A Story about How I didn't get to be in a school play

where I get even more distracted than usual

I was born. Oh, it reminds me -that’s how I started answering the first question on my first “serious” job interview, at which point the interviewer cut me off and told me “I can see that you were born”. 

In short, I was born and grew up in an empire. It didn’t call itself an empire, yet still. 

As somebody who grew up in an empire -I don’t like empires. For one, they meddle.

 Then, if they wouldn’t meddle, I guessed only lately -they wouldn’t be empires anymore. 

I also noticed, most people from empires, while theoretically not wanting to meddle, still want to meddle, but differently and better, meaning as they themselves see fit.
 
Or they don’t want to meddle but do want to save their special status of being the best something. 

“Best something” changes per an empire in question but persists that it indeed exists. The Soviet Union for example had everything best plus the biggest elephants (kidding; that was our inside joke) 

Interestingly, many anti-imperialist people seem to often eventually end up rooting for yet another empire, usually the one that impacts their own lives the least. It’s understandable. 

The moment it starts impacting their life, it stops being as enticing.

Once I read diaries left by a Russian woman who hated Soviets, many did, silently, but she hated so much, she really but really waited for Germans to come and instill some new order.

So, she cheers when the war starts. 

But. Wars don’t tend just to start, strangely, then they continue. 

 And so, she describes finding herself and family under occupation during WW2. When troops indeed come, she’s surprised it’s not what it’s cracked to be, and no enlightenment happens, but other, rather gloomy, things. 

Troops on the ground change-Germans leave, some other troops allied with Germans come, don’t remember, Romanians I think, then somebody else, etcetera. Each troops appear to be even crueler somehow. Or maybe it is her who’s more exhausted and desperate.

Then at some point, she leaves a heartbreaking line in her diary “So who to wait for now??” (“Так кого же теперь ждать??”)

One can be against all empires, of course. That’s a nice position to assume, the more I think about it.  I need to study it more. Bora Bora seems to be the place where I’d like to study, great everything including cuisine, only I vaguely suspect that tsunami will hit shortly after I arrive. Wherever I go something happens, I start thinking maybe it’s me behind all the ills of the world. 

One can be (un) fortunate to witness empires’ ruin; then after a period of chaos, wars, diseases and lots of people perishing, some other empire or wannabe is born and finds itself needing to meddle because it is, too, very special. It is very heartwarming to know many have hopes that something different will emerge, it reminds me of Chekhov’s plays. 

If you think I can suggest something practical, beyond not waiting for someone too passionately -I don’t. 

Also, maybe sadly for mankind, I’m not an activist -even though they tended to put me in that role especially until middle school. I’ve a leader’s qualities, I explained. 

Maybe because of that I dislike being an activist. At this point of my life for sure. 

 Either they wanted me to be “a commander of the small star” or “a class pioneer squad commander” or some such -and each time I had to ask, at the end of the school year, to please elect somebody else. All this commanding is not to my taste. 

While at that-I also dislike anything that’d be reminding me of preaching and slogans. Had enough of these in school. 
 “Let’s all agree on… “(followed by something basic that I knew by the age of 6.  Granted I was at my smartest then, and only become dumber and dumber since.) 

The thing is, I was 6 already once, and while it was a nice age to be in, some stuff I’d leave there.

I had great memory, -the number of poems and prosaic passages I had to memorize and recite, at different ceremonies, was dizzying. 

If it was a classroom play, other normal kids would get to be squirrels, or bunnies, or foxes, or snowflakes.

Only I had to be whoever tells the tale. 

A ray of hope glistened when I was already 12, I think, and it was New Year time, and we decided to put together a play about Cinderella, all by ourselves, and I was to be the  Cruel Stepmother.

Unfortunately, after the first rehearsal, we had an epic snow fight between the girls and the boys.  

Only all the boys were present and very cheerful, and of the girls, there were only 3, and two other girls told me they’re running to get more of stickier, better-for the-snowballs-snow, just around the corner,  and I stayed alone in front of all the boys, and didn’t move, because I gauged from books that one should never show his back to an enemy, I wonder now if those authors meant a stoning situation as well. 

That was mighty stupid, in retrospect, because one of the snowballs broke my nose, and the game stopped at that, and I had plastic, one can say, surgery on my face, that very night, only without anesthesia. (I know that you know story already, tough luck as I like to tell it, that’s the story that helped me later in life hang in there without epidural, one recalls and becomes inspired.)

The nurses had tied me to the operating bed with belts, “so I won’t bite the doctor”, as they’d explained with some humor. Then I had to lie very still and not utter a sound, they yelled at me early into the surgery, do I want the doctor to screw my nose up completely or what? 

The doctor was very pleased afterwards with the results; he put a huge white plaster on my face, and all the nose was filled with amount of gauze that later I would be “how they even fit it in?” 

It was exceedingly unpleasant too when they took it out, but of course not like suffering through a hammer and whatnot taken to the bone, for I don’t know how long. I think took about an hour; but then we all know that time is subjective.

Then they took me to a room which was called “reanimation” and where the heater was broken, and I developed a high fever. Later when I felt a bit better, I was allowed into a room with other kids, and the canteen, but then smaller kids were frightened of my covered face, and eyes above this white plaster, and some even started crying. 

By the way it was eternal quarantine in that hospital, so parents weren’t allowed there. They’d stay outside when coming to visit, so we’d see them from out of the windows, and wave; and they sent us small care packages.

I think the hospital was a bit understaffed, because once another doctor needed to take adenoids out, some poor little boy, and she asked us, bigger girls, to hold his head, -which we did, with trembling hands, in horror.  She screamed at him as he sobbed and coughed blood, she shouted: “You made my white robe dirty with all your blood, you such and such, I just laundered it!” 

This god-awful phrase, when written in English, sounds anciently, eerily poetical. Just listen to it:

My white robe,
Dirty,
With all your blood.


In short, I spent all time of my New Year plays in that freaking hospital. 

Last couple days of my stay weren’t bad as they took my plaster off, and all the girls sighed at once and said, “ah you’re beautiful!” with surprise - I wasn’t, they just could see the face now.
 And we invented games and sang songs as girls do everywhere. 

But afterwards, at home, I refused to eat much and was sad, and Mom called for a doctor, she was nice, but I got into contra mood:
 “No, I’m fine. No, nothing hurts”.
 Mom then scolded me for being uncooperative but told me the doctor assured her: “Don’t feel bad for calling me, I can see something is wrong”. 

Which brings me to another thing I dislike, besides slogans and being preached to.  

Many people say about other people that they like “playing a victim card”.

If I understood something in this life-then it’d be this:

-most people hate: a) being a victim b) being perceived as such c) feeling a) and/or b)
They do the strangest things, just to avoid this feeling. 

I engaged in doing very strange things for decades, because it gave me some illusory state where I had some semblance of agency. I’m by no means unique, I’m common as them ромашки спрятались, поникли лютики. 

So, to me, it’s a somewhat faulty premise. 

It doesn’t mean that it never ever happens of course.
 
I’m of the opinion that many things are possible, maybe there are mermaids and faeries, because why not? People are awfully anthropocentric, I’m sure you noticed that too.

I just think it’s a faulty premise to start with.  

What else I dislike, I wanted to touch on the word “culture” in Substack context, I recently consulted with their bot, that threw around the word “culture” a lot instead of answering the question, then really wanted to know whether he was helpful.

 Usually I give 5 stars, even if I don’t feel like it, but this time I decided to pout instead. Later I felt guilty, that the bot might be sad, on account of my petulant withholding of stars.  

But I won’t go into it, or else I’ll never finish this boring story. I got distracted already in the introduction. Right after explaining how I was born.

 Let’s keep it shorter. For example, I dislike myself, not always, but several times per day on a good day. I wanted to add that it’s beneficial for others, but suddenly became unsure of it. 
I’ll continue to share my, no doubt, very valuable feelings and observations some other time, maybe. 

I want to want to play a squirrel, or a fox, or a snowflake. That’s what I’d cherry-pick and keep from times when I was 6 (that, and being less dumb)

Playing is the way of becoming, which one supposedly can stop, and unbecome. 

I miss being in the mood for it. 
It’s hard to be in the mood. And I became progressively bad in un-becoming. 
I always become, and become, and become.  

And if only once would be some Evil Stepmother, I thought, suddenly- but no, misspent youth, “у меня в детстве не было велосипеда”. 

***

Photo is by Eugenio Recuenco https://aestheticamagazine.com/fictional-landscapes/