God is neither soul nor angel ... nor can He be described or understood ... He neither stands still nor moves ... He is none of the things that have no being, none of the things that have being... Nor is there any way by which we can reach Him through reason or understanding.... --Boehme _The Cloud of Unknowing_

	In Articles:

	God-me
	God's diary
	Attack

	In American:

	I
	I-I
	I-God
	Trinity
	Souls
	Capital
	Alienation

Really, what if God doesn't exist and it's I? Than I'm safe. I wish they talk more about Noting. Sartre and Heidegger. The being of non-being. Every time they talk about Man, the existentialists meant God. God has no nature, God forced to be free!.. How could I miss my existentialist roots. The whole century is existential in its reaction to socialization of the modernism. How about Existentialism and Hitler?

The begining of the African Book I placed in the year 2050, after my death. I thought it will be easier for me to talk about the past, the dead. I had no time in this book to talk about being dead. You see, most of the time I am dead. It's only natural. I was dead before I was born and I will be dead after I die. I know, you would say, that in order to be dead one has to be born. Non-being has no less forms and configurations that life. Not being alive places me in a position when Before and After could be inter-changeable. It's only the living which interested in history and time. Being dead for eternity gives me a different perspective on my being. First, I have to accept the fact. Perhaps, that is the most difficult moment to accept the simple fact of your own death. I don't know why we have no problem with our birth, but our death always is something hypothetical (since we are not dead yet). Strange. This thought is just an observation of the Christian landscape. Jesus was borne and died. Christ lived before, during and after Jesus. Christianity insists that I am no alive when I'm dead. I wouldn't compare the two beings in this manner. Actually, measuring everything to my human (animal) understanding of life limits my thought. For many years I keep thinking about life of a stone. It has its own existence, being, forms -- I can't call it "dead" nature. What is "dead"?

The point I am trying to make -- I wish to stop talking like "thinking" grass. There's a lot it in our philosophy. Why can't we get use to the fact that to live is extremely abnormal and being dead is our nature? Non-being is what I'm most of the time. According to a quantitative view, my life is a neglectable number. My non-living is so big, that mathematically speaking I never lived. Did you notice, I'm mixing "being" and "life"? Well, this idea has interesting consequences. Basically, like in Q Mechanics, we can't really say did I live or not. More paradoxically, anything could be considered existed even if it never existed! How about that kind of potentiality! And I have to accept it if I understand (believe) God's nature.... (I hope you remember that God's nature is not to have nature. Everything existing would be a limitation; God has to stay undescribable, i.e. outside of Being and beings).

Let me tell you about the feelings of the dead. Today (Sunday, October 5, 1997) I lived through a shame of recognizing that I forgot my existentialist fathers. Sartre, Dostoevsky, Kirkeggard, even Marx -- all dead -- talked to Heidegger about me (I read Heidegger lately). I could hear them talking in amazement how could I keep forgetting that it was said so many times that there is no such a thing as a human nature. I was ashamed of the future readers of mine, all of them were looking at me with pity. I keep forgetting that I belong to them, that I am from over there and I should know better. I am still too human. Maybe I watch too much of television. I forgot that I am dead. I should think about the nature of the dead -- what is the nature of a non-living? Did they all call the transition from non-living into (human) life a tragedy? Did they said that existence is absurdic? Why? If being a human is a nonsense, not being must be making a lot of sense.

I like being dead. Nobody bothers you. Even Anatoly.

	Also, ME-God


	R is the method of constructing God (through paradise); they
do it and will continue to do. Everything  written about God will
be there: Big Brother? Christ. Also, Daddy, the Father. And the
third one -- the Ghost. Omnipresent, all right. All powerful. Of
course, they don't need churches, the communists.

	R = creation of God.

	Not the nature, but God!
	Not just computers, but the SYSTEM. Don't you see what is
going on? How much they want it, how much work and energy is
invested!

	Oh, we need Him so bad! Not any God, but OUR god. For the 
people, by the people and of the people. (Which people? That's
why we need this global village, to make all the same). We need
the One who will never leave us alone. Who loves! How much we do
need it -- we are ready to go for anything.

	And
	We resist the position of being gods....

	Why do we insist that all humans are "basically" the same?
Like all dogs are dogs. Something anti-personal and possible only
in paradise or hell. Why would I need this total connection with
human? Don't I have enough of it? Or is it the only way to
contact myself? Humanity is only a stage in my upbringing.... Oh?
You don't want to work on manufacturing the Super-man?

	I watch myself. I've been doing it for many years. Am I
afraid to lose the body? What is life and living in such a
position?

	Body -- that's the place where they can get me. Christians
knew that my body never can be my friend. It's my slave. (And it
treats me the same). People are slaves of their bodies, we know.
Americans. If you can't beat it, join it -- so we did.

	Hey, now we know that your mind is the bigger enemy!

	R means different "Being" and "be" -- shall I say
"opposite"?

	Dwelling (Heidegger); spirits are always dwell. Hello, new
nomads.

	R means "secondary" existence?

	Salvation from what? Death? What if I'm not interested?


	ANTHROPOLOGY OF THE PRESENT

	Imagination that is what we should never ask from God. God
forbid, we can imagine the past and see the present. Humanism
can't be critical of itself -- it's too much to ask. We must not
question the gift of being humans. Nietzsche hoped that it is
possible for a human to go beyond humanity. He tried and went
mad. That's what the gift of imagination can do to you.
Imagination is more dangerous than knowledge. Actually, we value
knowledge because it kills imagination. We know about the past,
we study it -- we feel good because we UNDERSTAND! We are above
the past. We look down on them, the primitives, without telephone
and hot water, at mercy of weather and wild animals. We are proud
of being civilized, and why shouldn't we?

	Should I try to step out of my humanity and take a look at
my day? The media hip over Princess Diana's death did it. Not the
death itself but the way it was celebrate. It was another Di's
step up in being a celebrity -- she became "people's princess"!
Why those millions were so "moved"? What was behind the spectacle
of cheap emotions? What did they want to cover?

	Our times are no less brutal than pre-history. We kill and
torture but in a different (sophisticated) way. We can speed up a
human body at the 100 m/h and smash it against the wall. Or take
you several thousand feet in the air and drop down. We call it
accidents. Our executions have no trail and clemency. Like in
Stalin's trail we pick our victims at random. We sacrifice some
for our gods -- comfort, safety and peace. And like in Nazi
Germany it's hard to find the guilty -- we all are innocent.

	We have to pay for living better and longer. Who pays? Lets
make it a lottery. At the times of law and reason we submit
ourselves to the biggest injustice of all -- killing without any
reason. Fate? We don't believe in it. Not really. Or the broken
cause and effect link?...


	We'd like to think that we have a better laws than before
us. We banned cruel and unusual punishment by inventing an
electric chair! To make death instant we perfected the dying. The
guillotine was introduced for the same reason. And it made
execution more effective, now we could cut more heads.

	We are proud that we have less abortion than in Russia or
China. We prevent the conception, not the birth. It's less cruel,
don't you think? You are not against pain-killers, aren't you?
Well, don't I remember, that Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and hard
drugs are against pain, too.... It is "natural" not to feel pain?
The bottom line of anything philosophical is the doubt that it's
natural to be human. Do we need more humanization?


	We are more humane. We have done away with slavery....

	But what do you think the rush hour is?

	My children are taken away from me. They visit their family
for a few hours a day. Most of the time their are at work, with
their master. They get up around 6.30 am and brought back in
yellow prison busses at 3 pm. All day long they have been drilled
in working skills and, yes, they bring their work home (home
work). Of course, it's done for their good. From the moment of
birth -- for decades -- they are prepared for work.... the
society is the biggest benefactor of my success. I know what is
about to happen to a slave if he stops working. Also I know what
it feels like to realize that I am a slave.

	Americans work hard. They work all the time. The way our
prehistorical ancestors did to survive physically. We work when
they vocation, they work to stay healthy (workout). They work
watching tv.... you still didn't get it, the secrets of
entertainment? They work two jobs, those fools, who rase new
slaves for the humanity. They work at home, too. That's called an
American Dream. In postmodernity they have a third job -- they
must learn non-stop, upgrade themselves. All without exceptions
-- young and old, women and children.

	Do you want more pictures, mister Dante? I don't have to
travel to Africa or the world beyond. I have no need for
imagination and Kafka. It's all in there, my everyday mundane
life. Perhaps, now you know why people get bored, why they think
that nothing is happening. That's how a born into slavery feels.
Of course, we had to invent humanism and stupidity. We learned
how to lie and have fun. No, we don't want go beyond being
humans; we spent so much time constructing it!

	Even as a teenager I was suspicious of Freud. I understood
his point about me-animal and the powers of the body. But I felt
as if the doctor doesn't tell me the whole story. Freud was a man
of modernity, he could not admit that we constructed a more
terrible beast to control the nature. The human must be more
brutal to overpower the animal in me. Humanism must be
outrageously gross and ruthless to rule. Why than we are
surprised at the diabolic ferocity of Nazism? Why don't we see it
as a demonstration of the high modernity and success of humanism?
Gas chambers weren't even the means of punishment.

	You see, if we pill up 40 thousand killed on the road each
year and put them in the mass grave, we wouldn't be so shocked
with the pictures from Sarievo. We have more Americans committing
suicide in one day than Saudis execute in a year. But we didn't
do it! They did it to themselves! They had a freedom of choice!
They didn't have to do it! They were driving!...


	....


	After all the books about freedom I find myself having no
other choice besides being human. I have to say, it's
disappointing and depressing. I feel stuck with humanism without
the euphoria of modernists. I must be a postmodernist and even a
pomo, a monster, not being proud of rockets and cloning. To tell
you the truth, I'm not envy the optimists and masters of positive
thinking. I think that it take a lot of stupidity to be a human.
In the past it was a right thing to do, you can see in our
recorded history. I can relate to their amazement of the
discovery, but it's kind of out of place in the supermarket.

	Since I can go back into being an animal (because of
education), I am forced to claim up -- into being a god.... Let
me translate this state of being into English (I'm still not good
at communicating between the two stages). Actually, it's not a
god, but God. Yes, the one, this one. Perhaps, now you can
understand why contemporary Christians drive me crazy. "To be
with God," "to give yourself to Lord".... what do they mean? I
can understand the past Christians who didn't know better. They
tried to be human, they labored this thought. ...


	All right, all right, maybe it's just me, who works seven
days without vocations, who has children in school, drives and
flies. And I have it easy; I am a professor and live in
Fairbanks. We don't have much of a traffic in Alaska.

	The routine must be invisible. Trust me.


	MORE NOTES (4 BOOKS)

	Organizational: directory  grew into a book by
itself. I have no time to go back to the writing in the directory
. I left the other directories -- Self, Resurrection,
PM, USA -- only for the reference texts. "Geographical"
designation of the three projects -- Russian, American, African
-- the three worlds/historical time-frames. I would think that
each should have it's own organizational principle -- I don't see
it yet. Some chapters/articles keep traveling from one directory
to another, looking for its place, and I can't finish them till
they put the roots.

	There is a topical dilemma I face: _The Self_ is about the
post-human conditions (God) -- a hard concept to swallow. Another
is America = Communism. Politically provocative, a different
reading of history. Third (historically in my writing was the
first) -- the Resurrection (which in itself has two directions
--The Apocalypse and The Last Judgement). I feel that if I can
find a narrative for each project, I would know how to
re-organize my pieces. What is that? A plot?

	I am afraid to force myself into some artificial
construction for the sake of shaping and finalization. I keep
writing, expecting that somehow the story will appear by itself
in each book. I'm waiting to discover this line of EVENTS in my
own life. Not by the thought alone! Some biographical sketches
(NYC first impressions) looks like the (right) format. Driving
the taxi? Something simple. I need the one to tell it all -- the
hero, as they used to say. I have to switch to the writer's side
of my brains to see them -- the Russian, or the American guy. I
don't see myself!

	I resist the temptation of fictionalization, I don't want to
invent anything, only to discover. Something like a scientist.
Not only reading of history but reading my own life! Confessions
is a tricky genre, you have to be old and almost dead.

	I'm still not writing; I don't look for the details (the
guard's uniform in Manhattan, the hat with a number -- I rash). I
can't slow down the thought to materialize the light! I like the
re-writes because I can how the flesh grows around the bones.
Every draft is the growth; I cut very little, there's very little
there to cut off. I want to help myself and that is not an easy
task to pull yourself up the hair.

	I don't have a simple luxury of reading what I wrote
yesterday. I throw in new pages in hope that they fall in right
places. Of course, I am afraid of too much of my control over the
process -- I "wrote" so much in the past and I must be careful in
NOT writing, disciplining the need to "glue" things together,
when I fake the joints and cover up the cracks. (Take it as a
diary entry of Oct. 20, 1997). I have no pleasure in reading
anymore. I open the book and see that it is WRITTEN! Sometime
well written. It's something "made up" (fiction). I have a
feeling that I see a primitive mechanism, like a car. I stop
after a page or two -- I have no time for "stories"! Tales! Some
non-existing people are talking (dialogue), like in the movie. I
understand that it is difficult to dig out the essence of your
own experiences, I understand that Hamlet would let me express my
views and feelings because I won't be limited by my non-eventual
life, I understand the beauty of the self-contained composition,
but it goes against the principle -- I have to talk about MY
SELF! In that sense the novel is dead. Fiction is too human, the
stage is something of a neutral territory between me and you. No,
I am the territory of the action. I am the stage.

	To be heretical: down with art! I am already a "fiction" --
a construct (as we love to say nowadays), why pretend that I
"write," when I am "written"? If I am a text (am I?), why write?
Recording is enough. What for did we invent video cameras? I am
not about to fight with the facts of my postmodern existence -- I
have been read all my life by the others. Now it's time for my
own reading of myself. (I think it's not only my situation). Let
the pop-culture write novels, let them have it. Let them have
drama and art. Let them write books. Let them to be humans and
fictionalize. Let them think about history and society. Let them
have it all. What for did they do the cultural revolution for?
It's theirs, they are in power. I better stay away from their
property....


	The big Three -- American, Russian and African books are
about the border between I and the world. (Not about MY Self?)
Also, it's NOW. _Viewpoints_ is about the methods of tomorrow.
After all, cinema has only one century of history, a day or even
a minute in its future history. That was the method used in the
six days of creation, we have to perfect it to full powers.

	African Book is about the pre-history, pre-modernity, before
me. _Father Russia_ is my experience of the postmodernity, which
the Russians used to create the modern (American) age. Till the
age of thirty I was a communist by position. Memories of
childhood. American Book -- living in the communist future.

	THE THIRD WORLD: (STATE) COMMUNISM (POSTMODERN) AS A METHOD
OF MODERNIZATION (Epstein). It's over when the communist society
(American) is in place.


	Should the Russian Book be the first? Next -- African, what
was before. Third -- America. (Depends how each project
progresses. American is the most marketable?)


	What is missing? The images! I spent too much time and words
explaining. I need to collect the symbols -- picture -- to make
my thought VISIBLE. Without it I never come closer to WRITING. I
have no hope for arranging chapters as stories without gathering
the imagery. I have to slow down my thought to notice the
landscape of my time. Simple acts (watching tv) is not observable
unless I take them down in small portions. "Driving a car" is a
metaphysical action (life and death) -- and I have to alienate it
from the mundane reality. Truth escapes, it tries to stay secret.


	The "philosophy" in its open (smart) forms must disappear.
What could I possible say so profound about the very first stage
of the future? My experience is the only subject worth recording
(remembering). The postmodern thought gave up on systematic
knowledge for that very reason -- to be concrete, real, factual.

	Too many quotations. As if I'm on crutches. I have to step
away from the postmodern (attitude); too reflective, too
traditional. The subjects of the future are different--PERSONAL.
The heart of the matter that all the outer changes (technology,
globalization, communism) is only a sight of the inner changes
which take place today. The individual is the target and
battlefield. He is the instrument, the micro-chip of the future.
"Man is nothing"? I know how to read the prayers of communists.
You wish! The powers he, the single, will gain are unthinkable --
god's possibilities. Of course WE can't intrust him, the one, and
we will try to make him into nothing. Don't I see how consistent
their assault on me? What does it say? Forget the problem of
Socrates, remember the trails of the present, when the systems
throw their weight on a single and (yet) mortal.

	And why should I worry about departure from people. It's
equally impossible to escape the gravity on Earth. Don't look
back; trust me -- they are there, one step behind. They follow
you anywhere you go. You write, you leave the notes for them to
trace you. Look ahead -- look inside!


	I write to read it, and I read to think about it. I of
yesterday welcomes me of tomorrow.


	I wish I can take in the full scope of the change. I doubt
that anything less could give me peace. What about Ethiopia or
Russia when the whole world goes through this total
transformation? My mind is struck dead. I don't believe it! What
could I say about the world which evolves with such a speed from
within us? What did I know about my future at the age of twelve?
Nothing. What can I say about the world which disappears faster
then shots in commercials? What could be written by somebody in a
free fall?

	Was I right thirty years ago when I thought that nothing is
changing? Could both impressions be right? What changes did I
expect then? Did I get my wishes realized now?


	....Exponentionally? The Net. That's how the acceleration
feels like.


	THE EVIL OF THE GOOD and THE GOOD OF THE EVIL

	In Russia I knew only the best. Only stuff which managed to
make through the Iron Curtain. It must be a pretty good book or a
movie to be seen in Brezhnev's Moscow. And we paid the price for
selectability -- it was in Russian and it was late (sometimes
years later). Now I have everything instant and I MYSELF have to
select. There must be a balance between the two extremes.


	THE ARISTOCRATIC IDEA

	It's coming, it's near. The future division between the
majority with notion of Self and the few who will be capable of
self-discovery. Free choice is a matter of choice. (How do you do
it without a need?) Not all want it. Yes, it's possible. Like
children. They AWARE of their existence, they are functional but
since the communism through collectivity will make my
self-protection minimal, the majority has no need for developing
full self-identity. Subjectivity without individuality. Oh, the
Big Brother is the Sweat Mother. We're not about to waste time on
developing something of no use -- the Super-Ego. Mind is only a
tool. No, they are not machines, they are working with machines
(computers), they are the army of mechanics (operators,
programmers).

	Possible, possible. I deal with semi-humans all the time, my
children. But there is an establish line of authority. There's no
problem with co-existence of different worlds. They have their
interests, I have mine. But we have to have DIFFERENT spaces. The
division has to be physical, separate rooms! ...


	Self-periodization. Let it be five-year cycles. First five
years, first memories. The second -- my elementary school
experience, continuation of the sense (not awareness) of
imprisonment (Soviet kindergarten has nothing to do with gardens
or care -- I had to be there, both parents at work). The school
with home work, ink -- no ball-pens. Report cards, being call by
the last name in front of the class, the uniform (based on
military, even the big copper belt, which we had to clean with
the powder, same for the teeth). By fifteen I felt liberated.
First the summer trip to Georgia. And the three friends -- Pasha,
Leosha, Sergey. New special math-physics high school and new
friends. Skipping classes, travelling by buss every day across
Moscow. With a sense of a physical (less control) liberation, the
full discovery of not being free. Drifting away from the family.
By the age of twenty I was on my own. Dropped my thermodynamics
degree, had a family, worked in small papers as a journalist. The
fifth cycle is about the Institute of Cinematography, writing,
losing the family. At age 25 I was a member of the Writers Guild.
The next five years I was a free-lancer and wrote myself out of
the country. At 31 I was in New York, a defector. For years I
tried many things, almost as in Russia before my twenties. The
next five are my American teaching career (Assistant professor in
Virginia and Associate in Alaska). I tried to get out of academia
by surpassing it -- Russian American Theatre project, New York
and Ethiopia -- and ended up back in Fairbanks. Since 1995 I
write -- and here are the plans: I have to get out of present
situation by the year 2000. To get by the age of fifty in a place
where I was in Russia when I was 25 -- by myself, not being an
employee. The only problem -- I have to write what I want to
write. Here are my plans get murky -- hopes only that somehow
what I write will be published and pay for living. Ten units, the
rest I don't see. Thirty years ago I didn't think that I will
live so long.

	Ten stories? How do I tell them in the three big books?
	Two. The African Book is not about myself per se.

	The Russian and American books can't take it all. I have to
break them into a smaller projects. I see the number of pages in
my three directories -- and that's without letting myself
"write"! Without the stories, without talking much about myself.
I have to go smaller if I go deeper. That is -- from "technical"
to "creative" writing. I can't complete, for instance, PURE WAR
(Chapter WAR WITH A HUMAN FACE) without extending it to the point
when it does include MY (life) experience, not only an
intellectual, but PERSONAL. Why? I ask myself. I don't know.
Somehow I FEEL that it will get right, if I go for telling the
facts, the roots of the thought, my feelings -- and where do I
go? Into my childhood? The uniform, the belt, the red tie
(pioneer)? Into my present conditions with the defence technology
of the Internet? Today (Oct. 21) in the big class (Aesthetics) I
said that I believe that the great work of art already exists and
I all I have to do is to discover it. Bethoween's music,
Tolstoy's novel, Shakespeare's Hamlet are no less the phenomenons
than gravity, light, chemistry laws. Follow this logic my books
are out there, I need to see, read them in order to write them. I
don't like "creative" element of art, all this stuff about
choices and my freedom, "artistic license" -- perhaps, that's how
looks from the outside....

	The scientist in me whispers that I'm asking for a trouble.
There are enough of the unknowns in the trajectory of the thought
to add the new ones. I know, but I also know that I have no
chance to solve the equation -- no time, no capacities -- the
great books of philosophy look much more archaic than the great
books of letters. (It's the Brecht's week in my _Playscript
Analysis_ class. Galileo fights the Aristotelian model of
universe. The same Aristotle of the Poetics. Who writes ABOUT
Sophocles! How much _Oedipus Rex_ is outdated? Language, not the
story. Brahms concert, the sound of the piano, is fresh as if it
wasn't ever composed but came out now for the first time! I have
to remind myself that he lived long before I was born and he
"wrote" it, that he is dead. 2 X 2 = 4; doesn't have it. I feel
like the "man from the underground" -- well, all right, so
what?)....

	I'm not an advocate of arts. I don't sign the petitions and
never lobbied for funds. Art is very private. I have to be
careful. Artist is an aristocrat. No followers (only imitators),
no dogma (only search), no friends (only readers), no help....

	Am I capable of helping myself?

	I want to re-write Nietzsche's passage of "Russian fatalism"
(see _Recollections_?). Yes, at the moment of final desperation I
fall face down into snow to die, I see my fast dreams, and -- I
wake up to get up -- and keep going. Yes, yes and yes! "Error is
cowardice"! I get up -- you can call it writing. Nothing
"creative" about it. I want to put my life story in to make a
point that I did nothing but fight for a survival.Arts recognizes
the same WILL in a flower, sun light, human body. No, no, not
that simple -- "existence exists" -- existence fights for
existence. "Get real, it's life!" -- as my 13 year daughter tells
it to my 11 year old son. The given is taken. The given is a
promise, a chance, an advance. Existence is a war for existence.
Get real, objectivists and idealists! I have nothing -- that's
why I write.

	I don't want to fight. I'm not a revolutionary, not a rebel.
I want to mind my own business. I remember why it's important for
me. I could be dead tomorrow. I have no time to waste, I have to
save myself. And do my best -- I write. I'm here, my every second
is important. (Why do we take photos?) I don't want to record.
The recording is a by-product of my fight for existence.

	I was an existentialist in a grade school. Later I
understood that existence is a begining of life. I want to live,
existence wasn't enough. I didn't understand that even the
existence is a task. I eat, I sleep, I wash myself. Sometimes
(often) I want to cry for mercy. I don't do it. (Nietzsche about
pain). Mercy is a gift, blessing, abnormal. About him, the boy I
was. My first five years weren't less dramatic than now. What
mercy could I expect in the first grade? My take on "beyond good
and evil" is different. I was and I am beyond morality. I do
exist. And I don't treasure my existence. Animals do. I value my
knowledge of my existence. It's MINE. That is my PROPERTY. Here
is the place where Marx dies, the time when he turns in his
grave. That's what I want to write about.

	I don't want to live or exist forever. I want to live while
I exist. Simple. How to do it is difficult. I hope I will time to
give more time (reading) to the sense of being (Heidegger). I
hope to get beyond the linguistics.

	I hope one day I'll write it right.

antohins.vtheatre.net: one family, one century (doc)