FUCK + ETERNAL MEMORY

It was high time to write a text where all the characters, including me, are fictitious, and the coincidences are random. This is exactly the case. Well, finally.

I'm scrolling through profiles on Tinder. A friend jokes: you need an application where a man’s photo suddenly begins to shrink and move away animatedly. Then you will definitely feel that THIS IS HIM.

Do you remember how we slept with our psychologist? Why suddenly “we” - well, because it’s somehow easier to communicate such things about ourselves: collective responsibility awakens, it seems to be immediately and not so difficult - distributed to everyone. There was a cool joke at the end of therapy, when you rescheduled the session and wrote to him that, apparently, you had a “transfer.” You actually had a transference. You and he finished therapy on your initiative, and two weeks later you went on a stuffy trip together. When you found him on the balcony watching the Comedy Club episode, you realized that you had no idea who this man was or what you were doing here. But for some reason you still had sex.

There is sex out of pity. It happens out of hatred. It happens out of respect. You usually have sex only out of pure and bright love - and this is a big problem. The other day after breaking up, you tried to sleep with a new person - and started crying. It was funny: you were crying because you felt like you were cheating on your ex-boyfriend. Who abandoned you by cheating on you and lying to you. Also a kind of transfer. The first question to ask yourself in the morning: my sister in Christ, what’s wrong with you? I don’t even know where to start so that the question does not remain rhetorical.

A friend says: write a simple funny text about all this. You usually romanticize everything, but try to do something the opposite.

So, who are we dying for today: a thin-voiced, stupid boy who reads Nabokov, paints his nails and wears beautiful rings.

Look, this text suddenly begins to shrink and move away animatedly. Do you already feel like YOU'RE LOSING HIM?

You showered the boy with gifts, money, connections and suffocating care.

The boy didn’t want anything, didn’t understand anything, didn’t grow anywhere, and in general had the relationship with life of a lethargic, lukewarm fish.

The boy said that there are too many of you and your feelings scare him.

Your soul saw in him a huge potential for his own suffering - and now you are already smoking in solitude at some party. That's it, there is no one more beautiful.

Who else could we theoretically fall in love with?

1. into a punk musician with a difficult fate with sad songs about Russia
2. into a tattooed journalist investigating some bullshit
3. into an opposition politician who greets you through his lip (that's what we need)

Oh, how many of us have fallen into this abyss. Their. We've been having trouble with pronouns lately.

(here, of course, there should be a lyrical insert about childhood trauma, but we will omit it while our dear, hated trauma-demiurges have not yet left this world)

My sister in Christ, stop, let’s go for a walk.

So, we walk along a country road, tall grass heated in the sun rustles around us. My eyes are inflamed from tears and allergies, the skin on my shoulders and ass is burning. Where are we? It seems we are in Tbilisi. The poppy fields are about to begin. Oh, when she was betrayed, without documents or visas, risking everything she had, she went far, far away in the hope of seeing HIM - and for everything to be reversed. Poppy fields were everywhere, reality unrolled rolls of red carpets in front of her. Such a movie, a road movie: jeepity chat, help me create a safe land route for the heroine of my cunt-suffering odyssey.

Every now and then your nose would bleed—and red rhymed with red. You sat at the conference with a napkin plugged into your nostrils, the paper soaked with poppies. Where are we? We're definitely not where we need to be. Get out of there, let's go for a walk deeper into things. No, you don't have to earn the love of Christ to call yourself my sister in Christ. Why don't you understand?

(here, of course, there should be a second lyrical insert about childhood trauma, but we will omit it, because the discourse of trauma is a space not only for healing, but also for speculation)

You certainly have experience with long-term love. It was received by accident: everything did not go according to your plan. You fell in love with a man who was in a reliable long-term relationship and lived in another city. Everything was about to turn out tragically. But he suddenly reciprocated, broke up, moved to Moscow, and then also married you. And now you have been together for 8 years. He hasn’t gone anywhere and says that he doesn’t mind the dubious pleasure of growing old next to you. He treats your men with anthropological interest. You are suspicious of his women. You can tell him 10 times a week that he doesn’t love you. He will always say that he loves you, and will never reproach you with this phrase. To the question “how can you stand me?” replies that he doesn’t have to “stand it.” You don't believe him, but you respect him for the noble stability of this little lie.

We recently read an essay about the woman historian Cathy Barclay's relationship with the dead and their sources—testimonies, letters, diaries. "Falling in love with the dead." It is possible without quotes. Her approach to analyzing sources involves working with the emotions she experiences as she researches. Do not remove the emotional connection as interfering with “objective” analysis, but include it in the analysis - recognize that relationships can also exist with the dead, with their lasting light. And that these relationships can make us more insightful. In general, this essay could be described by one phrase that once appeared on Twitter under a photograph of Boris Nemtsov :

fuck + eternal memory

The brain experiences separation, death of a loved one, and loss of homeland in a similar way. I carefully protect myself from knowing how neurons look and work, so I imagine silvery living fibers that have no one else to envelop and they feel with themselves, with their little proboscis, the aching emptiness. And then they start eating each other. Yes, that's how it works in my head.

Why did Barkley come up? I stopped distinguishing between my relationships with the living and my relationships with the dead. Not even like that: with existing and non-existent. The power of my imagination erases this boundary. It has long erased the boundary between fiction and autofiction.

All characters are fictitious, all coincidences are random, all melodies are sung, all poems are written. There is no one closer and dearer than loss. Especially when you have been merged with her for as long as you can remember, into one loss-like, insatiable being.

A friend says: write a funny text about it. What pops into my head from school is “the last desk, what are you laughing at, say it out loud, let’s all laugh too.” I usually sat on the first desk - and I rarely found it funny. But I always tried to laugh with everyone.

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