Сергей Огольцов – The Algorithm of Chaos (страница 1)
Сергей Огольцов
The Algorithm of Chaos
Short and sweet
Who reads Prefaces or Forewords these days? Neither you nor I or any other person smart enough to have their IQ checked frequently.
So instead of stuff in the style of your grandparents’ school teacher I’ll tell you how come this here The Algorithm of Chaos happened to pop up at all.
Things have already got somehow settled down – well, yes, after six months of the blockade (written in Stepanakert, Mountainous Karabakh, in spring 2023) you, naturally, expect to fall victim in ethnic cleansing, or humanitarian catastrophe, or in another undeclared war, aka special military operation any other day…
But while they (who? where?) are reaching for The Button, issuing orders, manning the equipment… Loading… Zeroing in on… and countless other actions – I still have to while away my share of eternity for taking all that shit, right?
Good news, I’ve got what to whittle that enormous mass of spare time with. Years ago I got hooked on writing.
By me, it’s rather a winding process. Starting a sentence, I’m not quite sure what it’ll be finished with. Both how and where are no less moot points. And getting thru a passage resembles wandering in the primeval forest. Or, better still, alike to treading thru virtual world of a computer game.
On entering a passage against the backdrop of squalid backstreet lane, you make for God know where until – after a sudden turn – your boots step onto the tiled pavement in a brightly lit casinos area. Welcome to the passage end!
There’s a stir in the air, luxuriously attired ladies of tempting paint job in their faces, gents of murky aspect, casting furtive looks at you: now what? Where to?
I wish I knew! Wait till the next passage end, we’ll see there…
That’s why I entertain a firmly fixed idea, that my writing is not quite what writing is supposed to be.
It’s not me who writes, it’s I thru who it is written. By whom? Well, at the end of some future passage. Maybe…
Call it escapism if you like. Yet, what else can I do? I'm a small man, who’s stuck in a situation where all sorts of world ends may spring up at a moment’s notice.
(To keep to my diligently cultivated optimism, the list of all possible ends is not presented, although I could. Those eager to know the details of half a dozen the nearest disasters to come might choose opening Google and – wow! Well, I mean… gasp in funk.)
Those world ends are so immense, a small fry like me has nothing to do with such ga. Let them figure it out for themselves, who’s after who in their queue.
I’ve got cares of my own, among them writing to brighten up the drag of spare time.
Firstly, you have to fix you up with a proper plot. Without the thing, it's pretty hard to grasp what you're about, after all. And what comes after what, and where.
In general, it keeps you on this side of sanity. Without a plot you’re simply lost in chaos. It’s your Load Star in too badly charted seas of creative metaphysics. In simple terms, that’s a mess of the maze from where very few were lucky come back. A negligible number, statistically.
But even those 2 sorry fools, who had somehow managed, were met with unconcealed suspicion, like, Jimmy, is that really you, bro? But why your Mom and dog refuse to admit the fact?
Hence, my brotherly advice to anyone who’s hooked, like me, on writing – no risky fumbling with chaotic shit. Find yourself a plot, nice and neat, to eschew odd troubles for both you and your custodians.
Undoubtedly, here arises a low blow question: where to find the effing plot?
To be frank with a fellow in misery, here’s a direct answer: I have no idea, Frankie!
Yet, in the same breath, I know for a fact, there are prodigies who can’t give the number of plots they are sitting on. No storage space in their attics, spilling out the gable window, the goddamn plots are. What’s more, the poor devils are just drippling them and have to restrict their walk routes to only their backyards.
How come? Well, a secret tunnel to King Solomon plot mines, by the lead of an archaeologist friend. Presumably.
There’s no time to deeper delve into the subject of alcoholism in the archaeology domain right now. However, I happened to see with my own eyes (by pure chance, and later I even regretted seeing it) the list of bestsellers by a certain author comprising above 400 items! A stable UFO connection.
More than that, there popped up already another one hot on her heels, catching up steadily: 387 printed book titles!
Not a big deal? That couple of ladies has made one King, named Stephen, plus two Alexanders, surnamed Dumas bite the dust! Well, brother, I’m fearful for the future of males in this world. Bitter tears of solidarity well up in my eyes…
Originally though, writing was my subject, not the ersatz scam for kitchen tables.
The problem, who’s tip was hardly scratched by my touch (delicate as ever not to distract busy people off their respectable routines) is not new; even Pushkin grappled with it. At the roughest moments he used to ask his serf nanny:
‘Where shall we sail?’
That was his dodge to beg Arina Rodionovna for a plot, in a way both metaphorical and cunning…
And here you are, a bolt from the blue! Though having no nanny, I had a lucky strike! A worthy plot popped up, though in Russian, sitting in my PC. Which is also for the better – no Anglophone person has chanced to be tired of it…
So, I braced up for translating to share it with my compatriots…
Not by blood, yet by the planet.
2023-05-05
It's not what it looks like!
The 2 following paragraphs do not make an epigraph.
Nope. It is the final warning to sissy purists, pedantic SOBs of scent trained specially to tree any lively language, so as to pronounce it offensive:
„Most Honorable Miss/ Lady/ Sir!
Stop handling the book, close it, take another look at the title, try to grasp the meaning, and think again and deeper: do you really need it? Why risking your mental health? Don’t endanger the core of your snug life in a nice world miles away from our everyday reality.”
. . .
a). Why Did I Kiss-Goodbye Sports?
Looks like I’ll never get it why on earth it happened that, in my whole life, a weightlifting career hasn’t hooked me on. Such a spectacular sport as it is.
Just watch in what sly way he sidles up to the glossy shaft with cast-iron bells screwed to its ends. The man is meekness itself in his velvety squat beside it, the eyes averted so as not to scare it off. And all of a sudden, a kinda wild man – heh! – he tears that bloody mass of metal off the floor, jerks up, and lifts above his head.
Then the sportsman waits for three seconds, upright, strained arms outstretched toward ceiling, coccyx a-twitching, before to slam the thing underfoot onto the platform! Some guys, of those who's not in full control over their emotions, will even yell something, like, ‘catch it!’. Or even jump in place.
The jump, of course, is not so impressive – his build isn't the right size to clear a bar set half a meter high, even with a pole vault.
The thing, meanwhile, clanks its complaints to the platform about harsh usage, before to shut up eventually.
And then the weightlifter puffs up and barges off like a proud flagship icebreaker! Or rather a bulk-carrier for his mountain of muscle meat, on his way to the podium of 3 uneven steps.
There, he’d occupy a step to stoop from it and shove his head into the noose of a ribbon with a medal dangling from it. Then follows one whole bundle of actions: he straightens up, sniffles heartily, sticks out his chest, and contort his mug in a thoughtful expression, pretending he’s a music lover.
Because at that moment there sounds the state anthem of the country, which has sent him to the competition, or of another nation whose big man sticks his chest out on the highest step of all the three.
Besides, there are also those multicolored flags hanging down from 3 poles. The all-embracing beauty of the sight just stuns you as any other on-looker…
Attractive, yes, however, the attractiveness pull was not quite constant, and I’m at a loss to put my finger on why so. Despite all the tempting beauty of the sport, I somehow felt – no, it’s not for me, all those bells on that shaft, even though polished to appealing sheen.
And later on, after my fanboy delights about the Olympics in the tv box subsided, it dawned on me that big guys there weren't just toiling away for free.
Someone was scraping an apartment out from under that damn barbell, another was trying to get a seat on the committee presidium, wherever they'd put him.
Which, by the by, is right – that not for nothing he'd spent the years of his youth in gyms working himself up to the point of stupefaction and drowning in his own sweat.
It was not for the sake of throwing a derailed mine cart back onto the rails somewhere down the gallery, under the sounds of his farts in place of the state anthem, right?
Although there are those who strained for nothing at all – no gains and the chronic hernia instead of a medal.
And so, based on the above considerations, sports failed to appealed to me in earnest. Well, maybe, rhythmic gymnastics and figure skating, to a certain extent, but then again, only for a while, until I got a taste for Rubens' forms.