about the castle of Whispers and Steps from a Turk who went by the name of Snake-agha (he was said to be a crafty man who could disappear through any crack like a snake or like smoke). This Turk had been at the castle and fled it.
/MTO note: the rest is missing/
/mystery/
This story happened a very long time ago. Silly people used all kinds of names for him: wizard, sorcerer, and even devil. They believed that he could control the forces of nature, that he could bend storms and hurricanes to his own will, that he could instantaneously transport himself over enormous distances, to appear and vanish at will. They called him a wizard and a sorcerer, but in reality, he was a thief, yes-yes, a thief, albeit a very unusual one.
He never had a homeland. Born on one southern continent or the northern tip of another (or possibly in transit from one to the other), he never went back to the first or spend much time on the second. Nobody ever knew for sure whence came and where went this lanky tall man with a full head of tousled hair. The only place where one was likely to find him was a small seashore port town. He never visited it more than two-three times a year and never stayed for more than a fortnight. He had an “uncle” who lived in that town, although I know for sure that they weren’t actually related. It was this “uncle,” an old man with a perpetual smirk on his face who told me about how the Black Wizard met his end.
“Nobody knows where, when and how Black Wizard picked up such a dangerous vocation. Believe it or not, even I have no clue. He was not a lover of gold, and his hands did not tremble at the sight of the sparkling yellow metal,” the man took a drag of his hand-rolled cigarette, exhaled a thick cloud of smoke, gave another inexplicable smirk, passed me the cigarette and continued, “He was a very odd man, he loved old castles—you know, in Europe you can still probably find many of these old stone fortresses that once were inhabited by knights and kings. Sometimes he brought me back postcards of these fortresses: some of them were nothing but piles of stones, with narrow cracks for windows—I’ll show you later. Anyhow, Wizard always chose demi-abandoned castles, whose owners would spend no more than a month or two there in the summers, and not even every year. He would sneak into the castle in the middle of the night, spend a couple of days there and leave, taking a few things with him. But the most fascinating part was that while the Wizard was at the castle, he would change the room interiors in his own taste; he rearranged, rehung, reorganized and reshuffled things--paintings, armoires, armchairs, decorations, tables, blinds, and everything else. He would change everything and would even collect and dump in a remote corner of the castle some of these things that someone else had deemed useful,” the old man smirked. “Can you imagine the surprise and the ensuing horror of some nobleman, count, lord, or baronet, who, having decided to relax amid nature in his ancestral castle, discovered the results of such redecoration?”
Anyway, the Black Wizard learned about the castle of Whispers and Steps from a Turk who went by the name of Snake-agha (he was said to be a crafty man who could disappear through any crack like a snake or like smoke). This Turk had been at the castle and fled it.
/MTO note: the rest is missing/
We Are the Light
We are the light,
light pours from our eyes into the world.
We have grown an enchanted garden in the dreary twilight
and in that garden, we’ve become rainbow flowers,
We rejoice when we see our reflection in the shadows cast by the light of the moon,
in bouncing sunbeams and on clouds,
we enter our own eyes,
in warm waves, we spread through our blood,
and burst from our hearts in explosions of Love,
we are amazed to see ourselves, we feel love,
i love you and we all love each other.
We are oceans of waves, we are our magical world.
we are delicate flowers,
and we are the light, pouring from our bright eyes into the world,
into our world, and nothing will change this world
your world and mine,
our world.
-------------------
Summer is such a tender time,
in twirling dance, your eyes half-closed,
you’re dancing with a flower, and its petals,
aloft, brush against your skin
like tender lips.
they bend, swaying gently with the wind,
two heads—the flower’s and yours—merge,
a crystal stream with bitter juice
that’s very-very tender,
the sunbeam also dances
in the small lusterless iris,
the flower’s or yours,
summer is such a tender time.
-------------------
We force the smoke to crawl through our lips
into our lungs in quick eruptions,
we splash around our long hair
intertwined with the grass in the sun,
we’ve soared over the earth and are flying through the sky
like the waning fire of the rainbows,
everywhere we look we see our own faces,
and the V sign of our fingers in the air.
We are the light,
light pours from our eyes into the world.
We have grown an enchanted garden in the dreary twilight
and in that garden, we’ve become rainbow flowers,
We rejoice when we see our reflection in the shadows cast by the light of the moon,
in bouncing sunbeams and on clouds,
we enter our own eyes,
in warm waves, we spread through our blood,
and burst from our hearts in explosions of Love,
we are amazed to see ourselves, we feel love,
i love you and we all love each other.
We are oceans of waves, we are our magical world.
we are delicate flowers,
and we are the light, pouring from our bright eyes into the world,
into our world, and nothing will change this world
your world and mine,
our world.
-------------------
Summer is such a tender time,
in twirling dance, your eyes half-closed,
you’re dancing with a flower, and its petals,
aloft, brush against your skin
like tender lips.
they bend, swaying gently with the wind,
two heads—the flower’s and yours—merge,
a crystal stream with bitter juice
that’s very-very tender,
the sunbeam also dances
in the small lusterless iris,
the flower’s or yours,
summer is such a tender time.
-------------------
We force the smoke to crawl through our lips
into our lungs in quick eruptions,
we splash around our long hair
intertwined with the grass in the sun,
we’ve soared over the earth and are flying through the sky
like the waning fire of the rainbows,
everywhere we look we see our own faces,
and the V sign of our fingers in the air.
While not all of Azazello’s writing reflects the tenets of Love and Peace, the manifesto below represents perhaps one of his clearest formulations of hippy philosophy.
The Rainbow Gathering Goes On. We’re Together Once Again.
WE ARE HIPPIES
There was a moment when I thought that only the sturdiest remained:
We with brains woven of sunlight and ice crystals;
We with eyes that take in all the horizons;
We with hearts emitting Love and Peace;
We with lips that sparkle with laughter;
We with long hair that swaddle the universe.
Flowers, strewn all over the world, capable of scattering the darkness like the stars in the night.
Darkness fell sometimes—they uprooted us, stomped us out, beat us, mocked and maimed us, drove some of us to madness. I have seen broken flowers: empty eyes, frightened faces, helplessly dangling arms.
But we gather once again, because we have something to communicate to each other through words, through music, through dance or simply through a smile. We, the hippies, are the makers and creators of the New Spirit, which we pass on through pictures and drawings, poems and prose, through music, through song and dance, through outfits and ornaments, through relationships among ourselves as well as with the society of Adults.
We want to see ourselves united by a creative force whose aim is the creation of a Luminous Space that will overtake our Mind and Soul. We want our relationships with each other to be pure, without deception, lies or innuendos. Sincerity is the fulcrum of our relationships. Each one of us carries the fire. For some, it is brighter, for others—less so, others still don’t even know about the fire, but they have it nonetheless, even if just a spark. We want to unite our fires, our sparks and torches; it will be a Bonfire, a Fire, a Supernova Flash, and there will be no more solitary sparks. The light of our Fire will expel the Darkness from our space, cleanse us and return us to ourselves.
Just as before, we reject violence and intolerance, conformism, hypocrisy, dishonesty and other muck that the Adults use in an attempt to raise others to be like them. These are not for us. We choose smiles over stones, flowers over rifles, we choose Freedom, Love, and Peace. This is why we are always together.
Yes, we are together once again, and we say—
ANTIMILITARISM IS THE FOUNDATION OF LIFE
PEACE ON EARTH IS OUR SOIL,
FREEDOM IS OUR SKY,
LOVE IS A GENTLE RAIN THAT PULLS US UPWARDS, UNITING PEACE AND
FREEDOM.
The Parade of Rainbows goes on!
We are hippies.
The Rainbow Gathering Goes On. We’re Together Once Again.
WE ARE HIPPIES
There was a moment when I thought that only the sturdiest remained:
We with brains woven of sunlight and ice crystals;
We with eyes that take in all the horizons;
We with hearts emitting Love and Peace;
We with lips that sparkle with laughter;
We with long hair that swaddle the universe.
Flowers, strewn all over the world, capable of scattering the darkness like the stars in the night.
Darkness fell sometimes—they uprooted us, stomped us out, beat us, mocked and maimed us, drove some of us to madness. I have seen broken flowers: empty eyes, frightened faces, helplessly dangling arms.
But we gather once again, because we have something to communicate to each other through words, through music, through dance or simply through a smile. We, the hippies, are the makers and creators of the New Spirit, which we pass on through pictures and drawings, poems and prose, through music, through song and dance, through outfits and ornaments, through relationships among ourselves as well as with the society of Adults.
We want to see ourselves united by a creative force whose aim is the creation of a Luminous Space that will overtake our Mind and Soul. We want our relationships with each other to be pure, without deception, lies or innuendos. Sincerity is the fulcrum of our relationships. Each one of us carries the fire. For some, it is brighter, for others—less so, others still don’t even know about the fire, but they have it nonetheless, even if just a spark. We want to unite our fires, our sparks and torches; it will be a Bonfire, a Fire, a Supernova Flash, and there will be no more solitary sparks. The light of our Fire will expel the Darkness from our space, cleanse us and return us to ourselves.
Just as before, we reject violence and intolerance, conformism, hypocrisy, dishonesty and other muck that the Adults use in an attempt to raise others to be like them. These are not for us. We choose smiles over stones, flowers over rifles, we choose Freedom, Love, and Peace. This is why we are always together.
Yes, we are together once again, and we say—
ANTIMILITARISM IS THE FOUNDATION OF LIFE
PEACE ON EARTH IS OUR SOIL,
FREEDOM IS OUR SKY,
LOVE IS A GENTLE RAIN THAT PULLS US UPWARDS, UNITING PEACE AND
FREEDOM.
The Parade of Rainbows goes on!
We are hippies.
“WHO ARE WE”
Part 1
I will cross the horizon,
shrouded by the viscous fire of the sunset
and then someone on the other side
will shout
in the silent night:
“What will you see when you look up?”
“The fire-stars will burn,
I’ll look at their blaze
and at the vast greenish-blue sheet—
the sky that shrouds the earth on all sides.”
MTO note: the other poems on this slide repeat.
Part 1
I will cross the horizon,
shrouded by the viscous fire of the sunset
and then someone on the other side
will shout
in the silent night:
“What will you see when you look up?”
“The fire-stars will burn,
I’ll look at their blaze
and at the vast greenish-blue sheet—
the sky that shrouds the earth on all sides.”
MTO note: the other poems on this slide repeat.
While it is unclear whose death (or near-death) Azazello contemplates in this brief excerpt, he does make an allusion to Christ in the final sentence. The poem is not dated, but seems to be from early December of 1990.
You only begin to appreciate what a person means to you when you lose him or when there is a chance that you may lose him, the crisis unexpectedly clarifies the significance: pure water proof against the opposite. having conquered death.
You only begin to appreciate what a person means to you when you lose him or when there is a chance that you may lose him, the crisis unexpectedly clarifies the significance: pure water proof against the opposite. having conquered death.
The car will be here in the morning—one more move from one apartment to another, although this time I’m retreating back to my burrow, my lair, where even the walls help, but still, it’s a bit of a hassle, with my right arm in its gypsum carapace. May God help us.
All around the room, there are various boxes, upturned tables, a gnawed-up refrigerator, stacks of books, something leaning against the wall, a pile of clothes. Some of this needs to be consolidated, compacted somehow. A coat is hanging in the hallway. It annoys me, it takes up way too much room. I don’t want to wear it. Where is my long leather jacket? It’s huge on me but matches the color of my hat. These gray walls have worn me down. The stiff flaps of the leather jacket smack against the Chinese flannel banana-pants, the seams are lined with Persian fringe, orange on blue. It’s super-retro. Dreams. I remember my first black leather coat; I bought it off my uncle for ten roubles—he went half-way through the Far East in it, exposing the collaborators of the Japanese statists. For this, he eventually earned a bullet to his back. The hole that the bullet had made in the jacket was neatly mended. Neoromanticism’s neologism compelled one to march in rebel-lutionary step and to dream of a Mauser, which would bang against the knee; while Marcuse, a virtual unknown at the time, was already beginning to resemble a mini-prophet. But the genetically encoded military past got old really fast and fell away. Then came a celebration, not the victory day—that was forgotten and never brought up again, but a celebration, a carnival straight out of a magic shop, which went on and continues still, granted, with interruptions when it rains. And when it rains, all I want to do is to don my long brown leather coat, go outside into the shimmering drops, to light up a cigarette and to take a leisurely stroll, resting from the carnival. Perhaps military ribbons would be more suitable than the Persian fringe. Retro-dreams.
The walls will be different tomorrow. God is our fortress.
Started on March 1
All around the room, there are various boxes, upturned tables, a gnawed-up refrigerator, stacks of books, something leaning against the wall, a pile of clothes. Some of this needs to be consolidated, compacted somehow. A coat is hanging in the hallway. It annoys me, it takes up way too much room. I don’t want to wear it. Where is my long leather jacket? It’s huge on me but matches the color of my hat. These gray walls have worn me down. The stiff flaps of the leather jacket smack against the Chinese flannel banana-pants, the seams are lined with Persian fringe, orange on blue. It’s super-retro. Dreams. I remember my first black leather coat; I bought it off my uncle for ten roubles—he went half-way through the Far East in it, exposing the collaborators of the Japanese statists. For this, he eventually earned a bullet to his back. The hole that the bullet had made in the jacket was neatly mended. Neoromanticism’s neologism compelled one to march in rebel-lutionary step and to dream of a Mauser, which would bang against the knee; while Marcuse, a virtual unknown at the time, was already beginning to resemble a mini-prophet. But the genetically encoded military past got old really fast and fell away. Then came a celebration, not the victory day—that was forgotten and never brought up again, but a celebration, a carnival straight out of a magic shop, which went on and continues still, granted, with interruptions when it rains. And when it rains, all I want to do is to don my long brown leather coat, go outside into the shimmering drops, to light up a cigarette and to take a leisurely stroll, resting from the carnival. Perhaps military ribbons would be more suitable than the Persian fringe. Retro-dreams.
The walls will be different tomorrow. God is our fortress.
Started on March 1
I CAN’T
they foist me on myself, oh, you poor darling, oh-oh-oh, they demand attention, they swaddle me, they drive me nuts, they confuse me, and i can’t:
1. i can’t love everyone, together or individually—they expect me to, but i don’t see in each person his or her individual spark, although the final say isn’t mine.
2. even if hatred is a pure feeling, still i can’t be filled with this purity, it simply floats next to me in small amounts.
3. i can’t be tender, like they want me to—rationed tenderness only accentuates its own might.
4. i can’t be cruel, like they want me to, even if cruelty, while no spring, is no autumn either.
5. i can’t live not because i’m exhausted (nonsense!), but because of life’s permanence. God alone, having granted me life, leads me through life.
6. i can’t die and let down those few souls who still love me by becoming yet another millstone around the neck of their memory.
7. i can’t be different, someone other than myself, it goes against my very nature, i am who i am, neither blind nor clairvoyant.
and I CAN’T. ___________ i can’t.
(November 17, 3 AM and 10 AM)
they foist me on myself, oh, you poor darling, oh-oh-oh, they demand attention, they swaddle me, they drive me nuts, they confuse me, and i can’t:
1. i can’t love everyone, together or individually—they expect me to, but i don’t see in each person his or her individual spark, although the final say isn’t mine.
2. even if hatred is a pure feeling, still i can’t be filled with this purity, it simply floats next to me in small amounts.
3. i can’t be tender, like they want me to—rationed tenderness only accentuates its own might.
4. i can’t be cruel, like they want me to, even if cruelty, while no spring, is no autumn either.
5. i can’t live not because i’m exhausted (nonsense!), but because of life’s permanence. God alone, having granted me life, leads me through life.
6. i can’t die and let down those few souls who still love me by becoming yet another millstone around the neck of their memory.
7. i can’t be different, someone other than myself, it goes against my very nature, i am who i am, neither blind nor clairvoyant.
and I CAN’T. ___________ i can’t.
(November 17, 3 AM and 10 AM)
mad ship
all is quiet on the sexual front. uncontained reaction with an outflow of consequences.
where are you off to, speeding around the world, having abandoned everything, a perpetual rolling stone, a ship that, having forgotten about its masts, is flying headlong into the wind, be it a hurricane, a storm, or a typhoon—it is all the same to you. through the torn rags of the clouds, the moon peers gloomily at the sails billowing in the blowing wind; your eternal call and challenge is directed inward and out, only the foam and the splashes shatter your caked-over retinas, which reflect but one impulse—moving along the path of the greatest resistance, for although it requires utmost resistance, it also offers maximum locomotion, and this is possible only when you face off with the wind, with the night, with the mystery, with yourself, with me.
the storm continues, the gusts follow each other, everything rushes past and stays there forever, one-to-one, yet another frontal assault, yet another stormed wall.
onward.
early morning of april 6
summer’s almost here
i’ve made it, i’ve pulled through, i’ve done it. summer is only a few short steps away, spring is officially open for business and embraces everyone who pays it any heed, and this is why i keep my eyes fixed on the spring. in each other’s arms, we are marching towards the summer, which unfolds before us in its expanse. it beckons us and casts spells, spinning a kaleidoscope of color, scent, sunshine, and warmth. once again i step over the threshold of my own rebirth.
morning of april 6, five years from dozhdik’s death
(Translator’s note: Dozhdik was the name of Azazello’s much-beloved cat.)
all is quiet on the sexual front. uncontained reaction with an outflow of consequences.
where are you off to, speeding around the world, having abandoned everything, a perpetual rolling stone, a ship that, having forgotten about its masts, is flying headlong into the wind, be it a hurricane, a storm, or a typhoon—it is all the same to you. through the torn rags of the clouds, the moon peers gloomily at the sails billowing in the blowing wind; your eternal call and challenge is directed inward and out, only the foam and the splashes shatter your caked-over retinas, which reflect but one impulse—moving along the path of the greatest resistance, for although it requires utmost resistance, it also offers maximum locomotion, and this is possible only when you face off with the wind, with the night, with the mystery, with yourself, with me.
the storm continues, the gusts follow each other, everything rushes past and stays there forever, one-to-one, yet another frontal assault, yet another stormed wall.
onward.
early morning of april 6
summer’s almost here
i’ve made it, i’ve pulled through, i’ve done it. summer is only a few short steps away, spring is officially open for business and embraces everyone who pays it any heed, and this is why i keep my eyes fixed on the spring. in each other’s arms, we are marching towards the summer, which unfolds before us in its expanse. it beckons us and casts spells, spinning a kaleidoscope of color, scent, sunshine, and warmth. once again i step over the threshold of my own rebirth.
morning of april 6, five years from dozhdik’s death
(Translator’s note: Dozhdik was the name of Azazello’s much-beloved cat.)
This autobiographic prose fragment poses significant challenges for the reader and the translator. It describes the annual gathering of hippies at Tsaritsyno on June 1 and Azazello’s subsequent encounter with Irina, at a pivotal moment in Azazello’s life, after he finally and definitively parts ways with Ofelia. However, the prose is fragmented and difficult to follow; further, it contains jarring allusions to physical violence and drug abuse that offer a rather unflattering perspective on the author. The proliferation of slang terms, hazy syntax and nicknames, coupled with a possibly drug-fuel state of confusion about the sequence of events, all contribute to the difficulty of decoding this potentially historically significant piece of writing. Sadly, the final pages of the manuscript are lost and his narrative cuts off mid-sentence.
Azazello
A Short Love Story
/published with sequels/
Moscow, 1990
Azazello
A Short Love Story
/published with sequels/
Moscow, 1990
we were supposed to gather on June 1 at two o’clock. Diversant had instructed me a good month in advance: be at the Lenino station exit at two sharp. that morning, i started drinking early, so i’d made preparations beforehand; i was carrying a botl of streletskaya, and by one o’clock i was at the stone parapet by the station exit. i was curious to see whether our group had changed at all, and i figured i’d split my botl with whomever i ran into first, but next thing i knew, the vodka was gone, chased down with a pirozhok. after that, i just hung around on the stone parapet, smoking, kicking my feet, and generally feeling bored. at first, nobody was there, but then, at about quarter to two, i saw Kris rushing past, so i called out to him, and he started breathlessly yammering on and on about some liubers , how they were for sure going to come looking for us and how we had to warn the rest of the group and even move the gathering elsewhere. i cracked a couple of jokes about the liubers, and Kris eventually chilled out. by then, our peepls started trickling in, but i barely recognized two-three faces out of ten. Diversant still hadn’t shown up, so Markel and i decided to toss back a few. i had a fiver on me, so we hustled up some loose change and went on a little expedition. we scored three botls of wine, two of which we quickly put away, and then headed to tsaritsyno. on our way, we did see some wanna-be liubers taking a dip in the dam; they bummed cigarettes off us, but there were no attempts at aggression, except some stuff they shouted once we had already passed them. on the hill at the foot of the palace, i ran into Artur, who looked stick-thin—still, i was happy to see him. a group of about thirty people, some with kids, stood in the shade of the trees on the great lawn, but by then i was pretty flushed, so i just shouted a general greeting and dragged Markel with me to a shaded bench on the other side; there were some cops lurking around, but Markel told me that they had stopped roughing us up and were just there for general order. we gingerly sipped our vino, smoked a cuban, chatted, watched the peepl congregated on the sun-flooded lawn, then got up and went over to join them. that was when I first saw her. i was heading for the trees in search of some shade—the day was hot and sunny. Irina was standing in the sun, self-aware, limber and proud, i noticed her at once, but we were celebrating our holiday, there was a whole crowd there, and, frankly, i was there without a specific purpose. there’s a saying, to set sights on someone, which is what i did the moment i saw her. i think there were only pine-trees growing on the great lawn in front of the palace ruins, and God knows they don’t cast much of a shade, so i kept going back and forth between baking in the sun and rolling around in the grass, then there was a little incident involving the cops and a punk by the name of Chili, then, to my delight, i ran into Natasha Kozhevnik, was introduced to people whose names i forgot after a few minutes in the muggy heat. by then i was plastered, and Irina and i have divergent recollections of what happened next. i remember offering to take her back to her own flet, along with her guitar which i insisted on carrying myself, and I was quite aggressive in my offer, but she claims that i’m tripping and that there was no flet. who knows? i can’t remember for sure, anything is possible, anything could’ve happened….
Diversant (finally!) showed up; i hadn’t seen him since that meeting with some american anarchist chick on Novokuznetskaia. he was sprawled on the grass, looking quite relaxed; he had some downers on him, and that’s what got me really numb. there was other stuff, too, but i don’t remember much, some picture-taking and whatnot, God knows i’ve heard all kinds of bullshit about what happened next. some say a chick refused to kiss me, but others say that she did kiss me, and then i supposedly walked off, pulled out a knife and sliced my hand open. i have no idea what happened before that, but i vividly remember cutting myself, i must’ve been standing by a tree because i remember the scaliness of its bark. suddenly, to my surprise, the peepl started running around, there was commotion, someone wrestled away the knife, someone else pulled off a sock to use for bandaging, but what surprised me most was that someone had a sealed pack of medical gauze on them, and they used it to wrap my hand before dragging me, not without incident, to various hospitals and trauma centers. that was how i ended up losing touch with Irina that day without even realizing it, and then later i started asking around who this Irina-with-a-guitar was, but i didn’t get any additional details and failed to locate her.
our next encounter was also somehow associated with blood. on July 1st i got drunk on Teacher's whisky (made specially for teachers) and ended up cutting myself—must be something about that day—and on the evening of July 3, after two days filled with juvenile romanticism and criminal exoticism that i spent with Faif, I got back to the flet, still slightly under the influence, and found some people in the dimly lit room: Ofelia, Shmelkov and Irina. Ofelia was sort of dancing—i think the White Album was playing—i’d met Shmelkov a couple of times before, and then there she was, wow, i know you from somewhere, fascinating, you don’t say, then i asked Irina to change the dressing on my hand, which we did in the kitchen, i tried to tread lightly and ended up learning next to nothing about her. then suddenly Shmelkov was in a hurry to leave—probably to mainline some speed—so they all left.
Ten days later, Ofelia split, i don’t remember the details, but God always has a plan, by then i’d been on a bender for months, so maybe this was a subconsciously predetermined outcome, or maybe it was an actual plan, but definitely a subconscious one. I stayed indoors, drank and periodically asked my peepl to bring me some fuckmates, but somehow the chicks they brought over didn’t do it for me. then, late one night, music was playing, and the doorbell rang. i answer the door; it was Gania, someone else and her, and i remember feeling ecstatic and telling her that she was just the person i was hoping to see, and let Irina in. my recollection of the two days that followed are quite hazy; i drank and smoked, there was vodka with cabbies, various pranks, and generally disgusting swinish behavior, which Irina says she’s forgiven but not forgotten, and i also remember realizing at some point that she stuck around even though she could have split—granted, at the time she was renting her place on Kropotka to Anita Palenberg, but i’m sure it would’ve been better to spend the night sleeping on someone else’s floor rather than dealing with my drug-filled orgy. but that thought only occurred to me later. a day later, she and i were left alone, and i, mindful of my appalling behavior in the days leading up to that moment, kept freaking out that Irina would just take off, so i did my best not to let her out of my sight, and even locked the front door and hid the key because I was afraid that she’d leave while I was asleep, although considering how i’d spent the previous few months, i had trouble sleeping for a good week, i was jonesing and must have looked awful, because Irina told me later that she avoided looking at me, that my entire feis was covered in bruises, that my hands kept shaking, and i can only imagine the expression i must’ve had in my eyes. thankfully, we had some weed, i smoked and smoked it, i kept trying to teach Irina how to inhale properly, and she finally learned to keep up with me (these days, she no longer smokes, maybe a cigarette here and there).
this went on for a few weeks, and my soul finally started to heal, although periodically i’d feel overcome by anguish, but this was my own stuff, not anything particularly interesting. we rarely went outside, maybe for walks once in a while—the hazy morning city with its smoke and fog, the blazing sun, our backs wet with sweat, the scorching asphalt, the stench of thousands of cars, the horror of horrors otherwise known as our city. a bright spot among my recollections of that sweltering chaos: i’m riding in a troll-ey bus next to Irina, who is completely baked, and she is leaning against me with her head and shoulders, and her touch alone makes me feel high to the point that it seems like i am being pricked by needles all over my body. we left the city a few times to run errands—to pick up Lucy from camp, to send her with Irina’s mozer to stay somewhere near Mozhaisk, to collect her again, and i ended up skipping poppy-picking; there were some tempting offers, but i couldn’t stand to part with Irina even for a short time. but Irina worked at the social security office, and once a week
[MTO note: manuscript cuts off here].
[MTO note: manuscript cuts off here].