The Rascally Romance (in a single helluva-long letter about a flicking-short life)
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Though what else could you expect of a fucking philanthropist, eh?.
Acknowledgments & Disclaimer
I thank you all, whose names appear in the tale, as well as those who are not in here (you are indefinitely more in numbers and your contribution to The Rascally Romance having been written after all is equally important).
And of no less significance is Your, Dear Reader, tagging along up to this very line. Because any book can only be produced by the collaborative team of 2: the reader and the author. Thank you, I—(dead serious and no horsing)—am hugely honored by Your most kind cooperation.
And now we’ve just reached the point when everyone has to decide for themselves whether to return to their pursuit of customary business and/or pleasures—to all those pet joys, and daily problems alongside with habitual rewards and outlets befitting people of sober good sort, which (between the two of us, as one buddy-teammate to the other) might be the most reasonable course because you never know what insidious vortexes and currents might lurk out there—or keep rowing on ahead, past and beyond the popping buoy of this here Foreword, a sort of…
Whoa! After such a rambling passage I do have to shut up and take a breather, so feel free to use the lull for making your informed decision…
To be frank, it doesn’t matter how randomly or strictly Your cons and pros are scattered for the choice, and stay assured there’s no way to dump the blame on me because of the disclaimer to wind it all up—
*Regardless of which tack you pick, you’ll never be the same hereafter*
~ ~~~ ~
Epigraph:
Looks like that’s it,
In any case, as of yet,
And even if not quite,
Still, sort of, may be,
Because when otherwise,
”Hey, you!.“
Bang and – a-ha!.
Vladimir Sherudillo
~~~~~
~ ~ ~
The Birchbark Sketches
…Varanda…
…a handful of random sounds…
…some sonorant nothing… as any other name…
At this distance, the river itself is nothing but a discordant growl of water in nonstop tumbling over them those bulky boulders littered at random to block the way, ramming vainly into their blunt pates, maybe temples, to only get split by their huge indifference into maddened spits, and spill around the gobs of splashy froth, and keep rolling forth in unremitting helter-skelter on, and on, and on without ever getting outside the trap of Here and Now, fixed within futile breakout from nowhere to nowhere, under hollow tam-tam taps, not to time neither in key, by the rounded gravel at the bottom of its riverbed…
And what about the fit duration, Doc? Seems like setting it down to infinity plus this one day, would be close enough… Nations been risen and passed away, to quote the famous lecture by sage Abu-Lala before his string of camels, while this river runs here and still has to, thru all those ages upon eons ever since before the beginnings of time.
Changes in the mountain rivers are pretty negligible, except for those in their names. Sure bet, the Stone Age hunters had other sound combinations as for this here stream because all flow and everything changes, handles as well… Now, taking into account the whole multitude of roamers that ever trod these banks, you can’t state who’s runnier: the dateless river of Varanda or irresponsible drifters and purposeful undertakers of any shade and warp in the spectrum. And here am I, a casual bum from endless series, neither the first nor the last by this omnipresent flow.
…extreme pleasure, bro, from your spectacular malarkey… and while you’re at it how ’bout pinning down this “I” of mine, eh?.
A minor spill, considerably dehydrated and motionless for the moment, stretched next to the good ol’ hole thru which all of the future tumbles away into the past—a relay-pipeline from a snotty noddy kid to a grumpy, flea-bitten curmudgeon, yet both share one common thing: this ubiquitous word of “I”.
…me too, me too!. don’t leave me out!. I’m also somewhere in between them those two, on our everlasting journey from the junior to the senior, for even though idling now on this bank I still go with the flow…
“ O, water! We be of one blood!
…whoa, man!. what are you up at? acting a freakin smartie?. who cares a flick about your quotation frills at this time of day?.
Yes, time remains the laziest in our assembly, uncaring, has dozed off in earnest about my one-person tent. The twilight outside the well-bleached nylon wall will snail for long along its way to thickening into the dark of night.
…right, then why not to whittle the drag away by something useful, eh?.
…like, to compose the letter promised to your daughter… what’d you say?. we’ve got the promises to keep, remember?. especially when there’s not a flake of chance to fall asleep so early…
…just only watch your mouth, pardner… easy about them those f-f..er..fumbling quotations?.
~ ~ ~
Hello, Liliana
(…a hugely nicer name than “Varanda”, eh?.
…shut up and mind your business!.)
Seems, I do start at last the letter promised to you at our encounter in Kiev… What for? To marshal a chain of self-excuses and belated explanations, to claim not guilty, absolve my flawless self?. Anything can be explained, yet none redone. However, given the word was given, I’ve only got to keep it…
Hard it was to stomach your official correctness and the excessive use of “You” in plural to keep me at a proper distance, “Of course, Sehrguey Nikolayevich…” “Not exactly, Sehrguey Nikolayevich…” Oboy! I began to resent my own patronymic, yet faced the flogging without a flinch, as fits a manly man.
Meting out “Daddy” to a stranger popped up from the Internet vistas is not an easy job, more so if he looks nothing like the Mr. Pretty Guy sitting in your Mom’s album… Some obscure mujik, gray hanging beard… Where is Daddy of your dreams who you’ve missed since your early childhood? You dreamed of that Daddy, not of this old man. No, thanks! Accordingly, our farewell hug at the railway station was just put up with—not a big deal for a woman nearing her thirties—and that’s it. The glacial ice retained its hardness, not a micro crevice cracked the cold surface, the gardens never splash in bloom, nor were they filled with lively cheerful chirps of blackbirds, thrushes, tits, and starlings injecting their joyous trills into the triumphant blare of fanfares at The Happy End. The stranger who failed to become anything but a stranger let you go and I promised write you a letter. That way we parted, two strangers, at the Kiev Railway Station for Long-Distance Trains....