Илай Колесников
Earlyborn
Chapter 17
Luisian arrived in Moscow. So pleasant a feeling you experience when you get right into real Russian frost! This emotion cannot be compared with any of the life attractions – neither a massage session on the Bahamas islands, nor the satisfaction of the hunger. It is equal to a dining table after the New Year’s Eve, where there is nothing except black and white bread and a little bottle of water.
There was approximately minus twenty degrees Celsius. The night fell on the city when Luisian arrived. The carriage which brought him here had no boredom and sadness inside. One of his travelling companions managed to bring an electric fireplace. It smelled wonderful and emanated warm light through the darkness of night. Obviously, Moscow is a city of thousand thousands lights, but I suppose each Muscovite should draw in mind a picture for a moment that his pleasure finished, and cold autumn came to Moscow, and all the lights were cut off. The clocks showed already ten p. m. Luisian arrived at Kievsky Railway Station in the city center. And where the city is, there the Red Square also is. There is a well-known esplanade along the Kremlin—the beloved area for strolls as everyone enjoys walking there and still walks. Imagine this city with no famous lights, just without those charming gleams of Krasnaya Presnya, reflecting in the eyes of Peter the Great’s monument right in front of the Krymsky Bridge… Moscow. Imagine how changed people’s way of life for the quite short period of time—some hundreds of years! Some twenty one hundreds! How strong is the impact of the social networks, computer, TV and, which is the most predictable, going to bed late. That is an awful feeling when you see you can hardly do things in time, you are always in a hurry! I say, these talks are rose from nothing. Here you can either move to the village to be calm down by the drizzling rain of years or to take for granted the situation in which everyone lives in society and prefers to be on the same footing. Yet and computers, and social networks do not influence on our position in society.
Let’s dream there will never be any light in the world. People will use to it, and the sadness will vanish. Things will return back to their origins – savage era, where veal stakes will be replaced with mammoth ones. There will be no colossal changes in life. At times you should think about yourself and not others. This is better for your heart. The minutes come when your health is needed in your care. If you want to live for two hundred years (as I do and put it as my first goal), you should take care of your health first. You will not worry about trifles. Are you interested in your C mark in maths? Well, now you are. But in twenty years you will deem it a little thing! And in two hundred? We often fume about nothing. And this is the reason for people not to live up to the age they wished to. Yet they wished. It worth not to be on tenterhooks that much and not to hamper yourself from reasonably walking toward your aims and not hamper other people. You should meticulously work on yourself and move at a slow pace through the field of your aims, as sometimes a submarine moves through the freezing in ice when the temperature is about zero degrees Celsius.
Often the advice on how to deal with troubles and not to slip over a rock turn to be most important. Here is my advice, my dear friends: do not try to fulfill a lot at once. Start from doing it bit by bit. Take care of your health. Multitasking is equal to the winter sun, which shines but does not warm, since it is not productive. Do it in a different way, if the time lets. Start again from the beginning—from the health in our case. Build your schedule so that you have an eight-hour sleep, eating healthy diet and an opportunity to have long walks at night and during day, in winter and summer. Next, two actions at your schedule that help you earn a living and enjoy the life, doings, which will help you love this world. Add more and more new doings gradually. I, personally, added some getting practical information and writing books, but I felt it was not enough. I included writing a poem per day and studying English. I have a little time now and can do whatever I want for an hour or for an hour and a half. What else can I add? I think, sport. Jogging in the mornings or doing weight trainings. As I want to learn more about history beyond school lessons, I may read extra books on that subject. It is perfect. Doing and speculating this way you should go in life and live till two thousand years.
Sometimes take risks, sometimes launch an initiative. Just live and love the life you have now and which is left in the future. Delete your accounts in networks. Plan serious doings. Act.
Chapter 18, Alioth
Earlyborn and Zhenka continued their journey. Now they with a guide were on a beautiful yacht, which was in a good condition as it befits, if for no other reason than they paid for the trip. Their guide was a strong and, to a certain extent, plump little man. He went about his business in a captain’s cabin. The siblings were looking through the map of the stars. In Paris Zhenka simply made a sketch of their journey, but now they were looking at the bay sunset, scrupulously comparing the map of Latin America with the pattern of the Ursa Major in the starry sky. This constellation consists of seven stars. The guys wanted their journey to last longer, so they arrived at the decision that they were supposed to stay in each country they would visit as long as they could. They agreed to stay in Antarctic for fourteen days. The first star on their plan was Alkaid. This is the north star, which coincided with the area where the Islands of Bermuda were located. Our characters got a huge experience being there. So a palm tree starts to believe in itself when is watered. It starts to blossom much, and people who watered it begin to regret they poured this tree. Mizar follows Alkaid in the Ursa Major constellation. Its feature is that this star is divided in two ones, and one of the last ones is said to be divided in two more ones. But I have not seen it yet and do not know a thing about it.
There was a severe storm in Dominica when the siblings arrived. They assumed that in Puerto Rico, where they intended to move, was the same storm a couple of days ago. But the two Europeans were to struggle with obstacles and visit an unusual for their minds country. They planned to be in San José on January 29th to discover this town for themselves as new-coming travellers. No sooner said than done. Gazing at the warm and exquisite picture formed by the waves, like real painting, siblings supposed that it all was a dream. I am not talking about a paradise dream, which, as I read, is described by other authors. No. Our characters saw everything fuzzily, since there was the very reality around them. They still did not have any aim, although their perceptions of how the life goes, was totally changed for the better. “Our goal is to have fun and take pleasure,” once Zhenka said, which was somewhat banal. Practice makes perfect—that was the most important lesson they learned in Dominica. What else can you do if not repeating to yourself one phrase after you were safe from the hurricane: “Oh, how I’m glad the wind haven’t touched me!”
“We need warm sand after we bogged down in that wet and slimy dull European life,” Zhenka suddenly came up with an idea. “Something more sophisticated than a simple unhurried travel to various warm countries is required.” The guys began to think over actions on how to improve their state of affairs. The answer happened rapidly enough for such a crucial to them question, for ingenious ideas are very plain since time immemorial. To get the human pleasure, you should think like an ordinary person. The answer to the second question came faster than the one to the first, and they felt the ripe, a bit sour, tropical taste of life. To live the life of ordinary people, you need to have an amount of money ordinary people have. Money is the easiest way to make your desires come true. You may be happy to sit on the balcony in a five-star restaurant or to feel legs tightness after a day of adventures and walking in the capital… Taking different paths to happiness, you will still get this feeling. Our characters figured out what they could do make their journey interesting. They had a limited sum of money and decided to watch each of Russian telecast “Oryol I Reshka” episodes and then go ahead like people who finally manage to get $100 from a bottle thank to this TV program8.
***
They reached Puerto Rico at night. The majority of locals were about to go to bed, while the tourists yet dressed in expensive attire in front of the mirror. Siblings faced with a brightly shining liner at the entrance to the harbor. It was tremendous unlike Puerto Rico waves. The guys landed on a warm shore that had not cooled down during two evening hours yet. They said goodbye to their captain, left almost all the luggage on a yacht, except for their camera and went away from that island. The island which wiped from their memory as an oil stain with drops of fat can be removed from the surface with the help of water. That very moment they thought they probably found a refreshing cure, like the cleaning agent in the kitchen, to wipe out this dirty island twice as fast. This was a piece of advice they caught from the sea depths. You can reach everything you need, including happiness, without money. It seems a great computer game, which you can easily play through on a hardest for you level. Merely because you could experience more pleasant dotted changes, expanding like a mountain spring in your body. Why dotted? As you should consider your plan in such a detailed way, according to the difficulty of the game.
***
Why do we all want to move to warmer countries? Possibly because we have a nice feeling from a long time ago that something warm and soft gladdens. That feeling was first appeared in Africa, where our ancestors are from. Eating a pineapple when you climbed a tree and now look at the odorous sand is sweeter than to eat it gazing at a hungry bear shuttling around beneath. This is the humans nature. People evolve not in vain, and they try to get benefit from anything they discover. That is why, I suppose, nuclear energy is one of the most future up-and-coming energy recourses. It has a mystery. It can burn a person in a way that the fire did in the past. It shows we are helpless, and this source of nuclear energy can easily destroy us. Be strong, my friends! Recently our siblings watched one episode of “Oryol i Reshka” and noticed a person who experience positive emotions is the strongest one, as these feelings prolong the lifespan, which everyone craves to have. These people are respectable. And they a different attitude to life. Why does a person, whose help is appreciated by someone, suddenly feel better? The reason is same. Never does such a person ask a question about what his meaning of life is. These thoughts were discussed by our characters in a café in the city centre. They ate a local dish—mashed bananas. The café faced the sea. It accurately situated on a boundary between the sea and land. Earlyborn and Zhenka sat under the lights of Puerto Rica lamps decorated in Spanish style. They followed the shadows of the carnival in their glasses of Piña colada9 that took part somewhere in the next street. Probably, it is better to leave all doing which were not left yet when you are in Puerto Rico. Take a very old scooter and move to the outskirts, closer to forests and lakes, or a rugged coast—a tiny harbor of life.
Our characters intended to do so, yet later, since they were bound with a different business. Now they waited for one person whose apartment they arranged to rent. As in “Oryol i Reshka” is drawn that the hosts of the show stay for a night at houses of those not indifferent and helpful people who are willing to let them in. Earlyborn and Zhenka watched one such an episode and agreed with someone called Khaulo to meet in a café on the main streets of the town. Khaulo was late. The siblings did not want to waste their precious time and started looking at shop windows, locals and anything that could tell about the culture and secrets those locals had. They stared at an advertisement for tourists, and suddenly their gazes switched to another wonder—the deep water lakes and those evergreen forests further on the island (my note: how else can “в глубине острова” be translated?). They looked and experienced that calmness which comes to a person when he immerses in a warm bath. Earlyborn had a warm bath now for the first time after they sailed from Paris. She and Zhenka sat in the Khaulo’s veranda and discussed the problems of transferring unique tropical butterflies from the north to the south. If there was any secret on how to live, they knew it was in giving up on urban life and daily routine. They tried to travel freely and eventually got the way of thinking of people who are inveterate extremal travelers. Earlyborn was also an inveterate person when it came to baths, and that evening she could not help lying in a bath filled with her thoughts and dreams.
Chapter 19, Megrez
Luisian made his childish dream come true. It often happened in the last century that people faced with each other on a bus stop, where there was no bus, and asked: “What’s wrong?” Now somewhere in the construction site in Severnoye Butovo District—not the closest one two the Moscow centre—similar friendly relations happened among second shift of the group of workers number one. One worker said to another one, “Life is so wonderful! And we are so miserable in our situation, in which we deem our work as nothing of interest and do not see plain wonders as the star Megrez in the starry sky. But, look, here there is a person come here from Italy (from where! Just realize!), or from Argentina with the only purpose to work on the construction site while Russian frosts!” That is always true, my dear friends. Where someone finds a thing, another one loses it. Someone lives with an impossible for them dream to move to Denmark or on the east coast of Switzerland, while another person lives in this place in real life. Some people want to change something in their room since the placement of objects does not satisfy them, but can hardly determine themselves to do. However, other people cannot help altering the appearance and keep the beauty they made for a long time. It is never true that one thing has the same positive or negative emotional effect on different people. I have dream to drive, as Earlyborn did, my own Range Rover to the white coast of France and to greet the dawn, sitting on a windmill. Yet someone could have seen enough sunrises and has now wish to sit an hour or a day near that windmill, and like the pilgrim from my book “Honesty” strictly begins his journey. Never is it possible for two people to have the same feeling. If scientists were to perform an experiment on whether each person has got his own idiosyncrasy, I would suggest them to carry out a survey asking two hundred thousand people about one topic. Then the survey would live up to expectations and show that definitely each person is an individual, for even questioned with “Do you love the life?”, I am sure, each person on the Earth would tell his unique idea. Even if they spoke with the same words, they would mean different concepts. I will work notwithstanding the time, weather and other hazards. The words I will say now are deemed, if spoken, wrong, yet I will speak them, tell what I feel: “Probably, even be I on my deathbed (and I wish not to be there in the nearest two hundred years), I will improve myself or simply contemplate the idea—how it is to perfect yourself.”
Luisian sat in a cabin of a crane, which was, seemingly, located thousands kilometres above the land. Suddenly he heard the higher forces. They were not any kind of a kind faceless person with a beard. They were not angels in the flesh. They were calm wind gusts that knocked in trembling window. They seemed to him somewhat weightless, which caused a feeling as if someone looked at your back but had no intention to do you harm. This happened to Luisian February 13th. Then it occurred at him that numbers are of no importance nowadays. “Today is Friday the 13th, and what is the matter? Someone still got a nice present and experienced magic. Someone experienced the failure in the achievement of their dream. And what then? People are not able to cope with emotions, and numbers are not to blame for that fact. Luisian asked wind a question, “What should I do?” And the wind answered like a real old man of wisdom – in strange, obscure manner, with riddles and long pauses. It said he should find the roots. And the issue was next.
Luisian was drinking up a next mug of real Russian tea with lemon. He fought with his lovely hat with earflaps that refused to fit his head. Suddenly the wind roared. It was both harsh and light. It was a usual wind, but Luisian was confused. Perhaps, the thing was in Russian mysticism. Our character felt that someone was behind his back. He quickly turned around. He saw a second row of seats, which is often a part of a long-distance trucker’s cabin, where a bed, the TV or a fridge are placed.
Something changed in Luisian. He experienced some new, unknown powers. He looked at the mirror and exclaimed, “Ah!” It seemed to him, a badge “Li-san” was on his T-shirt, and he himself resembled a Japonese or a Chinese.
***
Megrez shone very bright, and Earlyborn and Zhenka wondered, “Has something burst in space?” Yet nothing, unfortunately or not, was burst in space. There were just caracaras flying. They seemed to fall like millions of splashes in that hot midday—either winter or summer one. The sky above Caracas was clean and purely blue, and the siblings could not understand why they went to the city with some kind of anxiety. Why is this town one of the bandit towns all around the world? But soon they discovered the answer. They were about to get off the boat when Earlyborn screamed. The fear touched her dress. The fear she would pass away and leave nothing after herself and never get the knowledge of stability. “Continuity is the power of progress.” Bandits, who live their life as if there is no tomorrow, palm and birch trees—anything confirms continuity to be the crucial part of life. If you are a Godfather, who does not manage to take a knife out of your pocket, some mightier gangster would replace you and become a ringleader. Zhenka gazed at birds that seemed to him the years he lived in his life and minutes when he pondered. He then speculated, “What is wrong with my life?”
The guys felt some changes happening with them. They experienced verve in their bodies to fulfill their plans before they would reach the land of Antarctic. It was not clear what brought the changes. Arguably, the reason was in Caracas, which proudly demonstrated remarkable and expensive skyscrapers on one hand, and somewhat reminding Brazil favelas under the heavy rain on the other hand. Arguably, they were caused by the fact our characters finally started their journey on Bermuda. Unexpectedly, Zhenka got a security key fob to car sent him a signal that someone wanted to break into a car. However, it was hard to do so, since it was far from people—in a cave near the bay, under the shades of coconut trees. The danger, which the car could face with was the a hungry tiny crab that wanted some iron to eat. They guys wanted to develop as they saw the beauty. Some three-five kilometres from there was the beauty. Beyond the human mind was Venezuela nature, which seemed to trail on the globe from the body of America, like a branch of fuchsia. The gist of this chapter depicts the relevant and marvelous characteristic of life, “If you suppose that life is meaningless, then you ought to go on working, because such work often turns to be the most important one in life, yet as the practice shows, people are not able to estimate it truly.”
Earlyborn and Zhenka went to greet the dawn. The sky grew scarlet.
