...In my investigation of the sign I was dumbstruck at the sheer brilliance of whoever wrote this. I looked around and people were happy, not a care in the world for them. As I looked no one moved in the form that I myself wanted to move. I wanted to run, I wanted to shout out, to warn the people of this dismal place. I wanted to shake the next man who walked next to me, to explain to him the importance of his footsteps. "Where are you going? Why are you walking so slow?" Those are questions I wanted to beat into the next man's brain, there was not a soul outside walking the streets worried about the impending doom that this sign foretold. Granted it was just a movie theater and most of the words on the board were foreign to me, well, because they were foreign, the names of movies from France and America, but I could see through them, see what was written underneath the actual words on the board. The Russian words spoke clearly to me...they spoke of the impending doom of the coming apocalypse.
I have lived a full life I imagine. Somewhere in the world lies a man who has achieved greater, but envy does not drag on my soul like men I see on the streets right now. The majority being successful, but they have led a life of ease with rare feelings of strife, only good descriptions like fortitude, executive, and business savvy have been stained into their pores, those words are unwashable from the skin. Congratulations for them! They walk the streets with a full vigor of knowing that their manlihood is safe, tucked into their satchels, into their rucksacks they hide their inner passions, but show their true love of being able to walk down the street and holler beautiful words and salutations because they know they've earned this right, it is enough to be happy. But look at the sign, they are blind to the words that it sees, it is unfortunate. I will not be able to decipher them in time, I cannot save the majority of these people.
The layers of sidewalk stretch for miles and miles before I reach the university. My friend Vasily's son Pavel, I need to find. Despite my own freedom I need to rely on this young man to see that I have enough sustenance to live since he has not been in prison for the last seventeen years. The university is teeming with life, enough people to fill a small factory and keep it working for days on end, a veritable gold mine for surveyors of this area. However, those days are gone, I am a fool. Not even two hours outside I revert back to my days before. I am thinking nonsense, I need to find Pavel. I reach a tan bricked building, which is where he lives on the campus. Strasvuytia I say to him in my most formal tongue. He replies in English, "Hello". This startles me, but I regain my composure quickly and ask him in Russian where to find Pavel Vasilievich Krelov. He looks through a folder, through a stack of papers and then picks up a piece of paper that fell on the ground next to him. He looks up and down the list, apparently his knowledge of the alphabet eludes him at the moment. He looks over at me lazily and tells me to find the fourth floor and its the second door on the right.
As I get to the elevator a young man in a workman's outfit is fixing the elevator. Astonished at the poor man's face and how young it looks I stop myself from saying anything as he turns to look at me. A handsome boy, barely eighteen years old he stares at me devilishly. It frightens me and I turn and walk off to find a stairwell. Startled again by the drab look to this basic architecture I turn at an opening where I would think a stairwell could be found, but instead of stairs I find an odd-shaped hold in the wall. They look like garbage shoots. As I look closer I see men working in a small, cramped room below with thousands of papers. There are literally two dozen men working in a space that could only fit maybe ten of them, its surreal, and all of them are dressed in the same khaki pants and white dress shirts. Some of them have hats, but most of them let their curly hair drift over their eyes as they study the sheets in front of them. One comes over to one of the shoots in which I am looking and puts an envelope through the shoot and closes the small door behind it. It hits me that I am staring into their dormitory's mail room. It feels strange to me, I have never seen so much paper and so much mail in my life. The men that live in this building must be an important lot to be receiving such mail. Another man comes over to me and as he puts the piece of mail in the slot and shuts the door he looks at me and cleverly slips a note in with the piece of mail and stares at me. I take the note and it explains who they are and why they are doing what they are down in this cramped mail room. It takes me a few times to read and fully understand what he is talking about, but he shoots me another look, this one harsher than before and tells me 'he knows'. Knows what I do not, but I have a feeling that within this note I will find out. He walks back to the desk in which he was working and another man comes up to me. He tells me to worry about finding Pavel later and to first listen to him. He explains everything to me. Apparently all of these men are 'brothers' I assume in the fraternity sense, but that they control and protect everything in the school and the city. They protect the masses from their ignorance, they seemed to have written the words that I read in the sign. They are both protecting and killing the city at the same time. Their cause is lost on me, in fact, they have no cause. Their actions seem to be pointless and yet they work like drones, busily feeding mail into envelopes and putting them in the boxes of their respective owners. But they seem to all be noble gentleman and if the words written in the theater sign are true listening to these 'boys' is the only thing I can do...
I have lived a full life I imagine. Somewhere in the world lies a man who has achieved greater, but envy does not drag on my soul like men I see on the streets right now. The majority being successful, but they have led a life of ease with rare feelings of strife, only good descriptions like fortitude, executive, and business savvy have been stained into their pores, those words are unwashable from the skin. Congratulations for them! They walk the streets with a full vigor of knowing that their manlihood is safe, tucked into their satchels, into their rucksacks they hide their inner passions, but show their true love of being able to walk down the street and holler beautiful words and salutations because they know they've earned this right, it is enough to be happy. But look at the sign, they are blind to the words that it sees, it is unfortunate. I will not be able to decipher them in time, I cannot save the majority of these people.
The layers of sidewalk stretch for miles and miles before I reach the university. My friend Vasily's son Pavel, I need to find. Despite my own freedom I need to rely on this young man to see that I have enough sustenance to live since he has not been in prison for the last seventeen years. The university is teeming with life, enough people to fill a small factory and keep it working for days on end, a veritable gold mine for surveyors of this area. However, those days are gone, I am a fool. Not even two hours outside I revert back to my days before. I am thinking nonsense, I need to find Pavel. I reach a tan bricked building, which is where he lives on the campus. Strasvuytia I say to him in my most formal tongue. He replies in English, "Hello". This startles me, but I regain my composure quickly and ask him in Russian where to find Pavel Vasilievich Krelov. He looks through a folder, through a stack of papers and then picks up a piece of paper that fell on the ground next to him. He looks up and down the list, apparently his knowledge of the alphabet eludes him at the moment. He looks over at me lazily and tells me to find the fourth floor and its the second door on the right.
As I get to the elevator a young man in a workman's outfit is fixing the elevator. Astonished at the poor man's face and how young it looks I stop myself from saying anything as he turns to look at me. A handsome boy, barely eighteen years old he stares at me devilishly. It frightens me and I turn and walk off to find a stairwell. Startled again by the drab look to this basic architecture I turn at an opening where I would think a stairwell could be found, but instead of stairs I find an odd-shaped hold in the wall. They look like garbage shoots. As I look closer I see men working in a small, cramped room below with thousands of papers. There are literally two dozen men working in a space that could only fit maybe ten of them, its surreal, and all of them are dressed in the same khaki pants and white dress shirts. Some of them have hats, but most of them let their curly hair drift over their eyes as they study the sheets in front of them. One comes over to one of the shoots in which I am looking and puts an envelope through the shoot and closes the small door behind it. It hits me that I am staring into their dormitory's mail room. It feels strange to me, I have never seen so much paper and so much mail in my life. The men that live in this building must be an important lot to be receiving such mail. Another man comes over to me and as he puts the piece of mail in the slot and shuts the door he looks at me and cleverly slips a note in with the piece of mail and stares at me. I take the note and it explains who they are and why they are doing what they are down in this cramped mail room. It takes me a few times to read and fully understand what he is talking about, but he shoots me another look, this one harsher than before and tells me 'he knows'. Knows what I do not, but I have a feeling that within this note I will find out. He walks back to the desk in which he was working and another man comes up to me. He tells me to worry about finding Pavel later and to first listen to him. He explains everything to me. Apparently all of these men are 'brothers' I assume in the fraternity sense, but that they control and protect everything in the school and the city. They protect the masses from their ignorance, they seemed to have written the words that I read in the sign. They are both protecting and killing the city at the same time. Their cause is lost on me, in fact, they have no cause. Their actions seem to be pointless and yet they work like drones, busily feeding mail into envelopes and putting them in the boxes of their respective owners. But they seem to all be noble gentleman and if the words written in the theater sign are true listening to these 'boys' is the only thing I can do...
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home