The Algorithm of Chaos

Prologue

All somehow got in the groove by now. Well, yes, half a year in this here blockade, and you day after day wait for the pending ethnic cleansing, humanitarian catastrophe, another dirty war or special operation they keep threatening you with but still…

And before they there (who? where?) are reaching out for the Button, barking their orders down the chain of command, manning the installations, zeroing in on… and so on and forth, you have to find something to fill up the eternity forked out to you, right? Haven’t you?

So meanwhile, to ward off my premature demise from ennui I keep it up, my addiction, yeah, keep writing little by little. Moreover, I’m a small man on campus and because those ends of the world proliferate like mating rabbits (for the optimism’s sake I shun calling the roll even though I could and who feels interested in the matter fire off Google or something and enjoy your fill of consternation) let them themselves then sort it out who’s after who in their queue of ends.

Now, the hardest task, when you’re a writer, is finding a plot. It is the thing of paramount importance, the plot is, from which you’d see what you are about at all and what comes after what in your scribble while its absence spells disastrous primeval chaos and that metaphysical shit you’d better give a wide berth. Don’t ever venture into that dreary jungle, too few and far apart are those who managed to come back, almost zero, statistically speaking, were ever seen after. I swear. But even those who pop up back, by pure chance, are eyed suspiciously: wow, man! What a surprise! but why can’t I recollect you? your name, again?

In short, chaos will take you to the cleaners. Do you follow? Be smart, go and find a plot, so as to avoid unnecessary risks both for you and unprepared public. Hence, by the by, springs up that cursed, below-the-belt question: where to get it? The effing plot?

Here is my friendly and open answer: I have no idea! And in the same breath, parallelly, I am informed on existence of prodigies grunting under the weight of heaps, and hills, and Cheops’ pyramids of plots they have. Looks like some unscrupulous archaeologist has leaked to them the King Solomon Plots’ Mines GPS numbers. Yeah, so it looks to my naked eye. That’s how they go about it, clandestine extraction of plots, on the sly.

Asking for proves? Both natural and clever attitude, yours. Okay, recently and rather inadvertently I rammed into the fact myself and got dismayed in earnest. I wish I still remained in the dark about the issue. But it’s too late now. No way to ditch my awareness (screw Google!) that there is a certain authoress of more than four hundred plots and printed too in the form os bestsellers. While from behind she hears already the wheeze of another (also female) racer turning out her 387th book! How do you like it? The couple of shrews, even if counted apart, belted Steven King’s, and Alexander Dumas, and Alexander Dumas Jr.’s output taken collectively. I couldn’t but feel dismayed and sorry for the guys because of unalloyed solidarity of cavemen.

However, my concern is yield of worthy literary products not base flimflam for housewives and other society strata witth not fully developed psyche. As of yet, if ever.

The problem touched here (as lightly as it is humanly possible, not to take much of your precious time) is not anything new. On the contrary! Back in 19th century did irk it Pushkin, the great swarthy Pushkin who gave birth to the Russian poetry per se. It was his habit, when too sore by the problem, to ask his serf nurse:

‘Whither to sail?’

That was his way of begging from Arina Rodionovna a plot, subtly and metaphorically…

And all of a sudden, no nurse applied, I had a lucky strike! A good plot was stumbled at, faith! Even though it had some drawbacks—being written in English—but then who’s ideal, eh? And as always, the silver lining was in place, that is, the Russian reader hadn’t chanced yet to get not bored by the stuff. Besides, no need to skirt around the sanctions meant to quench the Russian aggression, alias Special Military Operation, against Ukraine because the plot sits on this, Russian, side of the communicational hedge, at the litres.com domain, lucky me!

‘Now, boy, to the mill!,' said I to myself, and dug elatedly, and delved euphorically into translation. But then the insider whistle-blower (I don’t know if you have this built-in bitch which is beyond the point anyway) blew it, the above-mentioned whistle. Like, there had cropped up not a little deviations from the original text and the original author might feel hurt, a sort of.

Well, yes, I also marked there a thing or two for deeper contemplation, after the whistling I did, and had to scratch where anyone’s supposed to when having an itchy sensation but then, gradually, I came to the final conclusion:

‘Fuck you! You don’t like it? Then go and sue me! Sue me or draw it if you be a man! Ungrateful jerk! I’ve let you into my personal space, allowed you to publish your hooey from my personal litres.com account, and now what?’

So, while the bugger gathers back his shooed off thoughts, I go on translating it into Russian for my compatriots… No blood ties involved though, my compatriots by sharing this here planet.

2023-05-05

a. What made me walk out on sports?

Strange may it seem, yet the career of a weight lifter never appealed to me as an attractive walk of life. Quite captivating sports, no denying. Look at the guy’s seductive way of approaching the thing, caressing that smooth shaft in the barbell, the tenderness itself. His stare turned away to something a thousand miles off so as not to scare it prematurely. And then, the unexpected savage roar—yargkhah!—and tears he up above his head all that mass of metal. A couple of seconds, maybe three, the stick stands under the weight, his coccyx a-jerking spasmodically, before to smite the bitch against the floor! Some sportsman, not suitably reserved, might add a yell sounding like “screw you!” Or even to kinda jump. Not overly high though because of his improper shape, a weight lifter never reaches an altitude above half a meter, not even with the pole.

The barbell whimpers its clang-bang complains to the gym flooring, and shuts up, while the weight lifter, like a proud ironclad, goes off with a swagger. Well, yes, not exactly goes but carries he his beefy cross of muscles to the sport podium to mount it and to thrust from aloof his head thru the medal band. Then he would stand erect and listen to the anthem he’d been brought up under or to that of the nation whose chawbacon did occupy the upper step. Besides, the motley flags hang down, also three in number… A catchy show.—

Still and yet, I don’t even know why, there always was a feeling – no, not for me that barbell and stuff.

Later, as my regular ails caused by the Olympic Games current on TV abated, I got it finally that they were not for nothing busting their asses. Nah! Some guy was grunting from under that bloody barbell to stake off a separate apartment another one to secure a seat for himself in the Committee, no matter which one, they would tell, and so forth. And that’s an absolutely justified ends – why should he otherwise make of himself from his junior years a beast of burden, huh? Straining his skeleton and all to the detriment of his mental skills? Not aiming at to break wind fiercely while he puts back on trucks a derailed trolley in a coal pit, right? Of course, as anywhere else, there are zilch winners too with a chronic rupture instead of the booby-prize of his much-coveted medal.

For these and suchlike good reasons sports somehow failed to hook me on. Well, maybe except for the free calisthenics and figure skating, in part, yet also temporarily before I grew up to appreciating Rubensian forms.

Which is a pity, on the whole, because sport is life. Ask any hockey player and he’ll confirm it. Yes, you’re likely not at once to decipher his lisping thru the couple of teeth still there, the rest knocked out in the ice arenas, which is the underlying reason for their speech problems. And stay assured, when leaving the harsh ice of jousts, they do insert their dentures to have what to smile with, yet the lisp still abides, that’s the mark of their profession. Unavoidable.

The fact is well-expressed in that lyrics by Robert Rozhdestvensky to that soundtrack song by Arno Babajanian for the famous Soviet spy-epic sequence:

…give your cut to the mutual course / the scars and evening bells will be your pay…

Damn, no! Wait! It was Michael Tariverdiev who composed the music, a Georgian Armenian:

‘tyn-dyn-dyn ta-da-da tyn-dyn-tyn’

A really cool rhythm there, by the way…

Now, they were the reasons why I walked out on sports. We split, you may say, without getting to know each other properly.

The sad outcome called for hunting down some other field where to apply myself.

b. The Silver Screen, my boy, brings forth a whale of a joy!

Thus, on parting with my hope for an outstanding career in sports or, to make it graspable even for tik-tokers, as it turned my ex-hope far behind any fail-safe, I had to ponder pretty deep: where to? In which direction to channel my amazing talents for their full realization?

Clear enough, to stake on a Russian movie with me in it as the leading star will cut no fronds off Golden Palm. That ficus on steroids pulls for lesbian passions lately. Yeah, sure, with the advancement in plastic cutting and sewing the task is fairly trivial – silicon padding here and there, penis turned-inside-out-and-tucked-in to fix you with a brand new pocket, and – giddy up, girl!

Up to unsparing display of raw facts of nature and naked truth in the minutiae of all sorts. Up to the details which would leave ISIS hit men stilled in catatonic fits. Up to the confrontation with the Animal Protection Society canvassing for the global ban on demonstration of films awarded the Palme d’Or by the Cannes Film Festival Jury (moreover special prizes by the said panel of connoisseurs) to the octopuses imprisoned in bio-laboratories specialized in developing the methods for extensive farming and processing of the said critters into canned sea-food, protein-rich and stuff, despite the APS claims of supremacy of octies intelligence over that of humans.

And at that point I raised my voice. Stop! (said I out loud) Whoa, man! (said I to myself) I put my foot down shut up with this shit! Not a chance I’ll ever allow to spoil this hunky bad ass, me. The buster does deserve, albeit slightly narcissistic, love and fondling, on the whole.

What about tacking to UzbekFilm, huh? To star in their psychological thrillers?

Yet, there’s not without a cinch too. Any schoolkid can easily foretell that UzbekFilm directors roll their joints up of the buds grown locally which stuff is over and above the herb used by Mr. Snoop Dogg of the New-York City. Although yeah, he’s got a good connection too, look into the guy’s eyes and you’re immediately high from pure solidarity. I mean, given the Uzbek ganja quality, one thriller in progress will take a decade for its accomplishment. Minimally.

Now, they roll out a noir masterpiece when there have remained no audience around to appreciate the subtleties of the director’s touch and far-fetching allusions even less to dig the crap at all. Rather a bleak debit-credit perspective, to be frank.

What remains there? Hollywood? A suck-dried wasteland. For each and every leading role a scrambling line of Kobzon’s great-nephews in four generations ahead. And such a hubris knee they are! Your being on friendly terms with Auntie Fanny Tsiperovitch is not a pledge and good enough guarantee for you acting the next Batman or Bond, James Bond! Some gratitude for my keeping back politely any comment on their great Uncle’s lousy singing and the preposterous wig he sported thru all of his career.

Nothing doing, Bollywood loomed ahead for my destination, last and only. Which also teemed, on the second thought, with certain problems.

Each film down there is a marathon of no less than 2 sequels (which is minor) and in every one you have to give out up to 6 numbers singing and dancing simultaneously. About dancing, I am cool, the choreography’s brimming up in me after the third shot. Even I myself get amazed and delighted by the spontaneous dance figures given out by me, unexpectedly.

However, my scope of the available vocalizing never surpassed that of V. Vysotsky’s husky below, shots or no shots. Which musical talent I am proud of, yet by sober estimation, those falsetto hits “Jimmy! Jimmy! Ay-ya! Ay-ya!” fanatically loved by the Indian film-goers are not in my gamut.

In the end I just cast that whole sphere—lock, stock, and barrel—of movie production like a bone thrown by a knight to dogs at a feasting about the Round Table. Fight for it, limp mongrels!

Still at times, as I shave the bristles off the mug watching me from the mirror, do address I the character:

‘Yo, Bro! I say, the three of us—I, Belmonde, and Nick Nolte—would make a god-awesome fine team for The Three Musketeers! The trinity they can’t even dream of, those dandelion cunt-suckers can’t.’

OK, let’s leave them alone in their sandbox acting fallen in love or in the battle field. Leave them alone, the bohemian elite of featherheads! They know nothing even less can learn they, stuck in stale, dismal monotony, where all the difference between the drifters and Wall Street wolves they act springs from the studio wardrobe.

c. Waiting hat-in-hand for charity alms from Nature? Forget it! We’ll rip off all by scientific methods!

For those curious to see the extent of my wobbling after encounter with the two mighty blows—neither the Golden Palm nor Gold Olympic medals for me!—which shocked the very foundation of my psychic conditions, let them once again scrutinize the Vasnetsov’s masterpiece The Knight at the Crossroads (1,67 m x 3,08 m).

See? That’s me on the horse back, side view, with high boots on and in medieval pants instead of my perennial jeans. The almost life-size replica of me sitting on my faithful steed in deep contemplation – now what? Maybe, to try a tack towards the fundamental science? Moreover, they always were in a good rapport, the science and my inner world. Congruence in basic features, you know.

Yep. I’ve got a fairly scientific temperament and potential, especially in the sphere of thinking. When I start thinking I might just keep in on, and on, and on… thinking, I mean. At times fully forgetful of what namely or which was the initial thought, yet still go on, and on… The force of inertia, I think.

Furthermore, there certainly sits a deep-rooted bent for research, in me. Say, I come across some vague device or thing, or other implement, you know, where even a kid would get it instantly – the crappy scrap’s an obsolete doodad from decades back, throw the trash away, wash your hands and forget it. But no! I would dismantle it and unscrew the last screw to see what’s inside before collecting the dingus’ parts altogether to dump into the nearest garbage container, still as uncracked enigma…

So why (if you don’t mind my asking), given so favorable a bunch of kick-off talents, did I not get along with a scientific career? And everyone supposing at this point that I’d give out a list of shortcomings, uncertainties, and sheer absurdities it’s full of and start picking holes in science then think once more, mon cher.

That way it would look like a template already: sport activities knocked out, movies production steamrolled ruthlessly – what ugly things will I dig out disparaging the science?

Vain are your agronomical expectations, my dear friend! Whenever I talk business, I pour out the truth as is without any equivocacy and other oversees spice. Such a stance makes my life easier, afterwards, it leaves no space for belated self-accusations in being a slickly streamlined bitch obedient to demands and exchange rate in the political arena, trading my truthful self for a soft seat under my ass at my workplace and other comforts. Nope. The first and foremost is my personal health for whose sake I say what I think, and feel, and understand.

So what—again and namely—saved science from my ground-breaking, epoch-making discoveries which neither Einstein nor Tesla saw in their wildest dreams?. Ever?.

Despite my obvious propensity towards pure science, there popped up a pesky predicament attributed irrefutably to my personality traits. One of those prevented my plain sailing to the glamorous shores of purity.

To tear, straight and openly, the mask of false shyness – yes, it was me or, rather, my unconquerable dislike of useless inactivity that separated us from each other, Science and me.

The most noteworthy fact about my vibrant briskness is that it tends to manifest itself selectively. On the one hand, I’m quite capable of sitting on for hours, who fly by like seagulls past a buoy of no interest to the gluttons looking for some chow, when I am pouring over an electronic microscope or thru the Hubble telescope (none of which I have got, as of yet, as well as a bicycle which cryingly unjust deficiencies I refuse to discuss now).

And on the other hand, whenever called to participate in a sitting of any kind at all, be it an AA caucus, a General Assembly of UN (the most hateful are those time-wasting get-togethers of a trade union members) I feel sick in one way or another. Some averse endocrine shit shoots thru my system, the bladder sounds sirens of micturition alert and, so as to abate their combined peak of energy, I evaporate on the sound excuse of legitimate need of peeing immediately.

That same restlessness turned to be the stumbling block as big as the huge rock carved with the directions for further routs in front of the knight-ridden stallion’s face who does not know how to skirt around it, the stallion doesn’t because the knight in his medieval pants and not my jeans gives no clue to his means of transportation and just sits irresolute and irresponsive to the uncertain snorts of his companion with the stares of them both fixed blankly to the rock.

Which fork to take? Really? The divination for the outcome down each of the three trails available are pretty ominous: loosing your dear life, loosing your faithful steed, getting married to who knows whom. Some bleak dilemma for any sentient explorer, take my word. Just like choosing your way in science which, let’s be frank, is a minefield of all kinds of briefings, meetings, colloquiums, symposiums, congresses, conferences, convocations…

Let us peruse a trivial, predictable case of my visiting Stockholm to collect the Nobel Prize for my quant-mechanical achievements and—bolt from the blue!—it turns out I have to sit thru the Ceremonial Blah-Blah first! So? And have you consulted my peppy whippiness beforehand? Just to plumb if your planing had feasible grounds?

Hence, the conclusion which any average horse would whisper into your ear: sorry, mankind, for leaving you without the second to none discoveries and inventions but—even for the sake of your unavoidable convergence with AI—I won’t rape my nature. Not a chance!

That’s what I am and gonna stay on unlike the proverbial hunchback getting straightened by his grave. Mind you – my personal hole is to be dug taking in account the peculiarities of the would-be filling (supposedly – me but… well, whatever… Forget it.)

Sehrgueys, are notoriously tough customers, if you recall the Cicero’s harangue or another, recenter development at the Radonezh Monastery where the Catilina’s namesake’s funerary skiff went counter the flow drift which phenomenon was not expected by the onlookers from the bank because 600 years ago the science was not keen yet on motor-boats.

(*A life-hack tip here for startup parents: be careful at choosing the name for your newborn so as not to kick yourselves later for the gaga flippancy – “Ah! The kid’s turned utterly unruly!”)

And finally, summing up my scientific experiences, it’s only fair to admit: whatever is is right and although we, I and the science, keep moving on independently, the separation might very well be for the better.

How do I know? Easy as a pie. After taking a shot at a crossword or puzzle I have a nasty backache next day because whatever I do I do with enthusiastic vigor.

d. Find yourself and pass the rudder to the foundling

And if anyone had, nonetheless, the nerve to read up to this here line just to remark, both deductively and scornfully, to themselves, ‘The guy is so predictable! Now, he’ll start kicking the educational system’s ass,' then, dear Sherlock, take my advice: possessing suchlike knack at clairvoyance keep off betting.

No, Sir. I refrain from whipping it, the system that has formatted us and picked up mutilating our offsprings, not because of its immaculately chaste innocence—miles from that! the slut has been used by every other fool in all manners of postures and weird juxtapositions—but out of a pity for the poor wretch. And, overwhelmed with empathy, all I can say is “o! poor thing!” and clamp my teeth firmly blocking the outpour of four-letter words, condolent as well. Absolved you are, poor child, go take some rest before the upcoming reformative changes in you by a bunch of sleek-talk buffoons.

As a natural gentleman I have no intention of entering the subject any deeper and instead will I get straight over to where all of my meander circumgyrations were, up till now, leading to so as to let you see what namely I am about, after all.

Now, dearest dear, get ready! Your entrance, yes, the dessert crowns a dinner, mind it, sweetie.

Hats off, gentlemen! No semi-monde tramps here… Enters Lady Belles-Lettres!

I do foresee the ineluctable backlash, like, the smirk of my acquaintances at any level of familiarity, ‘What? That jerk and belle-letters? Are you kidding?,' and haughty, ‘One more hick in dang-smeared boots!,' from the heights of the Laureate-Nominees’ Olympus, and the matter-of-fact response from the too busy slip-slap-sloppy bestseller kneaders – ‘A bitchy upstart!,' and “Holy Baaa! Belle-Bull!’ braying by the counter-culture shitheads from their glossy latrine they try to sell us on as the Underground.

What belletrist am I? Frankly – I have no idea, some passages of mine are, like, to my liking, others not exactly, depends on the extent of the dose consumed, I reckon, and, maybe, on the time of day as well. Yes, Sir, I stay ignorant as to who I am as well as to which correction institution will be honored with seeing my end. Yet one thing I know for sure – there are no born belletrists, writer is a self-made product.

That said, I’m far from denying possible presence of one or two smithereens of truth in the commentaries of my still-to-emerge-at-some-later-point critics, be they aesthetes groomed in the scholarly shade of ostensible family trees or common drunkards kicked out from full of hell of a lot of noise speakeasies. A winged byword from the public domain attests that any asshole might happen right when they pop up at a proper place with good timing.

And yet, how pitiful are the clowns who try at staking off their short-lived being right and keep their current position forever by falsifying elections results! Nitwit schmo schmucks with their tries at putting shackles on time!

And you, Citizen, keep back your shocked-loyal-subject’s burps, I meant Muammar Kaddafi here. As of yet. Though the finish by them all is pretty similar—a gutter holding the divine ruler of yesterday now ditched and turned rat-food. Game over, Your Majesty…

Secondly, what else am I supposed to do if fishing does not turn me on? Neither get I aroused by Real Madrid nor by Manchester United? What is there to do? (Damn, I have definitely met the phrase someplace. Am I plagiarizing?)

The answer is as simple as follows: your only choice, sonny, is to become a belletrist. Amen.

And here immediately springs up the galling question: why?

‘You are asking “why?” Comrades! This here Citizen would like to know “why”!’

(‘Couldn’t stand the temptation, huh? Poached from Dovlatov, you bookworm thief!’