Василий Ласовский 19+ SE

24th lunar day (Pavel Globa "What the Moon is silent about," links in Russian)

http://volnium.ru/interpretation/moon_days?n=24

"Mystical influence: The forces are awakening. A very powerful day. Practice intense training and work. Time to utilize the transformation of male sexual potency. You can begin building your own temple.

The day is associated with the awakening of natural forces. It is believed that a person may receive a revelation or experience the awakening of tremendous power. If they don't know how to use it, they will pay for it. A family curse, as well as lycanthropy, is realized."

https://www.life-moon.pp.ru/moon-days/24/

"The symbol is a bear (god Shiva).

The ancient Egyptians broke ground on this day for the construction of a new pyramid. They knew that the energy of this day brings success to all undertakings. Today is a good day to begin building a house or lay the foundation for major projects. Study the information around you; it may prove important. You might even receive a revelation. In the past, people practiced communing with the elements and the forces of nature on this day."

(link unavailable)

"A jack of all trades. People born on the 24th lunar day typically possess a wide range of talents. It's important for them to identify their calling and field of work to channel the enormous energy potential within them. They must avoid stagnation and idleness—this will lead to lethargy, daydreaming, and an inadequate perception of reality. To develop harmoniously, a person born on the 24th lunar day should explore different areas, be active, and devote time to physical activity. Such people typically possess innate magical abilities, easily comprehend the mystical laws of the world, and are adept at channeling and transforming cosmic energy. They are able to attract people to themselves, share their gushing power, and serve as a source of motivation and inspiration for others."

Childhood

My name is Vasily Lasovsky, I was born on April 27, 1973 in a village on the banks of the Dnieper River, adjacent to the city of Rechitsa in the Gomel region of the Byelorussian SSR (now the Republic of Belarus), a former republic of a now defunct great country of the past called the USSR.

Most of my life was spent among women, which left a serious imprint on my worldview.

My father left the family early, when I was about 8 or 9 years old. My mother had a strong, determined personality, and my father apparently couldn't handle the intense pressure.

I don't remember my father very well; I only remember two moments of him, each lasting a few seconds. He never saw me again after he left the family.

As a child, I played exclusively with girls, and considering they constantly had ‘secrets’ from the boys, you can imagine what a daily circus it was. But I had a completely natural attraction to them, and I was simply happy if they included me in their group.

This continued until adolescence. After that, I had no one to make friends with. Boys were never interesting to me, and as girls grew up, they labeled me as ‘strange’ and studiously avoided me.

Interestingly, from birth until I was 13, I had one best friend—a girl the same age who initially lived in the next room to me in a shared two-room apartment that my mother's company allocated to two families (one room for each family). I remember meeting her while sitting ‘on the potty.’ When I was about 5, we were separated, but I continued to communicate with her daily and even fell in love with her when I reached adolescence. At that point, our relationship ended; apparently, I wasn't her type at all, and again, I behaved somewhat strangely.

Around the age of seven, I practically left home. I talked a school friend into it, and we quietly gathered some food, grabbed our backpacks, and left that evening. We reached the nearest tree line, and when it suddenly turned cold—it was late autumn—we felt very sad and lonely, thinking about how our mothers would suffer... and returned home. For the next few years, I kept the necessary things for the hike ready, but I never brought myself to leave home.

My early childhood (up to age 10) was characterized by nightmares in which I was falling into the abyss. It was very scary. And it happened often. I fell every night, many days in a row.

Incidentally, many children believed (and not without reason) that I had serious mental health issues, and this was one of the reasons why they avoided me. I was characterized by sudden mood swings and a short temper, which was fueled by the atmosphere in our family and my inability to control myself at an early age.

About childhood hobbies

[This one and the three following chapters were added in May 2026, in preparation for the 2nd edition of the book.]

I was a completely uncreative child. I couldn't draw pictures. So I drew the blueprints. My mother brought home from work a lot of orange and blue graph paper.

When I was 7 or 8 years old, I drew wings and swords on it. Since the paper was in rolls, I could draw the wings full-size. I needed the wings to fly, and I needed a sword because if I left home, I'd need something to fight my enemies with.

As I grew a little older and my body mass unexpectedly and significantly increased, I realized I wouldn't be able to make wings large enough to lift my body into the air. This was a major stress in my life.

The epoch of sections, clubs and other hobbies

For quite a long time, I was involved in the canoeing and kayaking section. I was about 10 or 11 years old at the time. The Dnieper River flowed through our town of Rechitsa, and at the spot where there was a small bridge leading to the town beach, there was a boat dock, and next to it, a building housing the canoeing and kayaking section.

We ran 3 km marches along the beach and further along the river, and in any weather and at any time of year we swam in our kayaks, and the older guys also swam in canoes.

These kayaks and canoes were not for tourists, but truly sporty, designed for high-speed movement on regular, flat water. Made of plywood, they were lightweight and hydrodynamically designed, allowing them to accelerate to high speeds with just a few paddle strokes.

It was also at this active age that I first discovered a ship modeling club, and then a couple of years later, right in our apartment house at 69 Naumova Street, at the end of the building farthest from my entrance, an aircraft modeling club opened.

What most attracted me to the ship models was the changing configuration of the frames (the transverse bulkheads running the entire length of the ship). They created the underwater configuration of the ship, and for the ship to achieve high speed, its hull had to have a perfect hydrodynamic configuration. The hulls of naval ships have a very beautiful and perfect shape.

Also, when modeling the ship, I had to separately fabricate and install various small elements onto the model that were very similar to the real things, but were actually very small. I suppose it's in my nature to sit at a desk for weeks and meticulously create miniature parts for a ship model.

As a result, I had at home a real floating model of a ship (torpedo boat) about 45 cm long, equipped with a rubber-band motor.

I also managed to buy about a dozen ready-made (all that was left was to assemble them) plastic model airplanes and one ship, and within a year the entire sideboard in our apartment was filled with these models.

In the aircraft modeling club, we didn't make exact replicas of real planes. The goal was different: to create a model that could fly as well as possible. We mainly made control line models, for training and separately for aerial combat.

The control line model was controlled by a special handle, to which two 16-meter-long metal cords were attached. The person controlling the aircraft stood in the center of the platform, while the assisting team members started the engine of the aircraft model and launched it into flight.

The model's internal combustion engine ran on ethyl alcohol, which provided a wealth of excitement, as everyone's hands were covered in oil, the propeller could give you a good whack on the fingers, and the engine sounded like a moped without a muffler, which was definitely a joy for all the boys. When running, the engine practically pulled the model forward, making it difficult to keep it on the launch pad. The models themselves were large, with a wing span of at least 90 cm, and the airplane model itself had stunning contours, was heavy, and was impressive.

As a child, I had a Nocturne-212-stereo turntable and vinyl records by Alla Pugacheva, The Beatles, Space ("Magic Fly," 1977), and Joe Dassin. Then we got a reel-to-reel tape recorder, and I managed to record songs from the radio; my favorites were Modern Talking and Europe ("Final Countdown").

Like all boys, I wanted my own camera and started taking photos. First, I got a "UFK-2 Photo-Constructor," and then a real camera, the Smena-8M! I even used it to shoot a couple of rolls of film and then managed to develop them. I had almost everything I needed for photography: chemical reagents, a wash tank, and even a photo flashlight with a red light to illuminate the printing of photographs, but I didn’t have a photographic enlarger, and as a result, I couldn’t transfer a single photograph from film to photographic paper.

About collecting

At the age of 7–8 years old, I was given (apparently by my mother) a small album of 3 pages already with postage stamps. Apparently, no one expected me to take up this hobby. Within a year, I first got a medium-sized album that could hold up to 400 stamps, and then I managed to buy three albums of the largest size and quality available in the USSR at the time. Each of these albums held up to 800 stamps, and within another 2 or 3 years, all my albums were completely filled. By 1986, my collection already had over 2,500 stamps and souvenir sheets, mostly USSR stamps from the 1960s onward, about 1,800 of them. This represented almost 40% of the stamps issued in the USSR since 1923. I also had a few stamps from the 1930s and a couple dozen military stamps from the 1940s.

My passion for philately has given me hundreds of different emotions (impressions). Many stamps each held their own unique emotions. Of course, each stamp carries its own artistic image. But I'm not interested in the imagery in most stamps. For me, the beginning, the starting point, is precisely my ingrained emotions toward a specific stamp. What's depicted on it is practically irrelevant and can only be explored to deepen the emotion and my experience. My emotions toward stamps are only partially related to what they depict.

It's also important that stamps are small, making them ideal for emotional enrichment. I also tried collecting postcards, but they're much larger than stamps, and seeing them doesn't produce the same effect.

When, many years later, I try to analyze this miracle, I noticed that I am interested in stamps from the 1960s to mid-1985; older stamps were poor and uninteresting emotionally; newer stamps were absolutely uninteresting, since the advent of the digital era was felt and, accordingly, the quality of design and artistic content dropped sharply.

Stamps from other countries (not the USSR) were practically uninteresting to me. Stamps from countries of the socialist bloc held little interest, and stamps from various banana states were especially interesting.

About books

I loved reading from an early age. I read every book and magazine I could get my hands on. My favorite authors were Alexandre Dumas (The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After, The Vicomte de Bragelonne, Queen Margot, The Count of Monte Cristo), James Fenimore Cooper (The Deerslayer, The Last of the Mohicans, The Pathfinder), and Jules Verne (Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, A Captain at Fifteen).

Around the age of 7, I had a musketeer costume, and a couple of years later I was going to make myself an native American costume.

Of course, I was also crazy about any science fiction I could get my hands on for a couple of days. This included, of course, the Strugatsky brothers, in my teens and youth I read many of their works.

I could read a book of 300–400 pages in one evening or night.

During the Soviet era, decent fiction was hard to find, and some books had to be read in the library reading room, where I often sat for days after classes.

I was extremely fond of pseudo-scientific literature with biographies of famous people. William Seabrook's "Doctor Wood, modern wizard of the laboratory" and Richard Feynman's "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" were two of my favorites.

I also had a collection of books on model-making, photography and fishing.

The First Bell

The first bell rang on June 19, 1985, the year I turned 12. I know the exact date from my mother's words, who reminded me of it at the end of May 2017.

12 years is an important age for a person; during this period, events can occur that will have a significant impact on their life.

Under our apartment, where my mother and I lived, at 97-A Sovetskaya Street, apartment No. 74, Rechitsa, in the basement of our multi-story building, a supposed ‘carbide container’ exploded. In fact, I can't say for sure whether it was just carbide or something else. The most plausible theory is that the carbide, upon contact with water, heated the oxygen cylinders, causing them to explode simultaneously. Another theory was that it was real explosives, as the basement belonged to a local hunter. The local prosecutor's office was investigating, and a KGB agent was dispatched from Moscow.

As a result, the thick, 20-centimeter-thick concrete floor slab in my room in our two-bedroom apartment on the first floor was broken into three pieces and completely collapsed. The edges of the broken slab remained level with the floor, but the center sank more than 2.5 meters. All the partitions in the basement were blown away, and the slab fell into a large hole.

The epicenter of the explosion was about 20–25 cm away from the spot in the center of the room where I so loved to lie on my stomach on the floor and draw or sketch on paper. Aside from my room, the rest of our two-room apartment was undamaged, and we lived there for several more months.

External consequences: the basement's outer door was smashed so hard that it flew off and hit the wall of a neighboring nine-story panel building, similar to ours, located 60 meters from ours. The door flew past some suddenly sober alcoholics sitting on a bench near the entrance (they say they stopped drinking after this incident), and right next to a sandbox where children were playing. The incident occurred around 6 pm.

The explosion was so powerful that cracks appeared in the walls of our high-rise apartment building, all the way up to the 9th floor (my mother recalls; I remember the cracks extending all the way to the 5–6th floor). Experts said that standing not only at the epicenter but anywhere else in our apartment would have been fatal due to the extreme dustiness of the blast.

When Mom arrived home, she didn't know where her child was and, seeing the uneaten lunch on the kitchen table, assumed I hadn't returned from the library yet. Rescuers hesitated to clear the rubble, fearing the entire building would collapse. Over the following months, they first installed logs, which at least somewhat supported the floors, then replaced them with a concrete block structure, strengthening the damaged building.

No one was injured in the explosion. I was in the library when it happened. I was supposed to be home by the time of the explosion and wait for my mother, with whom I was planning to go for a walk that evening. But I was late, not knowing what time it was—my digital wristwatch had stopped, its battery dead. My mother was delayed by a friend who persuaded her to go thrift store with her.

A few months later, the state allocated us a new apartment at 69 Naumova Street, Apt. 19. Interestingly, the building number contains a nine and a six, which is essentially a nine but upside down, and the apartment number is 19, the same as the day of the explosion. I learned that my mother was offered a choice of two apartments in buildings under construction, and she chose the one she considered the best. At the time of choosing the apartment, since the building had not yet been commissioned, the apartment had no number.

You might ask why I'm so picky about numbers and dates? I only recently became interested in coincidences; I only learned the exact date of this event in May 2017, when my mother told me about it. So, I got carried away and started remembering everything connected with these numbers.

At the time of writing this book (summer 2017), I lived in apartment number 109 in another city. When we bought this apartment, my mother also didn't know its number, as it was purchased during the construction of the building. So, it turns out I've lived most of my life in apartments numbered 19 and 109.

The next event happened the following year…

On April 26, 1986, a small distance by our country's standards, 110 km south of our city, an explosion occurred at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.

In my opinion, in some sense the physics of both explosions have common elements: a rupture of the floor slab or a rupture of the reactor vessel with the release of a large artificial cloud carrying death.

Of course, you will say that these two events are completely different in scale and in no way can they be compared, since one is large, bringing death and misfortune to thousands of people and animals, and the second is small and insignificant, as a result of which no one was actually harmed.

This is, of course, true, and I agree with it, but let us, while reading my book, leave behind the human, social perception when we pay attention exclusively to facts that have a global impact on the masses of people and do not notice facts that have an impact on one person.

And if we abstract ourselves from human emotions and imagine, for example, a ‘chessboard with pieces,’ we will understand that both events may well occupy one fixed cell on the playing field and each produce an impact of its own strength.

You may have noticed that the Chernobyl accident occurred on April 26th, and my birthday is on April 27th. That's a one-day difference, which is also quite interesting.

According to one version, the Face of the Sphinx on Mars was discovered in 1973, which is the year I was born.

The Chernobyl disaster had a profound impact on my life, becoming my springboard into adulthood. If it hadn't happened, this book probably wouldn't exist, and I'd be a completely different person, and the world around me would be completely different.

Consequences

Since the Chernobyl disaster sent clouds of toxic dust into the air, and we lived just north 110 km of the epicenter, our town became unsafe, so my mother immediately took me to the oil town where she worked at the time. Thus, I found myself in Siberia, not even in the taiga, but in the permafrost zone, in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, in the city of Noyabrsk.

This region is considered part of the Far North, and more than half of its territory lies above the Arctic Circle. But we lived in the very south of this beautiful place, and all we had was tundra, dotted with stunted trees, and a variety of experiences, including the polar night and the Northern Lights. Winter temperatures reached –55 degrees Celsius, while summer temperatures reached +45 degrees Celsius.

I was lucky that there was a school near our house, where I ended up in a special physics and mathematics class.

After finishing the 8th grade of secondary school, I was sent to study in Minsk, the capital of the Republic of Belarus (then it was the BSSR), where I managed to enter the Radiotechnical School (now the Radiotechnical College).

My future major was in computer software development. When I applied, I had a 4.5 grade, the minimum passing score, and I was at the very bottom of the applicant list, somewhere near the bottom. So, I barely made it, and I don't think I would have been able to get into this Technical School without a special class focusing on physics and mathematics.