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anatoly.org books.filmplus.org directing.filmplus.org him.filmplus.org
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* Century of Antohins (new 2005) In fact, everything I write is nothing but explainations. In postmodernity it's difficult to understand what people say, because they always explain what they say. "You know what I mean?" The explainations, of course, need more explaining... In the past the purpose of understanding was ismple; I wanted to know -- and I try to understand. Now my understanding is connected with your understanding. You have to understand what I understand, even I don't understand it. And I have to understand you, even if you don't understand yourself and I don't understand myself. All siz billions must understand each other! You see how difficult this simple act became. We have to understand Russians, Russians must understand Americans, Chinese -- Africans and so on. Obviously, they don't. More we try to understand each other, the less time we have for ourselves and understanding of our own lives. More we understand, less we know. This is the fundamental principle of general education. Now you know that I can't finish this book (or any other book). The pre-pomo "books" were the result of this (personal) realization. Now this process is impossible and a book can't be written. Look how many "books" we publish and you will understand what I mean. Oh, by some strange accident I opened another account with Tripod under the name "FatheRussia" and now I will post the new texts there, or @ Russian Page: Exile. See you there!
GeoAlaska: Theatre & Film
Summary( русские тексты потеряны! )QuestionsВосстанавливать тексты по-русски не могу, копий не сохранилось...The Possessed 2003 Notes"Organized crime in the Soviet Union bears the stamp of the Soviet political system," wrote Konstantin Simis, a lawyer who had worked in the Soviet Ministry of Justice, in his exposЁ¦, USSR: The Corrupt Society. "It was characteristic of the system that the ruling district elite acted in the name of the Party as racketeers and extortionists, and that the criminal underworld per se paid through the nose to the district apparat for stolen goods and services."2004 & After
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This book is written in Ruglish, Russian English. Quotations are from non-existing books, published by Babylon Press, Mesopotamia U.The Ruglish, or more precise, Aruglish (Anatoly's Russian English) is a dead language, the personal language and nobody speaks it anymore. I am a specialist in Aruglish, the only known expert, since nobody besides me uses it. In pre-postmodern history the languages were born and only then they could become dead ones, when whoever used them died out. My dead language is dead born language, which is for one-time use only. Its origins are in two living languages -- Russian and English. I began to write in Russia and, of course, I use Russian. Now I stopped using cyrillic to make my writing more reader-friendly, since I live in America. I use some American words which do not exist in Russian, but other-wise I use the same words which can find even in Latin. Sometimes I think that I write in Latin (when I am not sure do I write in English or Russian).
I never was good with languages. I even had "C" in my Russian language middle school classes. It improved a little, when I became a Russian writer. When you write several hours every day, it's only natural. But as a closet postmodernist, I never trusted language. I suspected that I was faking Russian language, because I lived in the Soviet culture and should write in "Soviet." Something like Americans speaking English. But the Soviet culture was much more radical and insisted on not being Russian in essence. So, I was a Soviet writer, using foreign language. I was a writer without language. I never resolved this contradiction, because the Socialist Realism didn't recognize "personal" language. I couldn't tell the Ministry of Culture about my problems and to claim that I write in Asovrus -- Anatoly's Soviet Russian. I never felt that I betrayed Russia, because the language betrayed me first.
According to the sacred cannons of pomo, I can't have any meta-narrative or system, it's illegal. I have to suppress the modernist in me and shovel him into a closet, where the pomo was before. I have to be rhizomatic. The Postmodernist, who took over without the Ministry of Culture around, physically suffers, when he sees a complete sentence. He is happy that Anatoly doesn't know English; the lack of grammar is an cornerstone of Aruglish aesthetics (Anatoly's Russian English). It's not "bad English," but "bad on principle English"! Since I consider myself a minority, a nation of me, I think that my claim to an official status of Aruglish is very legitimate. Something like Ebonics. Aruglish is the language, I understand, the language I use in my community. I have to treasure my cultural heritage and preserve Aruglish. That's why I write in this special language. This is the first book written in Aruglish.
My manuscript is an ethnographical and anthropological study of Anatoly. Not much is written about the subject, the existence of this culture was discovered only recently. The reader must keep in mind that I do this work without proper scholarly background, I am not a cultural anthropologist by training. I follow the tradition of the early explorers -- I record and document. I reject the travel writing genre; I am not a visitor, I am the subject and the object, the event and the observer, the native and the scholar of the native. There is noting fictional about the stories in this book, no matter how strange or exotic this culture could look like for an outsider. (I define the genre as THE PULP NON-FICTION).
Since I was born in a strange family of radical existentialists and materialists, you can consider me as a fiction. (Existentialism: The attempt to create meaning out of a meaningless universe by the exercise of free will. Materialism...). I could be a fictional creature, but my book is not.
I have to do it for the record. I insist on my civil rights to be considered a paradigm. A model of Anatoly. (In postmodernism, a paradigm is a way of looking at reality specific to one social group. The rules of thought and consistency apply within a given paradigm, but cannot be applied to any other).
One word on Anatoly's hermeneutics. (Hermeneutics: The science of interpretation, the rules for interpreting a text). I don't know it, I studied Anatoly, not interpretations of Anatoly. The same with Epistemology. I didn't study how Anatoly knows things. I didn't try to answer the questions of epistemology: Is Anatoly's knowledge reliable? How can we be sure? But I am in full agreement with the concept of reader-centered interpretation. (The postmodern idea that interpretation depends, not on what the text says or what the author intended, but on how the reader reacts to a text). I was agree with Bakhtin, before I knew that I am a postmodernist. (I told you about my weird family conditions). Yes, the meaning is constructed or created by the reader, not writer. I know, I was the first reader of this book. This book will never be finished, because I-the-reader can only take notes on readung. He wanted it and he told Anatoly-the-writer what "I" want to read and he wrote it down. I am happy with my ghost-writer, but I am tired of reading this book, so it was finished, because I wanted to read another book.
Let me tell you why I am not good postmodernist. I was bad all my life. Bad Soviet, bad Russian, bad writer, bad reader. I couldn't even claim to be an Orthodox pomo, I don't think that I am a pomo at all. Classical Postmodern is defined as an intellectual movement in the late twentieth century, the thought that rejects enlightenment rationalism, individualism and optimism. I am none of the above. Postmodernism is characterized by nihilism and radical subjectivity. I and Nietzsche are both against it. "Affirmative" postmodernists believe that social reality can be changed by activism. That's the last thing I have on my mind. I have no time, energy or desire to be socially active. Thank God, it's behind me.
The Pomo Zeitgeist (The spirit of the time; a general trend of thought or feeling characteristic of a particular period of time). Pomo for me is a historicity, not history. I have my own history, which is parallel to yours, ours and theirs histories. History of Anatoly is not a resume. My biggest historical events are not directly connected with the history of the Outside. For example, Anatoly's perestroika and collapse of communism took place in the seventies, not in the eighties, and for a different reason. In fact, I have several histories....
There are two major theories about the origins of Anatoly-land, or Anatoland. One is a materialistic, which states that Anatoly was born on March 1, 1949. Another is from the high postmodernity or the after-post-modernity, the theory of resurrection. The materialistic theory is self-evident and self-explanatory. The second one is an obscure and has the unique features observed only in species of the Anatoland. If you travel through the museums of traditional societies, you would notice that with all the diversity they still have similar organizational principles, and there are some elements in the A-culture (culture of Anatolians) reminiscent of a traditional closed society. Anatoly-spices live together as an extended family, with strong oral traditions, their own mythology and epos. There are many other features in this land, which are very much from the post-industrial global society. The connection between the two is not explained by the theory of materialism. The materialist point of view considers Anatoly as a social construct without its own independence or sovereignty.
I talk about Anatoland, because I don't want you think about it as a there park or Disneyland. On the contrary, it's a frontier, terra nova, never-travel virgin land!...
PICNIC AT THE LAKE
Resurrecting or to be resurrected? Big difference. I consider myself a resurrected soul. ...Yes, I was born before the contraceptives made their way to Russia. But I escaped death a few times, because some modern medicine was there never-the-less. This intervention I consider non-natural and the May Day of 1953 I count as my first death defeated by a penicillin. The four years of living experience is enough to write a book, but I didn't do it then. The rest of my life wasn't natural anymore and assisted by the humanity life-support systems. The chemical intervention of penicillin opened my "natural" body and made it into an open structure, a physical step to the cybering. Soon I learned that the power of technology could also kill, if improperly used. When Marx states that it's impossible to live in society and be free from it, he means that there is no point of return to the pre-modern conditions, except for accidents (intentional or not, for more on theory of accident see Paul Virilio). The more I live, more I'm being socialized and expect that my end won't be of a natural cause. Today a "natural" death is even more rare than "natural birth." I can call it a postmodern death. But first, I want to recall the classical concept of resurrection. (see Res in DEATH).
As we know the resurrection is to be followed by the final judgement, where the good souls are divorced from the bad ones. The bad are to be thrown in the Lake of Fire forever. "The Second Death" concept means that the condemned souls have no chance of returning back to life. They are gone, destroyed for the future use. Here I'm in a full agreement with the atheists, there is nothing after the death -- if you are sentenced for the Lake of Fire. That's what is ahead of me unless I can make through the last judgement, my "life" is not a mortal life but a trail. That's why I am never alone, always under the surveillance and "work" all the time -- it's more than matter of life and death, but eternal life and absolute death. Do I have a chance? You always have a chance, they say. My task is to immortalize myself, to be up to this position of equality with God. The Becoming God as not easy, but this is the only way to avoid the Fire Lake.
How does it look like -- the lake? Did I see it? How did I find it? Who told me about it? How do I know that it's THE LAKE? Where is the story? (is it a screen? TV, monitor?)...
I am both.
It's a shameful admission to be a postmodernist. More shameful than to be gay, because an intellectual orientation goes into the center of being human, the mind. Pomo is intellectual perversity. I could tell you the stories about intellectual practices of pomos, wouldn't believe that they live next door to you. And they are protected by the affirmative action laws; a landlord or an employer could turn down on the ground your intellectual preferences and nothing you can do about it. There is place in Hell for postmodernists, the last circle, after the sinners against Holy Ghost, and since the Hell and Heaven at the times of resurrection are present, you can visit it and see for yourself what punishment they get. They placed in total isolation. If you remember that the habitants of hell can see the paradise in full view, but can't touch it. They are in paradise but inside the bubble which prevents them from being in paradise. I see life, hear sound and voices, but not a part of it. It's called in Aglish (American English) -- virtual reality. All you need is a computer and a modem. If still don't have one, go to the public library and the pomo hell for yourself. It has a proper name -- the Internet. The Internal Net without any chance of escaping. To make sure that pomos will never get out, there is another structure inside the Net -- the webs. You know about WWI and WWII, you hear about the Cold War, the pomos live in a space of the WW III which has a name "WWW" -- World Wide Web. World wide, understand? Not only inner but outer locks!
Those are the stories from the American Book, but I had to explain you the Anatoly's territory in order to show the dynamics of Anatolys and their interaction. There is an Anatoly who speaks Aglish and lives in pomo hell. There is another Anatoly who watches him from outside of hell, the paradise-Anatoly. One Anatoly is wired, another is not. One is Russian, the next one is anti-Russian and so on. There's even one who is a male! And the usual -- Anatoly-body, Anatoly-yesterday, Anatoly-the-day-before and etc. Are they a family, tribe, nation? Anatoly and anatoly; subject and object....
The idiots-pomos think that they're happy, when in fact they are not. But since they are separated from the world, including their bodies, they don't what they feel, the only could guess it. The drugs and therapy are very popular over there. That's hell for you. Of course, it very efficient and economically sound place, the pomos torture themselves, it's a self-service joint. Very high tech, very smart. The more they feel happy, the deeper is their unhappiness. Obviously, they want to escape the pain reaching for more pleasure, inflicting more pain on themselves. Professional pomos do not rap load, they write and read rap.
Anatolism? ... Of course, I separate myself from him. Anatoly and I is not the same. What do they have to say to each other?...
Now, seriously, how personal are my emotions? What could be more private, right? And how do I express them? Do I do it to be understood? Watching the dissension of New Jerusalem, the Web, I fear its globalism.... because nothing local is available anymore. No, we are not together, friend, we're redistributed throughout the world. Is this great (physical) distance mandatory? Exile from earth -- I guess, we are forgiven. We are working, working on it, we are not free. Reusrrection is a busy time. No time to writing poems.... The Age of Information and Communications leads us into solitude and silence. Do I have any language to communicate with myself, the most needed contact?
Yes, writers still survive as entertainers. But the grand battle to keep the words alive is over. The end of language is another sign of apocalypse -- how I could miss it? We still speak, we talk to each other, but the real life language has in computer. We invest in their communicating abilities, we want them to understand each other. We develop their languages with an enormous pace. There're millions of real writers, we call them computer programmers. I was one of them, when I was fifteen -- why did I leave the future? Now, fifty, I am a nation of one -- what do I have? Aruglish? Computers are not interested in reading my book. I have nothing more to say, Your Honor.
The Lake of Fire is a few inches away from my face. The new monitor.... I see my words, which computer recognizes but doesn't understand. I corrects my spelling, its brains are faster than my mind. "Save"? -- the screen asks. Oh, yes, it will remember the words, not me. Save? What for? I say "yes" -- save me! Do you want to see resurrection? Click "retrive"! Try, it's easy. You don't have to understand, how it works -- click on!
Contents | Russian Being I | Russian Being II | Father-Russia, Intro | Intelligensia | August91 | Epilogue | Notes | Americans in Russia 92-94 | ffaga@uaf.edu |
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