How to dial the code correctly

A Slavic professor I know divides women into two categories: those who have read Ilf and Petrov, and those who make do with quotes from Ilf and Petrov borrowed from their men. In other words, there are women with whom you can talk on an equal footing, but there are so, for decorative purposes. This rather cynical classification suddenly seemed witty to me. It is about the fact that a man, even as advanced as a professor (by the way, at an American university), insists not only on his intellectual superiority, but also on the authorship of communicative clichés. Or so — a woman develops her mind only if she strives to meet the male cultural request.

• Empathy: How to Empathize Without Destroying Yourself

Does anyone object? It would only be good to take into account that female intellect and female empathy are different aspects of personality. Female empathy is a unique phenomenon that has been formed in the process of evolution. Questions of survival forced a woman to share insane male addictions, if not literally, then at least in the form of sympathy. Who among us has not smoked with smokers, drunk with drinkers, hunted with hunters, and dived with divers, naively expecting to pass for his own? While men, like hedgehogs in milk, are hustling around some textured idea such as the redistribution of the world, the Higgs boson, or the death of a novel, a woman quickly hacks their code system, hoping to have time to call out and feed them. For any male idea, whatever you take, is unambiguously apocalyptic in nature. It scares a man terribly if he suddenly spends the night in a house alone. Therefore, men are rapidly acquiring camouflage in the form of a complex code system so that they are not immediately dragged to where they themselves diligently paved the way. It looks like this. In order not to blurt out something not sacred enough in vain, they arm themselves with quotes from The Golden Calf, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Catch 22, Lost Time, The Fourth Prose, The Pit, Roadside Picnic, «Theatrical Novel» and «Moscow-Petushkov» — and you will never in your life make out its basic inclinations, except, of course, an excellent visual memory. And for you, as the successor of the family, this is extremely important. I mean deposits. And now, instead of the last issue of ELLE, you are forced to shovel Confucius, Dobychin, Kierkegaard, Zoshchenko & S, in order to answer the question “Which country’s wine do you prefer at this time of day?” without hesitation to answer — «Cocktail» Tear of the Komsomol», if you’re not kidding» and devote your only day off to deciphering the text you heard behind this.

• Is it possible to learn femininity?

It’s no secret that for me, as for many, romantic relationships began there and then, when he, like a dear child, brought me his favorite book. So I read at different times, of course, «Monday begins on Saturday», «Life Ahead» by Emile Azhar, «The Bridge of King Louis XIV» by Thornton Wilder, «The Real Life of Sebastian Knight» by Vladimir Nabokov. That is, a man simply hands you a dictionary, because he will not learn your language in the time that is visible to a meager look, do not hope.

Women’s wisdom is to make a decision regardless of the accumulated intellectual experience. This is its value and the source of extreme irritation of life companions, who will check to the last with the primary sources of all times and peoples, which will eventually turn out to be the latest releases of CNN.

And, I forgot, there is still a cult movie that is supposed to be known — well, there, “Amarcord”, “Counting the Drowned”, from the domestic one — “Pokrovsky Gates”. By the way, I could never remember the connection between the exalted characters of this film, how it begins and ends, but at Bronevoy’s phrase “Note, I didn’t suggest this,” I, as expected, grin meaningfully.