над письменным столом в швейцарии у меня висел...

I had your portrait hanging over a desk in Switzerland. in a funny military cap-hat, which seemed unseemly unserious to everyone else (... little Xenia rolled in half army triangle with a star in her forehead seemed to be the apogee of fairy-tale folklore, which I was a big fan of until eight years) ... the headdress, which marks belonging to the naval forces, seemed to me a symbol of dignity, valor and honor.

I remember your restrained nods of approval. remember the smell. I remember the eternal smile in my eyes - you could give light, piercing gut to a tremor, endowing me with this energy of my beloved green eyes.

before the next semester in a foreign land, I climbed into your empty office, smelling of expensive perfume, tree and books, and spent a long time sorting out the shots taken in the distant nineties - for some miracle, the device, managed by you, slides in boxes.

there were a lot of memories. I sorted them, as today the feelings and emotions are sorted by a lie detector. gripping the slides tightly in my palm, I brought them up to a desk lamp.

so I chose her - the only photograph in which you were captured as a young, twenty year old. I graduated from university at twenty exactly, receiving a Swiss diploma with honors.

Later, the same signs of differences in the form of shoulder straps appeared on my shoulders at twenty-six: exactly two years ago. I appreciated them more than work, status and reputation.

I always thought, believed and it seemed that you look down on me - and, of course, you smile. I even dreamed of how you laugh at my next blunder, saying in a warm voice: “don't disappoint, Marus, break through.”

a sense of humor was not your fad - it was your horse, on which you skillfully, like a mountain warrior, went out of the bedroom every morning.

and was filled with happiness all day long: “nothing lasts forever, nothing collapses, everything is reparable”. I forgot this sacred formula without you. I live every day, telling myself: "we are eternal, and even if the world collapses, it will not lose me."

ubud to Bali probably took its name from here - in this magical jungle of faraway Indonesia nothing diminishes - it just arrives.

I remember how we passed the endless cableway on the way to rafting, and time traders everywhere in Bali followed us: “buy an elephant, my father carved it out of the tree”. you were wearing a funny panama covering from the rays, and a black backpack with the most necessary inside.

you didn’t have the clear intention to buy all these elephants, toads, giraffes, you just had fun while we were walking the road together. “A man, a hundred bucks is our last price” - and this is a thousand kilometers later. and you, with a smile holding on to the rocking handrails of the ropes, insured me from behind and as the song kept saying “one dollar onli” to them.

all ended, of course, a complete fiasco by the sellers. izmorennye, dying from the heat, they were ready to give us these elephants, if only to stop following the only of the tourists who dared to keep up the conversation with them.

and now we are at the ferry with inflatable colored boats, and you are paying for all the twenty: they give you a cow, a bull, an elephant; home-made murals, which later will hang everywhere, fragrant with Balinese freedom of spirit. the figure of the old man fishing, which her mother left behind in the study when moving: he seemed harsh, unkind to her, and her mother was suspicious.

I remember you so that I wake up every day and fall asleep with your smile. we are not afraid of the gray wolf! but to live, having become a wolf, and howling like a wolf - here it is, everyone's clear choice. I'm not a wolf, dad. and you are not a wolf. you are human we have no limit with you :)

but seriously, I will not be the same wolf, na. only a proud wolf, who knows for sure that even Mowgli can be tamed by warming.

distinguish between octaves, notes, bodies, odors and seasons; taking the scent of another fortress, hardly approaching in it, to take out the dungeons of all captured wolves from the cellar, without fear of wolfhounds. thirst for conversation with the sorcerer - but where is there to find such?

from the most tangled, sophisticated wilds of fate, you always led me out - intuitively, gently, without screams. no matter how much people, religions, documents convince me. I know that you are with me. knowledge is a bottomless thing.

you always said: “what you believe is what it is”. and still "fight, until you hear how your heart beats." and believe not - it is still beating. only here, as Assai says, "the heart cannot beat and beat."

I promised myself a word: no physical abuse. hence, this awareness in me: the most painful blow is inflicted not on movement - but on its impulse, intention. the most accurate moment of hit is determined not by fate - but by yourself. the clearest way to create a chain reaction is to throw the ends into the water, and be steel. flint, concrete, steel. the most powerful blow is always dealt with the word.

and I will not give up, na. I will never give up. even if a meteorite falls on us - believe me, I will fly on it to the same place where it came from. under the flag of your name.

Happy Victory Day, pa.
Happy Victory Day.

May 11, 2018