English Summary
Editor’s Letter
Show me your Tumbler
By Igor Garanin
As is well known, our spring doesn’t come according to the calendar. We all have experience at hoping that the first warm days will come in the middle of April, no earlier. Nikolai Noskov’s kettle will be the first to whistle: “Spring has come, like paranoia,” the popular singer will announce. Spring will perhaps have come, but paranoia won’t abandon us, if we’re honest. Have you ever noticed that whenever you come home from a trip abroad, a new function gets turned on inside of you, a certain kind of additional equipment. No, that’s not it: when you’re at home, you don’t notice this particularity. You leave, let’s say to go to Italy, you relax, you start to be inspired by a trust in people. You stop seeing evil intentions behind the broad smile of a stranger. You walk calmly by a police officer, and you may even exchange a few words with him, ask a question, discuss the weather. And you will be certain that he will politely answer your question and say a few words about the weather. Sincerely and with ease. You return to Moscow: you enter, for example, the customs zone. And suddenly an unobtrusive diode will light up in the corner of your right eye and start blinking. Before, you seemed to have no thoughts in your head: you’re not carrying large sums of money in cash and you didn’t even buy anything valuable or edible. But you shrink a little bit inside, fully armed for battle: don’t look anyone in the eye, give accurate, one-word answers to questions. That diode continues flashing again and again: you have the peripheral vision of a wild animal. I act like I always do, and yet I see everything. I don’t move my head, but I’m scanning my surroundings, making sure there are no encroachments to my freedom or my well-being. This equipment for living life “a la Russe” spins out of control, it begins to put pressure on you: everything is subject to it. Even in a small room for movie premiers, everyone notices you but acts as if nothing has happened.