Bread

Every time I cut bread, piercing a steel tip into the crust and then into the flesh, I cannot get rid of the obsessive association. The first time I killed a person. All sorts of secret mechanisms of symbolism, primordial encodings are triggered, that bread is life. Moreover, this symbolism is presented in all its glory. To survive, you have to kill bread. And eat it. This is probably why in many traditions it is forbidden to cut bread with a knife. Just break it with your hands. In order to most likely not use the association mechanism, which my psyche was hooked into.

It was because of my youth. What does youth have to do with reckless, acutely deadly and at the same time philosophically contemplative. Just like the strip of sharp steel itself. Which is used to kill and cut bread, and at the same time, with a well-maintained sword/knife, you can dash sunbeams into your beloved’s room, or even catch your reflection. So, one day, I was sitting at a round table in some rollicking company. There were cards on the table, and a Finnish woman, which, by the way, was used to exactly cut the bread. I remember that I kept trying to position my head in such a way that the light bulb resting in the lampshade would be reflected in the strip of steel. Reflecting on the fact that the world, which we are accustomed to perceive as some kind of unshakable and whole, if we look closely and find the right viewing angle, instantly splits, fragments, crumbles like a Christmas tree toy dropped by a clumsy child’s hand. These thoughts were stimulated by sticky heads of grass brought from the Pamirs. In general, the evening was just like an evening.

So, when I finally fixed my head so that the light bulb firmly entered its existence into the existence of the knife, something rumbled and screamed in the hallway, the door to the room almost flew off its hinges from a kick, and at the same time as a shot was fired, some bull in a blue tracksuit burst into the room. He fired from a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun, not a double-barreled shotgun, and Styopa, who was sitting exactly in the line of fire, turned his face into a ripe watermelon torn apart by stubs of carnations. My adrenaline then jumped so much that I didn’t realize how I grabbed the Finn, how I jumped out of the chair, how I found myself next to the bull - awareness was returned to me by a crash and lightness. The ease with which the light bulb entered from the bottom up, went in at the place where exactly the ribs end. Maybe it was the fact that I hit with a turn, with the hip, and that my body consisted entirely of adrenaline, and the crack was most likely a hallucinatory derivative of it. In general, I did not feel any resistance. It was as if a knife had entered the water with a crash. And I drove the Finn up to the hilt, leaned down with my body, so much so that the bull’s eyes were level with mine, and I saw the reflection of the lampshade in them.

In psychology there is such a term - “anchor”. When some special event and the experiences it causes cut into the bread of our psyche and get stuck there. Thus, they get stuck that any subsequent event is not even an event, but just a hint - an irritant, which every time uproots the experience from the crumb, which, again, in the language of psychology is called a resource. And every time I cut bread, I call for a resource. At first he worried me a little. Well, imagine - you can’t eat normally. Any piece of bread immediately binds you to the act of murder. What does it have to do with simple murder? But no. Murders in their philosophical existence. Where the knife is a mirror reflecting light, and where the eyes of a just murderer (he has just killed Stepan sitting at the table with a shot in the head) but already killed reflect the same light that moments before reflected the object of his murder. And who was caught by another killer with his eyes and thoughts. It's difficult, yes. Over time, the anchor sank deeper and deeper into the wilds of bread chaff, and after many years from that event, the stimulus became dull.

But anyway, out of habit, I try not to cut the bread. But this is not always possible. Here it is today. I forgot, and only the steel touched the flesh, touched the bread skin - the crust, as a seed was reflected in the knife. Which instantly turned into a light bulb, everything around me began to spin, and as if in a time machine, I found myself in a private house, on the outskirts of the city, on a raspberry tree, looking at the reflection of the light bulb in the light bulb.