Scraps of dreams from the Karelian twilight zone (photo stories in six chapters)

Path. Movement

When you leave the metropolis, in which you have lived your whole life in an unknown direction, you just appear the path, but there is no goal. Consciousness draws images of the mystical Central Russian Middle Ages. The unknown hton lives in dense forests, a crazy grandfather crafts children from logs and puts them along the road - this is one of the local legends. In fact, we received Russian eclecticism, combining the pigeon and popular cyberpunk. What can be done in the head of a person decorating the niche of his private house, similar to Disney castle, with a white alabast bust of Lenin? The LED panels at brick Soviet department stores report discounts and urge to buy something, and nearby a children's synthetic winter jacket was stuck in gooseberry bushes-this is the reality that we encountered.

The post -industrial wind of changes from the city where they drink “coffee with them” and eat “Shawrem here”, weakens, leaving only High Tech and Low Life. There is no electrician, but there are ordinary ones.

The path leads further to the north, and even from primitive commercial technologies there is no trace. Instead, the skeletons of ancient collective farms and water towers look at the terrain -

A person’s triumph over gravity and sea level. Rusty corrodes the metal of agricultural monstrous units, which looks like the combat vehicles of the ancient war. On their buildings, paint exfoliates, covering the crossed terrain. Like antediluvian robots from the "Island of Rusty General", they harmonize with the red spots of lazy cows.

On the horizon he smokes something industrially heavy. A wide river brings a rumble from the opposite shore, and we drive along the cemetery. Tombstones with faded photographs of deceased people are directed towards the long -closed grocery store "Day and Night". Because of the garbage tank, an Abyssinian cat appears, but a man in the window of the barbecue with barbecue asks him not to feed him.

Cemeteries, rustic cats rumbling with the bass of the surfacing bridge - all this is already behind. On the banks of the river, children collect ice in five -liter bottles, and nearby grandfather sits at the stern of Mitya's motor boat and scratches the beard. Ahead of the lighter beacon. At his foot of the cow, and nearby men play cards. They ask to go back. They do not belong to the path, they are just here, but I want to stay with them. On the coast anchor. Another. There are many of them, but the boat is only one - near the hydrological bridge. It is clearly visible from a wooden shop. The main thing is to sit down so as not to smear in the flow of gulls.

We drove a huge metal bridge. After him, something changed inside. The path has turned into a target. We realized that they were not free. Food delivery and vacation in Turkey made life easier, but simply hid freedom behind them. She is behind endless user agreements, interfaces, everyday clothes and consumer loans. We forgot that there is freedom. We just have too many worries. But when the path freed the field of vision from white noise, the search for freedom became the goal. She is part of the path. But where to look for her?

Fragments of news break through the interference of on -board radio. Above the dark forest are red lights. These strategic bombers fly to Afghanistan. No, these are just cell tower-iron trees that carry services where baths are drowned in black. In the twilight zone between the northern coast of Lake Ladoga and Petrozavodsk. The village of Kinerman. It belongs to the path, and there is a goal in it.

Target. Search

It seems that the best is always somewhere ahead. For that turn or at the next link. Or in a country where a visa has not yet been made. Search gives rise to the way. The purpose of the path is freedom. It just has different names. To see them, you need to get to the frontier between the worlds where the names of freedom show themselves. There, the gods offer different pills - blue or red. There is no correct pill, there are only sensations from it. Our God remained somewhere with a huge metal bridge, so you need to find a new one.

The twilight zone is located behind the towers of ancient pines-a 4G signal does not pass through them. Once there was a glacier here, and now eight houses and a church in which the icon is the mystery. Korean bus plants tourists and descendants at the church. While adults give their souls to their God, who in the sky, their children run along ancient tombstones and try to laugh softly. People part to skip timber trucks - they are from another God, who is from the car. A familiar feeling, because this is a god that we left 12 hours ago.

Pavel sits at the table and drinks tea. This is his goal. The dust in the air is illuminated by dense rays of the sun, on the table are plates with bitten Karelian flows.

“In the book of Genesis it is written that God gave man a vocation, the goal is to take care of the Paradise Garden. Probably, at one of the most basic levels there is a great meaning for each person. In the depths of a person is created and designed to care for the creations of God. For me, freedom is when you have a good relationship with living beings and neighbors. When it becomes normal, then from this you not only start to get high, but come to the conclusion that it should be so. I think that peasant life is closest to the divine. ”

God built a city from the car and freed people from worries. His commandments in street advertising, and his style in catalogs. Liberation did not bring relief. People do not know each other, their relations are depersonalized and disposable, and they see freedom in the desire for immortality through self -expression and endless search. They are ragged from the metro to the maze of city quarters. Everyone will survive in this crowd, but someone will collect discount coupons at the promoters, and someone will go to the bakery in a taxi. In textbooks on economics, this is called capitalism. Their concerns did not disappear, they just changed, changed their names, and the problems did not resolve.

A person thinks that, having optimized his life, solving household problems, he will come to the world inside. He will have time to himself, and he will be able to free his mind to achieve enlightenment - through an application for meditation on a smartphone, where the first three classes are free, and then for 99 rubles a month. Link to a psychologist in a browser. One, the second. Yoga on Tuesdays, Subscription to Documentary Cinema, a festival of young poets, a credit card in a banking application, a sale for Black Friday. He went to the avenue for craft beer - he arrived in the car departure to the district department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. And there are all the same four walls, all the same people in shirts at a discount. On a bright SMS screen - a reminder of paying a loan. They also serve their God and seek freedom in an artificial city with artificial relations, but they think that this is normal, because everyone has it. When a person was expelled from Eden, he wanted to build his own. But he did not succeed. The Garden of Paradise has become an endless project from the future, a utopia of glass and stone. He will be, but not now and not for you, like communism by the 80th year.

“The city is an artificial environment created by man. This place where a person invents something, manifests himself. But this is all artificial.

The countryside is a natural environment. She is not subject to man, not he created it. Due to the fact that a person himself is imperfect, he put himself in a cage with his achievements, ”says Pavel, drinking tea. - When I'm in the city - I'm in a cage. Life among nature, where you can do little to contrast it - here you understand your own restrictions. A strong wind blew, autumn began, and you can’t do anything about it. You are forced to take and hide. But this is freedom - that you cannot do anything. That you just went, hid and accepted it. "

Freedom - Progress/condition

For God from the machine, progress is a constant liberation from external restrictions. From worries, from suffering, from the difficulty of choosing a book/film/tickets to where everything is included. Progress is not a state, but a movement. This is not a moment, but a goal that even children of children are not achieved. People are looking for freedom inside, but there are empty, and the fences and walls do not allow to look forward - this is the care of the system.

The God, who is in the sky, is inside. He creates a community. This is communication today, tomorrow, a year and in ten years. These are children who choose the university closer to the house to go on the weekend to parents. This is a two -story house where they preserve their native language and offer to put on shoe covers out of the box with the smiling Ryan Gosling. This is the Pati Henokos party because the haymaking is over.

Sasha sits in the dining room while her ear is cooked in the kitchen. It smells of wood and food. In her bright eyes, the evening sun shines, and a cat rubs on her legs - he is waiting for a fish that he will not receive.

“I feel here in my place. In the city you think more financially. You have more access to people, entertainment, comfort. And there is access to calm. There are many people in the city, there I do not feel comfortable. If you walk along the street in the Vedlozer, then there everyone will say hello to you. People see each other. It is so cozy that people notice each other. You can consider everyone. Here a person is not a disposable passerby, you have a connection with him. In the village you remember more. There is time to think and chat. Freedom in the village is when you know people and yourself. ”

Technologies take a routine from a person. It is assumed that this will give him the Golden Age, when it will not be necessary to think about such unworthy things as caring for the house, drawing up a list of purchases, and remember other people's birthdays. As if this will give more time to development and progress, which God from the car promises over there, at the next turn, where the singularity and artificial intelligence. But so far there are simply timber trucks, they are taking logs again.

Somewhere near the house of Pavel, a chicken died, but he does not know about it yet. This is a natural circle of life. In the room, by the wall, on the blanket there is a newborn goat - his mother died during childbirth, the children in turn feed him from a bottle of a nipple. Pavel still drinks tea, and his huge beard moves with his lips.

“Sometimes they say that it is boring to live in the village: all the same. Not a fig it is not the same thing. Every day is different. All this is noticed over time. Nothing changes in the city, but everything is different here. Wisdom comes from the fact that you repeat the routine day after day and begin to see, feel, hear such nuances that it is impossible not to google, do not download it, you need to live. Wisdom is a divine thing. The routine gives freedom to some extent. You know what you are doing. You are in your place. "

Time to drink tea and sing songs

The old gas was driven into the village yesterday, but it seems that he is already eternity there. In his body, four square meters of Karelian Woodstock. The rock band from high school students plays psychedelic rock from the 70s and sings psalms under the solo on the balalaika. A woman in a traditional Karelian costume strokes a white dog along a sloping belly. A man jumps onto the stage and asks to play the best song Tsoi - “Aircraft”. Only no one knows this song, but everyone agrees to the “cuckoo”. He moves like Ian Curtis to the sounds of overloaded guitars. Music subsides: on the way, timber trucks drove again and dragged out the dust.

Life in the Paradsk Garden is a pleasure. The procession goes through the village under the banner of God, which is inside. The church father sprinkles the holy water around him. Drops fall on the iPhones of descendants, on rusty pood weights, rods and pancakes of five kilograms - this is a village rocking chair. 89-year-old Uncle Vanya looks at people from the height of the porch. In his ears, the stereo waretry of the auditory apparatus, he used to work on a sawmill, and now in the dusk of the old house he watches two TVs and is absolutely happy. Uncle Vanya laughs a lot and does not bother him at all that not all his speech and thoughts are understandable to others.

In the village, time flows slowly, it looks like something thick, smells of warm tea. There is a children's feeling at home.

Caring for a paradise garden is both a path and a goal. This is the realization that you are in its place. There is no need for competition with others and there is no need to fly to Mars - why? After all, there is no love on Mars yet, there are no people who need to be taken care of. There is no feeding the kid and do not sing Tsoi under the dirty lo-fi guitar. The twilight zone ceases to be twilight, because there are already no twilight. There is a warm sun, love and care, and people know each other - this is freedom.

Pavel finishes his tea and moves the cup with his finger for half a turn.

“Here I have such a picture before my eyes that I want to live here such a life in the village, so that there is time to drink tea with neighbors and friends and sing songs. Because when there is time to drink tea and sing songs, it is then that everything is fine in the village. The village moves where necessary. When you sing songs, you almost communicate on a spiritual level. ”

Return

The smartphone caught a 4G signal, through the iPod, electronic music began to play. The road leads back to the city of eternal seven in the morning. We are moving back to God from the car. Its rusty artifacts emerge from the evening fog. Through the thickets of hogweed are visible through it. They are like palm trees from the Apocalypse Today, only without helicopters and music of The Doors. Silence begins to spread, giving way to the growing noise. The puzzle of reality is going again, but already in another composition. In the one where there is a place for silence.

The road has ceased to be a goal, it is no longer a way, but just a road back. Man - the intersection of the path and goal. We were looking for what is hidden, but in fact nothing is hidden. The images of mystical - they are not. Cyberpank-explosion of Soviet heavy industry-it is, but this is just a background to fill a semantic void. What is important is always in sight: community, love, care. Freedom is a relationship, this feeling, it is God inside.

God from the car was invented to find freedom in technological utopia, so that there was always “coffee with him”. In advertising they say that he gives joy, but a person gives joy.

Afterword

The image of the Russian village in mass culture can hardly be called attractive. You probably saw posts on the Internet, where a half -stranded wooden house has grown through the window into the ground, and under it a signature that "this is 15 kilometers from Moscow." Economic decline, urbanization, Russian longing - it really kills the village, turning it into a nominee of a smoker. When we went north, the unknown forced us to play stereotypical images of the Russian hinterland. We crossed the popular romance of the cartoons "Carousel" and the Gibsonovsky cyberpunk, searched for traces of Linchevsky madness in dilapidated state farms. But in reality, only sleepy dogs, houses with plastic siding and thick forests, where there is nothing, but I really want to have at least something mystical. But Kinnerm turned out to be a very special place.

When we woke up in the old Karelian house, then only creaky Ikeev beds connected us with reality - they are from that yesterday’s life. It was not clear whether we continued to sleep or, conversely, for the first time in our life we ​​really woke up. In this dream, we saw incredible people. They showed us a life that we did not expect to see. Free in its simplicity, where the image of the future is not particularly important, where people and their relationship are freedom here and now.

We say thanks to all the people who spent us through their lives and showed the moments of happiness: Ivan and Betsy, to Ivan Kalmykov, Paul, Alexander Utrochalova, Uncle Vanya Ershova and his daughter Lyudmila Lasenina.

Vlad Cheatkov, Alexey Dushutin