Sergey Solokh. Paratrooper ruthenicus

Paratrooper ruthenicus
Sergey Soloukh

Publication date: March 19, 2001

In this equally endless country on all four sides, distances were once measured in dandelions. The little white parachute migrated two cubits per dragonfly flight per year. That's why the numbers were so huge on roadside posts.

And the letters are small and all with tails.

In fact, I just want to tell you how I forgot the city on seven hills. But there was a time I loved. Extremely. The entire length of its Zhdanovsky-Krasnopresnensky radius. On Nogin - VGBIL, on Pushkinskaya - "Akademkniga", on Barrikadnaya - Kachalovka. The habitat of words. Secret anthills of typographic signs. Layered paper of first editions and newspaper bile of pockets. Penguin Books, Grove Press and Gallimard.

And under your feet there is an eternal hominy of dirty snow and a swamp of spreading suluguni. That’s why Samtrust’s “Vazisubani” drank so well and naturally.

The seventies and eighties had a distinct western compass rose. The flight to Moscow is four hours, the return trip is thirty minutes longer. The electrostatics of the flower fields resisted moving backwards. There in the light rays of the sun - the main dandelion of this land. Coming back is like skiing knee-deep in the wet cotton wool of cumulus clouds.

Into the darkness of Asian hopelessness, but with a catch. Signet's volume On The Road intoxicated with the persistent smell of Californian chatter, the cover of Granada's Slapstick looked like graffiti on a New York subway car.

Moscow stood as a great literary metaphor for the world. For this she was forgiven everything. The amber beads of the night lights of the party-economic area shone behind the window of the Aeroflot bird and there were no sweeter dreams.

The sparrow fluff of the dandelions seemed to be recapturing the Motherland one inch at a time. And suddenly he began to lower himself onto his arms and shoulders. Into the green Mongolian grass underfoot.

On the screen in the Netscape window, pink as the color of a withered chum salmon, http://www.powells.com was glowing . New and used book.

Voyeur Voyant is the first thing that came to mind. Well, of course, well, of course you’ll forget how the cards rustled in the cockroach house of Rudominov’s catalogue. A favorite graduate pastime is catching uncensored insects. Then I didn’t read it - I devoured it, swallowing the paragraphs, choking on the leading edges of the comments and the italics of the bibliography. I couldn't finish it in one sitting. Checked out through interlibrary loan. He secretly brought a healthy regional Zenit to the foreign department and, like a thief, clicked the shutter at the corridor window. Since then, a cloudy black and white photo of a big-nosed doctor, covered with unfashionable plexiglass covering the entire tabletop, was a daily reminder that the Yauza flows into the Moscow River. At the very mouth near the bridge there is a VGBIL house, in its closed courtyard on the right and left there are green shoulder straps of lawns and one fine day a yellow parachute flower will definitely land on them.

So what now? Fifteen yu-se-de for a clean, nervous book in super, plus three cu. for sending likes. The nice lady in the office opposite has a VISA card.

Just click to order. Done.

That's how it is! The string string of meridians on the globe ball turns out not to be glued! It can be moved. The center of coordinates, the navel of the Guttenberg universe, can, by taking aim, be combined with any point that pleases your heart! For example, with the tubular peduncle of the small Siberian gypsy and the ball moth.

There is no need to go to Samuel anymore. Godot himself will call from downstairs via the intercom.

Cardboard boxes were unpacked every eight weeks. He grabbed everything that fell into the hands of the Oregon junk dealer. Everything I wanted to read, re-read, or just put on my bookshelf. For example, notes.

The Frank Zappa Guitar Book. Seven dollars ninety-five cents.

I easily straightened the crumpled and dirty corners of the pig ears with an ordinary electric iron. Thirty kopecks - one kilowatt-hour.

The metaphor of a window into the world was my own table, sofa, closet with transparent doors. Once again, when I got to Kachalovka, I didn’t buy anything at all. He got into a fight with a book dealer and ran away like a champion, like a puck, kicking the unbreakable lens of his glasses in front of him. The centrifugal force of new times destroyed the stereotype of the inherited behavior model.

An aeronaut-land surveyor can start a family and move on to a sedentary lifestyle. The dragonfly arshin of our native plains, mountains and forests was simply no longer needed. The world in the grid of modern electricity is a set of equal and equally distant objects. The difference of a couple of hops is simply impossible to feel organoleptically.

What was long and wide was concentrated, curled into one brilliant point. Its geometry does not encourage movement, but does not limit growth in any way. First a small ray from a seed, then a stem from the ground, leaves, a bud, a cheerful yellow beaver of petals over a blue meadow, a happy descent under a dome as light as smoke. And all over again. All over again.

Under the pine trees, on the lawn, where spring wine from the province of Beaujolais is so deliciously drunk on the bread crumbs of old needles. Peace!

- Don’t you want to fly to the exhibition?

- No, I’d rather finish the coven. I have a discount on the entire wish list until the fifth.

And Moscow was offended by me. Seriously. In "Rudomino" Sports Illustrated and BBC on the phone. "Akademkniga" was closed forever. Forever. And on Kachalovka they sell candelabra and paintings in Hermitage frames. The letters of one hundred and thirty nations of the world no longer appear there.

And they don’t give a damn - in the end, this city, which looks like a stellar egg waiting for an asteroid, is just a node in the .ru zone, where each other’s registration and travel documents are checked daily.

[sova@msk]# rm -rf /