It’s hard to talk about love. Whatever you say, everything is somehow not right, somehow trite or pretentious. It remains only to be honest. About how you feel. Or, unfortunately, you (already) don’t feel it.
Deep night. We are in a quarrel and have been driving in silence for quite some time. Outside the city, the snow did not melt. Now to the left, now to the right of the road, shapeless gray-white heaps were highlighted. I turned into the country. There was more snow. And just as I had time to think that I had changed the tires early, when suddenly the headlights snatched out two bare legs sticking out of a snowdrift. There was a corpse! I didn’t believe my eyes. More precisely, the brain refused to believe what the eyes saw …
… I jumped out of the car, caught movement out of the corner of my eye. Looking closely, I realized that the man was moving, he was not alone, and there were living ones. He yelled something like “Call an ambulance!” in the direction of the car, ran to the snowdrift and began to dig up people, someone was moaning, someone was colder than snow and without a pulse. I had a bottle of cucumber lotion in my pocket, which I began to rub while still alive … And then I woke up …
In love, giving advice is pointless. No one but us knows how we really feel and what we are ready to go for this relationship.
All week I could not understand what this dream was about. I still don’t know for sure. But I categorically do not believe in other people’s interpretations of dreams, either Freudian or otherwise. All kinds of dream books are especially amusing, giving universal explanations to people of different sex and age, who are in different psychological states. The closest thing to commenting on a dream can, probably, be a psychotherapist who knows you well, but even then only in a pair with you. Like a gypsy who asks a question and makes assumptions, carefully watching your reaction. And as my teacher Mikhail Romanovich Ginzburg said, “… only the person who saw it can understand a dream.”
I promised you to talk about love. I’ll try to keep my word. Even though I’m becoming more and more convinced that I know absolutely nothing about it. Not about love, not about falling in love or passion, not about the difference between them.
It’s been a tough week. I continue my slow butting fight with the editor of one of the production houses for the script of my film. They send me comments, I write answers, counterarguments, a lot of words, a lot of fear. It’s scary to agree, it’s scary to disagree, it’s scary that the producer won’t give money if you continue to resist, it’s also scary to betray your own plan, losing a child in these changes with water. Yes, by the way, the script of the film is also about love. What a coincidence! Or not?
I think that it is impossible to understand something about love with the intellect, it would be vulgar to write about it smartly. Poetry is possible, but prose, especially magazine — is nonsense. That’s why I want to make a movie to sort things out. Love can only be felt.
It seems to me that love is like air, like oxygen. You breathe for yourself, breathe, everything is fine, and there is nothing surprising in the fact that a person breathes. Then suddenly something happens, the tap is turned off, you start to suffocate, you realize that something important has been lost, without which you cannot live, but you can’t do anything. It’s like in a dream when you shoot a pistol, and slow bullets slowly fly along a gentle trajectory to the ground and never reach the target.
Therefore, love is always an unexpected gift, comes from nowhere, goes nowhere. The prankster Pak accidentally or on his own whim instills a magic potion in his eyes. And when its action stops, love ends suddenly, and also not by your will. Drug? Maybe. Illusion? May be. Chemistry? Undoubtedly. It cannot be begged for and cannot be earned. And when they take away a gift, it is always insulting and painful and you want to howl. Think how it is possible. What happened? Who is guilty? You try to do something, but everything is useless, and howl, by the way, too.
We decided to part, or rather, part for a while. Like to think about whether we should be together. It always happens that way. When there is no strength to admit to each other that love is over, adults agree to be alone, think, weigh everything, understand, etc. I’ve done this a thousand times already. Nothing good. Lots of alcohol, drugs, talking, self-pity and bad deeds. And nothing became clearer, rather the opposite. The shoemaker is always without boots! Neither close friends, nor colleagues, nor professionals can do anything.
Is the decision to “take a break from each other” a step towards parting?
We were together for several months. More precisely, three months. Three months of pure high, in the sense of oxygen. And when you breathe pure oxygen, you get dumber very quickly, in a sense, you stop thinking. This is love, you just feel, smile and everything is fine. Like a midsummer night’s dream. Sooner or later, the brain turns on, the effect of the potion from the magic flower weakens, you begin to wake up. And the brain always has dirty hands. He always ruins everything. Criticism appears, the partner suddenly has shortcomings (always), then — jealousy, possessiveness, fear of losing or not meeting expectations and that’s it … Pshhhhh … The tap was turned off. Suffocation. Asphyxia. Death.
There are two scenarios below. Run very fast and far, or freeze and not breathe, saving one oxygen for two, trying to save precious grams so that she only lives longer, and maybe, with luck, other gills will turn on that work thinner and longer.
I went to the new Jarmusch. And you know for sure this effect: when you are in a certain state, everything that happens around either enhances your state or opposes it. You hear only those melodies in which people are in love and happy, you open the wound, and there is a sophisticated buzz in this. Only Lovers Left Alive was such a film. I saw only evidence of loss there: generosity of decadence, beautiful static poses, the happiness of falling asleep and waking up together, furtively touching, observing, catching random glances, starting to say the same thing at the same time … Indecent memories floated, I remembered all the places where we were close , beds, hotels, toilets at airports … I understood that I was sick, that I was addicted, that withdrawal was approaching. And on the screen, Tilda Swinton drank blood from small glasses …
When I went outside, it got worse. I checked the phone many times, it seemed that right now she would call or write, and everything would return. After all, we did not agree on how long the isolation would last. And they did not agree on how the return (or non-return) would take place.
Who should call first? I wondered. Suddenly, a tune from a spaghetti western sounded, the characters on the street of a wooden town, in the dust opposite each other, tension can be touched with a hand, a fly buzzes, close-ups, drops of sweat, a whip, a horse neighs, someone loses their nerve, he grabs a gun and … … I could not stand it and wrote a text message …
…she answered…
In general, guys, not all are corpses in my dream. I hope that love has not completely died. And the flowers need to be watered (especially the magic ones).
Let’s breathe some more.
PS In training, I again broke the nose of a beautiful young man. Ashamed.