Whatever I write, it will turn out to be a fake version of what we actually experienced and felt.
If we are here, it means we want to run away from something. Everyone has their own reason, and it is unlikely that each of us is fully aware of it. In that case, dropping everything and flying to the other side of the planet, without consequences, calmly, without staging loud goodbyes, is the best way out. This escape is a time to heal internal conflicts, a chance to forget, to start all over again. It is a filter against unimportant people.
When you realize that there are two long months ahead from the start of the escape until your return, you can sleep peacefully. It's still a long time. May this help us understand ourselves. And then we will run away again, back home.
Usually, people carefully plan their place of escape. Why the USA? Plenty of space to hide and nothing like home to miss.
The USA presents itself as free and independent. Is it possible to achieve harmony in a person and a nation by granting them complete freedom of action? Child psychology deals with this question. Let's assume that one child was allowed to do everything, while the second had their desires restricted. The first will most likely grow up open and friendly, while the second will become withdrawn, often silent, gloomy, and pensive. I am, of course, talking about America and Russia. But equally, permissiveness and total control can have side effects. A child who was allowed everything will grow up selfish, while one who had to settle for little will listen to others.
No one will ever be able to predict the consequences, and no one will be able to raise humanity under one comb. And that is why there is Russia and America, with half the Earth and misunderstanding between them. They just can't understand us, and we can't understand them.
Americans are not constrained by anything. No one will judge you if you ride the bus in stained clothes, with your pants down, with a bag that reeks of cutlets, while you put your feet on the seat and have a plastic bag on your head.
Their Facebook is nothing like our social network VKontakte. An ex-wife, an ex-girlfriend as the profile picture, photos from the last party that you are ashamed to remember later. In general, the kind of photos that Russians first delete, then burn, and scatter the ashes to the wind.
Buses run conscientiously without delays; everyone has a schedule booklet where you can see numbers like 1:37 pm, not mysterious "every 20 minutes." Every minute is calculated. If a bus arrives early at one of the stops, it will wait until the appointed time strikes. If you are traveling with a transfer, you will never miss your bus - the time is calculated so that you arrive on time.
We take a short walk into town. There seems to be nothing to see here; in some areas, it looks like it's been bombed. The center was especially surprising - shabby walls, no people, no shops, nowhere to buy a bottle of water. Sometimes you feel like the hero of the movie "I Am Legend." From the street, one storefront catches our eye, with the name "Dolly's Vintage" hanging above it.
Jennifer from Main Street in Durham, NC was inspired by her grandmother. She inherited things that had served their time, distinguished by a certain retro charm. It immediately occurred to her to open her own shop, calling it Dolly's Vintage. There are new things there too, but the old ones stand out from all the rest with their charming shabbiness.
The more natural modern toys look, the more unnatural children's relationships with the world around them become. Why get a real kitten and take care of a living ball of warmth if you can buy something similar in appearance in a toy store, an electronic creature on batteries that makes meowing sounds?
"Dessine-moi un mouton," the Little Prince said to the narrator, and he didn't know how to draw it, even though he had seen it many times. All you need is imagination, even if you have an ordinary plastic lamb. Imagine it - and instead of plastic curls, it already has soft wavy locks.
I managed to look through a whole pile of greeting cards from thirty years ago, and it was like connecting to the recipient with an invisible thread, even though they might no longer be alive.
The state capital, Raleigh, greets us with rain and humidity. Hair gets frizzy, you feel very sticky. There are high-rise buildings here and simple houses with flat roofs. Sometimes you might think that someone deliberately removed the roofs from all the houses to clear the horizon. On the way on the bus, we look at unfamiliar signs and inscriptions in complete silence - everything seems so new and unexplored.
The ninth floor of the parking lot, from the unaccustomed height, the eyes see almost a view from a skyscraper.
In the evening, the city is somewhat blue, looking like a small New York.
We are sometimes drawn to all sorts of Tom Sawyer-style adventures. They necessarily include darkness and the fear of every rustle of nature. Tom Sawyer was not afraid of bugs; he was brave, but not in a stupid way. When real danger arose, he knew how to hide in time.
We walk through the cemetery, stone graves ominously exposed by a flashing lightning bolt. On the forest road, an orange lantern crackles, crickets call to each other. As soon as they fall silent, only the annoying sound of a dying light bulb remains. A sharp car horn breaks into the silence, we hear our own muffled scream. We scan the graves with our eyes: they have tilted, bowed to the ground. Wealthier, once-living people erected a statue for themselves. It is either a quadrangular monument, similar to the Washington Monument, or a grieving statue of a woman. When lightning wounds the sky, I peer into the row of battered obelisks. An anxious wind touches the leaves, and they, wounded, begin to whisper. It's good that there is no silence.
Two hours along deserted roads with private houses, where you want to believe that your only observers and companions are cockroaches and crickets. There are two of us (at least we hope so), Olya and I, we huddle to the side of the road and hold hands tightly. We know that at the first gust of fear, we will scream or run away. There are many trees on the road, they cast gloomy shadows. If the branches are lowered too low, we will definitely get into a spider web. Either the spiders are so hardworking that they weave their nets day and night, or the streets are so empty that there is no one but us to get into the web. We speak in whispers or are completely silent. I would like to keep silent further, but bad thoughts creep into my head, so it is better to talk about anything.
From the hour-and-a-half road, fatigue has accumulated somewhere in the area of the back and legs, but fear and the instinct of self-preservation drive us forward. Street after street, one more wooded and darker than the other. If a guard dog met us on the way or a person jumped out of an alley, the thrills would reach their zenith. But no one was met.
The danger passes. The legs are already barely walking, and the senses are dulled. Bed, we stretch out across it. And we cannot utter a word.
I move on to the topic I mention most often: my work. We are already writing to clients on order checks.
One of them handed me such a bill. It's nice, after all.
And this is Sally, we work with her at the restaurant. When I just started writing this post a week ago, I didn't know which of the waiters to tell about this time, and Sally and I were barely acquainted then. But she won my trust so quickly that I wanted to write about her. She looks like a cute mouse, very curious. She looks young, sometimes even a little younger than us, although she is already 21, and unlike many workers, she is not lazy. And she is musical, and I love musicians. She brings a guitar or ukulele to work, hides it under a black tablecloth on the second floor.
The ukulele has a small piece of wood broken off. Her friend found it in old things without a case and sold it to Sally for two dollars. She sings wonderfully, and I like that, unlike many, she is not conceited. She listens to country, folk, jazz, writes songs herself, and participates in concerts.
The ukulele has the inscription "When it looked like the sun would not shine again, God put a rainbow in the clouds". She explains something about how she was once at a concert that stuck in her soul for the rest of her life, where one performer said this phrase.
We managed to get to know each other better only on Thursday, and on the same day, she announces that Saturday is her last day at this job, that she will have to quit. On that same Thursday, we sit and talk about books, Sally is very well-read, even familiar with many Russian authors. Luis sits down with us (I'll tell you about him next time). He is one of those temperamental Spanish guys. He has never heard of Remarque, but listens to excellent folk-style music. We immediately find common folk artists and go into the world of music. They write their favorite songs in my notebook, and I write mine for them. Luis likes to fool around, asks me to draw him a snow leopard. I quickly scribble, want to show him, but he beats me to it, opens the notebook himself, sees the leopard, and pretends he likes it. "I will keep it close to my heart," he says. Well, he's lying, of course.
He also drew us a picture. He never explained who it was, a ninja turtle or a rabbit without a crown.
On Friday, Sally brings that very ukulele. We work in the morning, there are few visitors, and therefore we have some free time and a table in the corner where camera lenses do not reach. Somewhere there, employers are watching us, but the table seems to be created for chatting in the morning hours when the restaurant is empty. We sit on the bench and tuck our legs under us. Sally starts singing to her muffled guitar. But her voice covers this muffledness, there is something deep, hopeful, spring-like in it. Strength is heard in it, and her external fragility contrasts with it. Her voice transforms her, as if you are instantly endowed with a powerful flow of energy. I wondered where she got so much voice, so much inner strength, because she is so small. It turned out that her major at university is law, and lawyers must be strong. Here we are already singing well-known jazz songs by Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald together, and even Creep by Radiohead. Unlike many, it is pleasant to sing with Sally, she does not try to drown you out or outsing you.
We thank each other for the songs, she takes her ukulele under her arm and leaves, now forever, we will not see her in the restaurant again. She advises me on a violin shop in Durham, invites me to her concert next Monday. I feel somehow sad that I will no longer see how she hides her guitar under the black curtain on the second floor. Good people sometimes run away somewhere.
I am in complete darkness. My eyes focus on one dark spot, then on another, as if trying to warn of possible danger in advance. Because of the darkness, the pupils are large, quickly darting from one tree bared by moonlight to another. With my peripheral vision, I notice a glow. These are fireflies. You never know from which part of the darkness they will appear. Sometimes, in the hope of seeing them, you peer for a very long time, and not a single emerald light will appear.
Sometimes you can see a whole starfall of fireflies. They seem to be flying somewhere to a new place or closer to dry land. During or after rain, they are almost invisible.
There is too much magic in them for our world. Like a single light bulb of a Christmas garland, the saving flicker of a lighthouse, a falling star, a firefly soars into the darkness, a small keeper of light. As if the moon and stars themselves are reflected in it. It seems that you only need to follow it, and it will lead you somewhere where there is hope and always a lot of such soothing green glow, like a night light. Somewhere to the stars, through the darkness.
If it seems to you that your life is passing in darkness, then you should look into it carefully and patiently. And then you will definitely see a firefly.
