Antohins 100 (Russian): "defection" has universal meaning when we speak about existence today. Defecting is a progress, we are the traitors by position, we have to departure from ourselves in order to embrace the new. America = changes, it became a new "tradition." Betrayl is good!
There are some texts floating between my writing projects. The notes on this pages could be placed in PostAmeriKa, I guess. At least, as far as the timeline is concerned. My problem is that the story of my life and the story of my thought can't coinside. Perhaps, I do not read my own biography to see it.
Why would the defection in 1980 fit the pages about technology?
In PostAmeriKa? Transition from Father-Russia. The love story is already there.
When you return to the same time-event, it has to be narrated differently! Because of the changed subject!... But I am not surprised that I came to the story of my defection -- that was the closest to death moment in my life. If was my death. Death of everything mortal in me....
No, my final defection is not from Life. Everything what was our human existence leaving Life, I must get all what is rejected by them...
Notes
K: "I have no single connection with a single other person: I am the most solitary of persons, the (understood in a worldly sense) most powerless" (from the Journals).
Yes, I am kidding myself and you -- I should write about defecting from this world, from life. Of course, I am not ready -- who is ready to die? I had 55 years to prepare myself, enough? I had no other task in life. This is the only purpose we had in the third millenium.
Oh, you don't understand. You are in a better position; I don't understand and I am afraid to understand.
I know that I make no sense. I do not write, I just think...
I have "webster dictionary" at the bottom of my pages; I myself have to check the meaning of the words I am using. "Defect" -- does it "defective"? Broken, non-functional...
What is my life if not the series of endless departures? I don't even know how many I went through. Should I? I try to write them down.
I need to do it. For myself. For my sanity.
1. a : an imperfection that impairs worth or utility : SHORTCOMING b : an imperfection (as a vacancy or a foreign atom) in a crystal lattice
2. [Latin defectus] : a lack of something necessary for completeness, adequacy, or perfection
My father died past Christmas. "1925 - 2003" will be on his grave. I came to Moscow before the New Year and this is how this year began for me. With the old thought about where is my grave?
... I have to back, way back in my narrative.
[ the old story ] The Year of 1980: A DEFECTOR
Moscow -- Rome -- New York... The World.
DIE AMERICAN
Story of One Defection (from my three books -- African, Russian and American)
What was it? My life.
I write the books I would like to read before my defection.
What difference would it make in American life?
Did I think about America in the camp?
I ran.
"Death or America" -- what's the difference? I didn't immigrate. Why should I?
... I miss being a defector. Almost a title. Something to be proud of. Only once I wrote about it (in Russian for the paper I
had in NYC). Now, how does the story of defection fits into
topics? I ran away from the extremes of century to find them
fully accepted and institutionalized. Communism was old news for
European mind. The Russians were still experimenting with the
idea when the West saw it as history.
They found no answers before me? No kidding? All what I saw
-- more of the same. But deeper, stronger -- monumental. Was the
Cold War a "better" war? Is prison better than a firing squad?
What do I have to say, what wasn't said about our times? Do I see
a future where a man could be heard? This nobel man had his
chance to rearrange the world. He used it -- communism. They, the
people, would live their lives the way they want. He better think
how would he live his.
What's happened to proletariat?
Racial instead of class conflict?
Class roots of PC. A cocktail party neutrality where
everyone is agree with anything because nothing matters.
They taught you. I can't do it, man. You have to teach
yourself. Nobody else can do it for you. You have to find out
what you want, you have to define yourself.
There's no school for you. More, everything they taught you
should be questioned. They taught you not be yourself. They
created an enemy of you in you, the guard to watch you, to stop
you from knowing yourself. Make no mistake, you are not free,
there's no freedom in their world, only emancipation...
It was over twenty years ago. The skies were blue, as they should be in Italy. It was the summer of 1980 full of sun and air. It was a perfect place to die for somebody from Russia.
And I did.
There were other deaths ahead, but this one I love, because I was young and a rebel. It was right time place to die. You can have only once in your lifetime. You can't repete it. My American deaths are different. Well, my Russian ones too, of course. Each death is different. Like life. The difference is that we have many deaths and only one life. Many think it is an contraire. I wish I could believe it too...
It's easy to die young, when you know that there many more deaths ahead of you...
I do not know why and how this stoy got into this book. It should be somewhere in PostAmeriKa. Maybe because I write about reckless death. Yes, yes, you will miss it, the death. Life won't be the same without death. I know I will miss it.
I suspect that my death will be terrible as my father's. I have to wonder alone at night and threw myself under the train, because I have to place to go back. We say, tragic, but the graphic death is honest, this is what death is, it's a naked death. Simply what was always there, every day, every minute, while we were living...
I see this night and hear the train coming.
@1995-2004 film-north *
I knew that I have to run -- and I did. Some places were lovely, the places you wish you can spend maybe a day or life, but you have to run, because you know that they are after you. You sense their presence -- and you keep running, or if you have to energy left in you -- you walk.
I was tired, I wanted to take a train,ban, streetcar -- anything. So tired that you can't even walk anymore. And the place was so flat, you can see everything -- and I saw him coming. Far away, the one who was after me. Hr was a small dot in in the dusk. Me and him on this endlss flat land. He knew that I am tired and wasn't rushing. He was after me for many years -- and now I have no place to hide, no direction to go. It was the same -- left, right -- and I kept waking, so slowm as if I was crolloing. And the ground was grey and dry. I walk look back at him, he was there, but now I knew that he was tired too, so tired...
I never ask myself, why he is after me. It was it, the law, I was running away and he was after me. Maybe I should stop and talk to himj -- but every time I stop, he stops. Because it was the rule -- not to talk, but to run. I do not know what I tried to escape, who he was, what the whole thing was about. Only the pictures in my mind, the places and people I wanted to spent some time with, my mother, that coner of the street...
It was over fourty years ago - the grey day with the grey sky, grey waters of Moscow River -- and the grey faces on the grey street. I was in grey school uniform and I knew that my face is grey too. What future? I didn't see any. I didn't want to be or to become anybody. I saw nothing ahead of me. The future wasn't unknown, it was empty. The whole life was ahead, but I didn't want it. Now, this uknown future is my past... Oh, I got more than I expect then, when I was twelve.
I knew that I have to run -- and I did. Some places were lovely, the places you wish you can spend maybe a day or life, but you have to run, because you know that they are after you. You sense their presence -- and you keep running, or if you have to energy left in you -- you walk.
