Native soil
- 2. No sentimen- And this all has truly happened to me. But photography tality towards gets spoiled of time, like does everything what used to be a living, pulsating piece of the reality. The photographs loose their original Moth- the meaning on the way, and get absolutely useless. I’m trying to hold erland. them in a handful, to carry them, being afraid to drop even one, to carry them to the world of the meaningfulness and eternity… But Absolutely stumble on the way, drop them all and collect them again… none. I’m I want the impossible – to conserve the memories, to take the very standing under essence of it and to squeeze it all, with all the strength I have and a huge apple- to put it in the can and to put the can on the shelf. This insuper- tree, and the able wish to own everything you’ve ever touched and seen. Then apples are fall- these memories will keep their original taste, but will get another ing on me like status. They will enjoy their place on the shelf, separated from each the stones. The juicy autumn green apples #1 #2 other and carefully sorted, safe, clean and almost understandable. Canned goods are always good with such an aroma… the apples smell like this only at home. At my I want todig these memories in the foreign ground to have a small unloved home- chance to keep them. land. And I But after crossing the border all the values are automatically zeroized. have so much And everything what happened to me in the sad snowy country looses it’s original meaning, becomes the home-made, which can boast only pity for these apples. Because with it’s authenticity. nobody will That’s why nothing is left except to create metaphors from text, con- nect the photos with each other and with the life itself. eat them. Ever. And they are What happened to me there will never repeat here, in a safe artifi- falling and cial Holland. And these are exactly the autumn soar apples which fall falling and fall and eternally fall on me. and falling
- 4. #3 I was called after my grand grandmother Irinia. She was almost a saint, very thin, and wore a shawl always neatly tied under the chin. My grand grandfa- ther was always jealous of her, even when he was 80. Once he decided to play a joke and has took a ladder from the cellar, where they stored potatoes. There was no light then, and my she has fallen and broke both the legs. The gangrene has started. There was no medicine at those times at all. So when her toes were becoming black one after another, she just took the scissors and cut them off. One after another. Knip-knap, knip-knap. And she was smiling in order not to scream. There is her wonderful engraved mirror left in my granny’s house. When I look into it, I think I see a person from the 19th century, like from a dagerotype. With the scissors in the hand. Knip-knap. Knip-knap
- 5. My grandfather from the mother’s side has died from alco- holism far away before my birth. Everyone have loved him, but everyone used to say: happily he has died, otherwise he #5 Everyone tells me that I look exactly like would have terrorize us more, beat us and turn out of the my grand- house. They said, he was very cheery, when drunk enough, father. My and played the harmonica as a god. My granny has confessed mother took afterwards that she had made about 15 abortions me often to the from him, with the knitting needles and whatever, and a cemetery in couple of times she almost died from the bleeding. He was the forest. We always jealous of her, but she never had anyone, except him, sat together at the table, #4 even after his death. And he on the contrary, had dozens of women. He held her hair in his fist, dragged them and asked: unpacked the why are you not finishing? She only many years after his eggs, apples, death, in the 90s, in the boom of the sexual revolution and cucumbers the TV-programs, understood what meant “to finish”. “And and vodka. I was lying under him like a stone. If someone could explain And she told me the sto- me, that the sex can be different. ries about my I grandfather. Always trying never to keep them good because knew you talk good that». or none about the dead. “He was a good person. And funny, always funny. He would fart in the fist and put then under your nose. Always shared something to enjoy.”
- 7. #5 In my grandfather’s family everything went Something was broken in our family – something wrong. His father, my grand grandfather worked irremediable. The waves from this explosion will in Moscow, and his family lived in the village. He follow many more generation. was always jealous of his wife, and when he came, His wife, my grand grandmother was paralyzed he drunk like a cobber, and then again went away right after that. She was lying in her bed, motion- to work. And when he got fired, he returned to less, bad-tempered and was cursing everyone and the village very angry and nervous, and couldn’t everything. Her youngest son had to take care of find a place. His wife milked the cow, mowed her patiently. And once he fell in love with a girl the hay, and he thought that it’s not work of his from the same village. He came to his mother to level. Once they’ve quarreled badly, he started ask permission to marry this girl. And the mother to beat her, and she took the children and found has refused furiously. At that time she had grown a heritage at the neighbor’s. After three days he really fat and was almost not sound in her mind. still hasn’t come for her. So she decided to go He had an argument with her, and then got de- back and make peace. She came home, started pressed and started drinking badly. And once knocking in the doors and windows, and nobody he was returning home and has fallen into a pit. opened. Then she broke the window, entered And drowned. In a pit not deeper than an ankle. A Shit, the house, and he – he has hanged himself. few hundred meters from home. Shit, Shit, shit, shit. Shit. People were saying that he decided to play a joke, His brother, my grandfather, has never recovered or to make a rehearsal, because he didn’t even from that. At the funeral he was crying like a baby, leave a message. But this has happened. And it and after that became unreasonably and sophisti- was a hell. catedly cruel. So cruel that everyone had to hide in the corners like the fleas.
- 9. In my father’s family there were the witches and shamans. They #6 say, my grand grandfa- ther was a rural healer, and all the village used his help in every situa- tion. He had to give the knowledge to the older son, but that one didn’t have the talent and didn’t want to learn the magical skills. And the younger son wanted and had the talent, but the grand grandfather didn’t allow him to learn. That young- er son was our direct ancestor. My grandmoth- er had known about her death because the bird knocked in her window. And she used her time to tell the coming news to everyone, to hide or de- molish her second pass- port, which she used to get the double pension, so that after the car accident nobody could find it any more. And when in the bad years her tomb- stone was stolen for the scrap metal, she came to us in the dreams to tell about this with the very significant signs.
- 11. #8 My parents had serious difficulties to make me. Before marrying my mother, my dad has passed an 2-year obligatory military service in Boykonur, #7 the supersecrecret space station somewhere deep in the steppes of Kazakhstan. He was working with the fuel, probably radioactive, without any protec- My parents got to know each other on “the potatoes” . tion, but then nobody was telling this. Only five All the students these years were sent for obligatory cropping of years after the wedding I have happened – really the fields. The government had no money to employ someone, so like Tom Thumb in the family of desperate old man they preferred to use the slaves. The headscarfs tighed unneatly and woman. They called me chiseled and evoked a behind the necks, rubber boots, disco in the evening on the wood- mouthful more of the dirty jokes about the issue. en floor of the rural clubs, and endless fields of Russian love. One week after the aqquintance they applied to register the mar- riage, because IT had happened to them and my father HAD to be a gentleman. I have heard that he had a really big love before my mother, but she died in a motorbike accident while riding with ANOTHER MAN. My father has never talked about this again, but has always been kind of sad and absent. Reading books while eating and in the toilet. Going fishing at every possible day-off. Quietly obeying with everything she sais.
- 12. #9 I felt some physical repulsion towards my mother. Not her, but her body, soft and cold, covered with thick fat. After her wet kisses I wanted to wipe myself and when I got older I didn’t allow her to kiss me any more. At all. The father’s body was on the contrary, hot, and firm. Even when his belly started growing enormously, it was still hard as a stone and covered with the hair. They almost always stay at home and think that they live a happy and calm life. My father reads the books in the toilet and while eating, without remembering what was on the previous page. My mother al- ways tries to be a chief. She is not clever but sensitive. #10 Once father’s friend of childhood came to visit us. He has left for Moscow and became an important person, but they still had a lot to share and to laugh about. They have closed themselves on the kitchen. But the kitchen had a glass door, such thick mate glass with the flowers in every square, which was in every second house then. So I could see them but only as a blur. And stand and listen to their adult talks. When it was over midnight, I finally got a plan. I wrapped mother’s headscarfs over my thighs and put on her bra. When I went to the kitchen, my father started growling from anger, and they took me to the room, and I was trying to protest and escape. Then my father has thrown me on the bed, and mother has beaten me with a slipper. And I was lying long on the bed, and crying, not of pain, but out of anger, while looking at the sparkling rays of the night lamp over my head. Such a standard soviet lamp imitating the medieval street lantern.
- 13. #12 In the kindergarten I never was close to any of the children, but I tried to always talk to the teachers on the philosophical issues. We were big friends with this teacher, when one day my parents couldn’t come to pick me up (because someone’s funerals or something). There were pretty often children forgotten in the kinder- garten, and the teacher took them all to sleep at her place. She lived in the far end of the city, and that time I was the first time at her place. These evening there were two other children as well. Always sniveling girl with a hair cut “a pot” and the teacher’s own #11 daughter. The teacher made for us the big pan of 12 scrambled eggs, with the bright yellow yolks. And it was the In the kindergarden they made us sleep during the day, but I never did. I was star- tastiest dish I’ve eaten in my life. I was ing at the pattern on the wall-paper, such greenish worn-out pattern, depicting the taking one piece after another until exaggerated curves forming the figures. And I was also staring at the hairy ankles have finished it all. And she came of the nanny. The elastic tights would flatten these hair into the black waves. The from the kitchen and had no eggs for beds were arranged in the pairs, but we could sleep only in the sixty-nine posi- herself any more… tion, and to put the hands strictly over the blanket, I never could understand why. I never slept, but played with my fingers, and had really strange and daring dreams.
- 14. We were climbing the roofs of the ga- rages and chewing the tar. Such black sticky mass to cover the roofs – instead of the real chewing gums, which we couldn’t get at that time because of the “shortage”. When someone’s parents brought some chewing gum from #13 abroad we would chew it in turns until it completely looses it’s taste and even further – sometimes for several days. Those who could chew it first had the highest status in our hierarchy. But tar was something everyone could get. At first it was stone hard, and then be- came soft, was sticking to the dents and caused a lot of drooling. When we re- turned home, our parents first asked to #14 show our teeth. If the teeth were black, that meant that we had chewed the tar, which was very harmful. We knew that but chewed it anyway. I was collecting the atumn leaves when suddenly I thought: Here am I, Ira Popova, a girl of seven years old, a child. Some whole unchangeable substance. What will be if I die? What if the tram runs over me? Such thoughts maybe come to every- one. But I remember very sharp- ly how they came to me - with the smell of those dead autumn leaves. And pain inside, it smells always from that moment with these autumn leaves.
- 15. I had a chineese pink school rucksack. And once it had just fallen apart badly, and I needed to go to school. So my grandmother gave me her shopping bag to put my school- books in it. After #15 school everyone went to a classmate’s birthday. And when I came there and rang the bell, every- one were inside but wouldn’t open. They were laughing about #16 my bag. And then I went home and sud- denly on the way I lost my speech. My mother is hysteric. She has always been, but she pretends that I’ve Nothing extreme made her like this. Once I went swimming to the lake, and swam to another happened, I just shore. The water was soft and pleasant, and I was just thinking about Africa couldn’t speak any and stuff when I already noticed that I’ve passed the half. I was so tired by more. It has lasted then that I decided better to go to another shore. And then I didn’t under- for three days, and stand on which side I was any more, because everything has seemed the my mother brought same. Then I met the boys who have jumped from the high swing right into me different kinds the lake and stayed with them for some time. And meanwhile the whole vil- of psychothera- lage was searching for me with the divers. When I came back my mother was pist and healers. crying and told that I have stolen 5 years of her life. And I wanted just to have Could have bought a right for my own freedom and adventure. But I was not talking to them, I me a new schoolbag was just eating the tasty fried fish which my father has caught himself before instead. my disappearance that morning.
- 17. #17 The children summer camp was like a bad dream. There were only a few bar- racks with the pictures from the cartoons, and the pine trees endlessly all around it. Just because I seemed strange to some people. They didn’t like me from the be- And In ginning, so one day they found a everyone this cause to do it. I was playing with the could camp girl, and have clumsily let her fall. do I got Then they called me to have a whatever beaten they once. “meeting” at the football field. wanted They were with more than ten with people and I was alone. They were me. standing in a circle and I was in the center. To push me all the way round, track on my hair, put the nettle into my t-shirt, and someone even has caught a frog and threw in my. I remember only one thing – till the last moment I tried not to notice anything and not to cry. Suddenly my body became soft like if I just had let it go, because it would be worse to protest. Finally someone had shouted: “Hey, it’s enough, let her go!” and everyone sud- denly became a bit confused, and some people who just have beaten me even came to me to ask me if I was ok and if I needed some help. But I couldn’t believe my luck and run away, but actually my feet didn’t obey me any more. I went to the bath house (banya). It wasn’t the washing day (it was only twice a week), but the door was open and I entered it. It was the only place where I could find a shelter. I began to wash off the dirt, very carefully, then to spill the cold water all over my head. I didn’t feel anything any more. And only when I finished I sat naked on the floor and started crying and then couldn’t stop for several hours. At that time they organized the group to search for me, because they thought I have drowned myself in the river. When they found me, they only threatened that it would be worse if I tell to the teachers. And I was silent, but it seemed that everyone in the camp knew what had happened. The rest of the time I devoted to the exercise of being lonely and strong. I tried to concentrate on reading the books, but couldn’t do it. So I was strolling around the forest trying to find places without the people. But there seemed to be no such places. And that’s what the adults call “To get a sip of fresh air”.
- 19. My cousins have often stayed at my place. They were twins, a boy and a girl. I was a bit older and always told them frightening stories #18 #19 We had very strange neighbors across the wall. They were quarreling every evening, shouting how they really hated about the snots and shit. And sometimes each other, and wanted to kill each other. And after that they we were grooving and whispering till the made love also very loudly and emotionally. And I suppose morning and my mother always came to the they had also chickens and a pig living on the 5th floor of room to say “Pssssst”. And once we had to stay the block building. I’ve never seen them but could guess by the absolutely alone, because all our parents were sounds. My mother has bought a special thick carpet to hang on the wedding. Then we were laughing so on the wall next to my bed because of these neighbors. Because loud that the neighbor started knocking my bed was just next to the wall. on the radiator which connects the whole 5-storey building, so probably all the neigh- bors were up. And that night I have learned them to kiss. Both of them. I told that I could do it very well, but it was the first time for me as well. Fantastic and sweet experience.
- 20. #20 And we also had the neighbors with 6 children. The two younger boys were #21 We stole a boat. Just like this – we sat in it, untied the rope, pushed ourselves into the water and started floating. It was a big, en- dwarfs, probably because they got not ourmous lake with the bays and long curves. enough vitamins. They were cursing, With the swampy uninhabited shores. spitting and offending the little children in My aunt has told me the scary stories about the yard. So I preferred to run away when the wolves on the other side. And there I saw them. And we were calling them were no oars in the boat and it was leak- “homeless”, that specific word has ing like a crazy, so we were drowning in just appeared in those times and we used it the middle of the lake, somewhere after the as something as offensive as “shit”. I didn’t curve where nobody could see us. And we know the meaning of the word, but heard it didn’t know what was worse – to drown or to from my parents when they told that the be discovered by angry owner. I thought we pigeons suddenly disappeared from the could go to the prison for that. Then the rain city because they were eaten by “the home- has started and we were sitiing in the boat, less people”. not knowing what to do, until the boat came to some shore. We left the boat there and went home through the wild bushes.
- 21. I came to St. Petersburg to enter the university . My mother gave me the money for living and advised me to put it in my bra for the safety. It was very confusing when I had to take it out in some office to pay for the campus rent. And it seems that I’ve dropped it somewhere while putting back. So I was left with a room but without money at all. And I didn’t take with me much stuff, but I happened to have a binocular. Then I went to Isaak Cathedral and was stand- ing in front of the entrance with handing binocular for some money. You take it on the entrance and return back after one round at the top of the cathedral. And it worked. I was buying the fat cottage mass with raisins in the market and tickets to the Chaikovsky concert in conservatorium. Finally it was too much stress and I failed #22 my exams there, and I was sitting and #23 cry- ing in front I got a room in the university campus with 3 other of the girls. It was on 16th floor and we got everything except por- the curtains. “Why do you need curtains, you stay here trait only one month?” was the argument of the zavhoz (the of Lo- chief of the utilities). The windows were looking at the mono- sea and every day there was so much sun at the sunset sov, the that I couldn’t work, so I sat on the windowsill with found- my feet hanging outside. It was the most beautiful sunset er of in the world. And once I couldn’t enter the hostel because this it was blocked because of the fire. There were also peo- univer- ple jumping from the windows from time to time. sity. Strange enough, it didn’t happen to me though I think suicide is a result of the Newton gravitation.
- 22. #24 Another time I was travelling to St. Petersburg with the suburb trains. That means that from Moscow to St. Petersburg you have to change the trains 5 times. But if you know the timetable you can do it easily. There was the whole social bottom of Russia travelling this way. The disabled people and people with the special paper (homeless I met a guy with long hair in St. Petersburg on the river bank. He said that he with lost passport) could travel like this to their native city to recover their passport. came from Omsk or some other big Siberian city. That he had university, work, lov- And we met often the football fans and just subculture youth (rockers, hippies, etc.) ing parents and a girlfriend. But on some day he decided to quit all this, and went who just didn’t want to pay and escaped from the controllers. The football fans and hitchhiking to St. Petersburg (about 3000 km). And now he has nothing except a skin heads shouted through the couch and behaved pretty aggressively. The rest has guitar over his shoulder and a beautiful and cold city. felt like one big and friendly party. When the control entered we have singed: “Noth- We were wandering through the streets all the night long looking at the beauty, and ing is better than wander through the world”, a song from a cartoon. finally we found a shelter in a porch of an ancient Admiralty house. We were sleeping right on the staircase, under his overcoat, and I saw some weird uneasy dreams mixed with the reality, probably because of cold. And there we found a big rusted ancient nail . I took it with me back to Tver, but never saw again neither the nail, nor the guy. It was all because of Jarmush. I decided to move to St. Petersburg. I met a filmmaker who was making a film about me. And I wore dreadlocks and funny knitted hat. I told that I loved Jarmush and the filmmaker invited me to come to his place. I came and stayed for a week. It was written on his wallpaper “I want to shoot films”. And he did. I think I felt in love not with the filmmaker but with his dream and with his strong and easy-going atti- tude. We were smoking hashish at his kitchen and listening to “Alice in Wonderland”. He advised me to get a job at video salon on Nevsky Prospect. And I did. I was working in a night turn in a small video shop stuffed with the DVDs of popular films and pornography But I was trying to find some art house films to play on the big screen on the wall. Like “The zoo” by Peter Greenaway. And there always came some strange types in the night to warm up. Some people who were left on the wrong side of the river after the bridge opening. Or prostitutes, homeless children, drug addicts and alcoholics. And they all said “Come on, put on something cheering”. But I didn’t.
- 23. Once I decided to rent a room in a communal I met a group of hippies while living in another communal flat in St. Petersburg. I found a cheap room in an flat next to Nevsky prospect. My neighbors were drug users, alco-trash district in the center. In my flat some and the only sympathetic people in the whole place. In that alcoholics were sitting in the kitchen all the time. year there was a hippy festival “Rainbow” in Karelia, and And the kitchen and corridor were all stuffed with the whole gang of hippies has arrived afterwards to St. Pete. some strange items like old plastic bags, tyres, Many of them found a shelter at my neighbors sleeping like piles of newspapers etc. etc. My room was so small a pile of firewood on the floor. One day I woke up feeling a that there could be only a bed and a wardrobe, and smell of rice with curry from the kitchen. It was cooked for some small space to move, like in Raskolnikov’s the whole commune. And some time after a part of these room. I had a CD player and headphones, in order people has moved to my place, and soon I have quit my to block the noise of the alcoholic parties from the work, started learning to play drums and to make fireshows, kitchen. And after one week there appeared a fat and discovered myself travelling hitchhiking to the Black sea man from Azerbaidjan with a family, who started together with them. to shout that it was his room and I had no right for it. So I discovered myself on the street, with all my stuff, passing through the bridge with golden griphons and crying. I met a friend who invited me to come to Moscow and to stay at his place. He was into historical reconstruction and practically that meant that the whole room was stuffed with the armor and every evening in this winter there came 8-10 people to smoke kalian. They all were working as the construction alpinists, and that winter they got hired by the house service to clean the snow from the roofs. That was the snowless winter, but they still got their sala- ries, and time to sit with the kalian every day. And I was running through Moscow, photographing the buildings, but selling noth- ing. For a change I bought a huge puzzle with a painting of Gaugin, and started to put it together in between the armor piles. It was the times of slowly going mad, so I decided to return to Tver. For that I had to break the puzzle, put it in the box, and start from the begin- ning. There is still a huge image of Taitian girls with pears hidden under the carpet in my parents’ house.
- 24. I rented a room together with a strange girl. I found her I the internet, and she was looking for a roommate. Her boyfriend had gotten to prison for the carrying a matchbox of weed, and she was really depressed. She used to spend several hours in the morning to dress and make up her face, and then suddenly to lie down on the bed and cry, and the rest of the day to watch the soap operas from 10 years ago. She also had a rabbit, who had gnawed all my cables for computer. After that I said that I was going to put a carrot in his ass. Soon it was the end of my living there. Then I was invited to stay in a lesbian commune in Moscow. It was just a way to rent a cheap flat and to get some tolerant peo- ple around you. I was sleeping on the same blow-up mattress with a woman 10 years older than me, but that mattress was the only thing which connected us. It was loosing the air and by the morning our bodies were rolling to the middle and touching the ground. The woman was very much stressed because her dog was slowly dying, her white dog philosopher, and we had to take care of it, to clean the shit. When the dog has died the woman became hysterical, got drunk and broke the CD-player, and cursed us all. That’s how it ended and it took me an eternity to clean the white wool from all my clothes.
- 25. Once my friend photographer has told Inside the territory I noticed a jeep me about a very far away mon- #22 with some fat people frying a shash- astery with a saint unfreezing stream. lyk. So we put our dress on the snow People say that if you dive in them three and dived. I hesitated if I should be times you’ll get all your sins washed off. completely naked. Finally my friend It was a snowy winter when we decided dived three times bravely, and I de- to go there. It took us all the day to get cided not to dive with my head. It was there by train, bus and then – 5 kilom- hot and weird feeling. Then we dressed eters with a timber-hauling vessel who quickly and went on foot 5 kilometers took us on the way through the forest. back to the village trough deep snow and Finally we arrived when it was very, very dirt. We spent a night on the train sta- dark. “The saint stream” turned tion, drying our socks on the radiator. out to be a small well packed in wood The friend told me that he dived because next to the monastery door. We knocked of his unhappy love. And I didn’t have at the monastery door, and said to a a reason to dive, anyway I didn’t feel all monk: “We came to take a saint dive”. my sins got off (otherwise why would And he said: “Ok, go for it!” and closed God abandon us here in this no-where the door. station). No sacred service, Maybe no putting a cross over us, that was no prayer, because no invitation I dived into the monastery. without my head.
- 27. Another try to come to the orthodox happened just before a photography competition where I had to participate. My teacher from the House of Youth was strongly orthodox, he even was trying to write the history of the Russian orthodox church on his own. He took me to a suburb monastery for the Eucharist rite, to some “good priest he knows very well”. “The good priest was not there at the moment” so I had to go to another one, a very fat man with a beard. I had to make a confession, so we sat down casually on the bench. I didn’t know what to tell. Suddenly I uttered: “Whaaat?” “Hm, I am a lesbian”. asked he. “Well, I love women”, ?” uncomfortable said I, feeling a bit about the situation. “Do you mean -physically asked he, and I felt just a manly curiosity. “Yes, physically”, said I calmly. “Then you have torepent” , said he. And I tried to repent but I didn’t know exactly what it meant. I didn’t know how to behave when he conducted the rest of the ceremony, and when he gave me a palm, I didn’t understand that I had to kiss it so I ignored it. After we went away my teacher asked: “What have you told to him so that he looked so pale?”
- 29. We were sitting on the roadside and were eating the eggs which the mother of my girlfriend has wrapped in plastic several days ago, before I’ve red a report of the autopsy. It was signed with an Armenian name. our trip. It was the last food which we had, after a long hitch-hiking trip The first thing he wrote about was her genitals. I imagined how an old fat to St. Petersburg. This time we got seriously stuck and bored to death. man has curiously explored her. Even dancing on the road didn’t help to stop some truck. We were sitting And her parents have spent a lot of time to suit the bus driver, but the on the black hard pile of what used to be snow. The shell of the egg didn’t court was obviously corrupt. Once I met this man in the corridor of the want to get cleaned, and I was looking how our dirty fingers had left the court. He was so ugly, disgusting and inhumanly that I stopped believing dirty traces on the white bodies of the eggs. And all this time her mother that the victim and the killer have a kind of the contract. was calling to mine to ask where I stole her daughter. This girl was a poet They tried to prove she has committed suicide. And once her mother whose family moved from Kamchatka. went to the priest and told that she was a lesbian. He answered: “And she got her death according to her sins”. We decided to buy one ticket fro the museums and go in turn. I sent her I worked to publish her poetry into a book, but never has recovered. After a message: I’m waiting for you where jazz is playing. I was next to Christ that all Russia stays for me a land of sorrow. A land of discontent. A land the Savior, where the musicians were playing jazz. Then I went to toilet, of absurd tragedies and repeating karma. I can’t agree with the political and my phone was uncharged. And I lost her. Afterwards I got a mes- and mind changes which are happening there. Every time I return back sage: there is no jazz, no you. I’m leaving. And she left and I stayed. And there I feel still more of the love-hate emotions. I can’t be so happy and we never were so close again. And one year after she has died. unhappy as there. Sometimes I feel as if this is the space beyond the end She was riding a bike, and a bus has run over her and has ruined her of the world. And I decided to step out there. To land to a neutral terri- body flat. tory. A territory of forgetting and forgiveness. I was in St. Petersburg and nobody could find me. My mother has called me several days later, so that I couldn’t come to her funeral. They have buried her in white dress, like a bride. And she was. I came only to see the grave. It was so hot, the sun seemed black and it smelled badly at the cemetery. So badly as only the rotting bodies could smell. And I put the chamomiles on her grave. Stupid big ugly chamomiles. And I was so dizzy and the cemetery was so big that I never remembered the way. Every time when I came afterwards, I had to spend several hours looking for the grave until I got dark. Sometimes I couldn’t find it.
- 30. Captions