How about that point, when the gray-covered notebook was taken over to the City Psychiatrist for the evaluation of sanity (if any) still present in the person, and/or how dangerous could the doodler of the like stuff be for innocent civilians?
Or take that pivotal moment, marked by the ample pocketbook of deep sepia tinge in the pages seen through the press in 1968, changing hands?
My Teacher outstretching it (no pathetic blah-blah attached to the book) for me to grab in awe and greedy gratitude? Does it draw a shorter straw to be the start?.
The justification for the gray notebook to pop up at all was, in the first place, provided by the weighty parcel in the mustard-hued coarse paper for postal deliveries, corded about and sealed up with chocolate-like blobs of stamped wax which I hadn’t broken. Ever.
Any use of breaking if you know what’s inside? Translations there were, that’s what. Translations from English, 35 stories, 472 pages typewritten in Ukrainian.
These, like, randomly collected figures do not repeat each other in their summing up of 6 years’ work—… (eh? gee! and this one coincides with not a single one of them!)
Six years deftly wrapped in the mustard-hued paper, bound-sealed up by the skillful hands of a post office service-lady: shrrsh-frisst-trunt-slamp – next, please!
The digits mentioned so far (undeniably non-uniform) do bear certain meaning, albeit not graspable at a fleeting glimpse, because socialism is, first and foremost, inventory, to cite the aphoristic definition by Lenin at the sitting of All-Russia Central Executive Committee on p.57, vol. 35, Complete Collection Of Works in 55 Volumes (four repetitions here but these are not from me)…
In the Publishing House they also did not bother to open the translations, toe-kicked them on the fly instead. A one-touch shot.
Yet why multiplying them? The half-back was seated all alone at his desk in the second office to the left down the corridor. Sedentary way of life made of that Sitting Bull a blob of blubber. Unhealthy obesity, not fitting a soccer player.
Let him thank me for the opportunity offered by my benevolent visit—no excruciating push ups, just taking to the post office 472 pages plus their cover—to throw away a sliver of his fat at that exercise, and the Publishing House would reimburse the expenditure confirmed by the post office bill slip.
Not a chance. A courier was sent by the slug. Screw him!.
The long and short of it, the translations returned to where they had initially started from and stilled there, like a mustard-hued tombstone, to crown 6 years of mental toil rewarded with the cobweb-light lines across the forehead to deepen later, when the good-looks period is over, into uneven contemplative wrinkles.
And why not to lie leisurely enjoying such a sound prop? The DIY book-shelves coated with translucent shellac—tranquil and soft environs for a serene slumber?.
Yet, the pages in the package upon the homemade shelf not only weighed down the item of interior but, on the side, were drip-boring my brains in defiance of the coarse steady wrap, the pages were. Their comatose presence made still acuter the inertia amassed along 6 years of handling them those antlike-black-critters-in-the-white-field, at first so effing obstinate but getting tamer, bit by bit, until they hooked me too, in their turn, up. A text-book case of situation-conditioned addiction. Jejunely christomathical exemplification…
And after the Game-Over, in the stiff stillness that followed, there remained nothing to waste myself away. Plodding donkeys and as well as circus horses are incurable… Fucking Sir Isaac Newton and that First Law of his!. Although the inertia thing he cabbaged from Galileo.
The evenings lengthened. Noticeably. Finding a shim to fill and dwindle them away turned out not a cinch. Like, no quick fix, brother, but go and learn playing melodeon squeezebox and, when it gets dark, off you stroll about the hood lanes outpouring some hit air or another, announcing, “Can’t buy me looo-ove!“. Don’t forget to shine your black pair of high boots, and stick a fluffy flower (Portulaca oleracea) in the visor-cap so that the chicks would tag along and fall over themselves to treat the musician to the sunflower black seeds they gobble up spitting non-stop the husk out…
Sad pity but the idea about a squeezebox failed to hook me up effectively, you know, and I bypassed buying high boots.
As for the girls, cute and saucy, they’ll always find who to give their seeds to in this or that, or some other feasible way in any concurrent settings.
Squeezing all the above-said together, instead of a two-row A-major/D-minor melodeon there, by the forlorn heap of paper within the stiff cask-like shell of wrapping (somewhat already softened with the growing layer of the virginal pollen of dust), yes, right next to it, possibly too nigh to, stretched out a notebook, rather thick and of a certain hint at brash boldness in its pale-gray leatherette cover.
The purpose of the stationery bad ass, at first, had rather fuzzy outlines, however, definitely slanted to the ant-like-signs-and-so-on-and-forth private games (because no computer games had existed yet and computers themselves were named Machine-Computer Engineering Tools that necessitated construction of reinforced concrete foundation to mount them (the Tools) upon and on that solid basis they thundered like locomotives spinning the spools of their perforated tapes hither-thither and backward again).
Yeah, buddy, be kind to patiently endure the games of my mind spilt in your grid-ruled pages where the well-schooled ant cohorts would crawl on bringing up the grim story of how I could possibly get to so morbid life style. Yet, those crossed-out lines do not count…
At that exactly moment came to me the radiant clearance as to how slippery was this question: where to start from?
However, the notebook did not give an eff about the complicated nature of the issue and with the arrogant gusto and nonchalance of a bro-to-bro talk revved forth about innocent lads hanging out on the screechy door-porch to a seedy half-hutta at calm starry nights, neither sharp nor fussy about uncouth strumming of Vasya (The Red) Markov’s guitar—who seldom showed up but everybody knew the instrument was to be picked respectfully—the assemblage full of perk, and jives, and gags understood by only partakers in the guffaw…
Everything as it was and always is to be in a one-horse burg of N…
That way, at nights, the notebook became the time-machine to which they flocked hurriedly, those a hundred times already mentioned ant-critters to turn into a fixed scrawl in another white field (small-scale-grid-ruled), until they stole the machine, not ants of course.
I didn’t report the vehicle theft and never showed any surprise, outwardly, so as to skirt dour declarations that I’d been warned it was to happen.
Yes truly, a couple of times there were voiced reproofs in the interrogative form: what fucking rascal hooey was I scribbling in that notebook?
But then the City Psychiatrist diagnosed the notebook’s case as not stark raving mad and violent, and it could be taken back to lie beside the hefty stiff parcel.
The whistle-blowers played along with the doc’s recommendation, however, they were not ready to what happened after.
“And what? What was that? Tell us, tell! Cut out your darn tries at frigging suspension! Damn coot, you!”
Well, not a thing. None! Nothing whatsoever.
The retrieval was met with the deadpan of my poker face (if observed from outside), no comment, total indifference, and since then the number of untouchable idlers on the shelves doubled drastically – the mustard-hued mother walrus, and her gray cub immovably advancing towards the equivalence in their pigmentation due to the natural growth of the dust layer of identical thickness.
Both time and place let me in on their mutual incongruity with wanton games at ant domestication and getting schooled in response. That’s the ballgame, folks!
In all fairness to the Twix (time-and-place), the so rigid halt was partly motivated by a vengeful wish to pinch the nose of mess-arounders, whose sporadic and somewhat pensive looks in the direction of dormant walrus colony of two upon their shellacked shelf, as well as random fingerprints detectable in the dust layer