Monday, December 26, 2011

Post-Soviet Me


'You know, it's all just humor. Don't take life so seriously. Don't take fashion too seriously. Don't take the movie industry too seriously. Don't take love and your relationship so goddamned heavy all the time. Laugh, laugh, laugh. Life is high school and it's small and everybody talks about everybody, so just laugh your ass off.'

Drew Barrymore


It's not always so easy to do so we all know it. I wish I could be as lighthearted as Drew states herself in this sentence.

If I were born in sunny California I might also feel that way. Sure it is easy not to take life seriously when you haven't spent your childhood in the destroyed Soviet Union in 90's, or you've never experienced learning English by the light of the gas lamp. No jokes here. When I was at school it was absolutely normal for the electricity to go on and off, and doing home work near the terribly smelly gas lamp was just a regular evening thing.

Why do I recall all of this?
I don't know.
It has been my life and no matter how fast I run I can never get away from it so all I have to do is to write it down and let you know.
I often have dreams about the past; the past that was so surreal you would not believe and sometimes I don't want to believe either. Dreams about people that are there no more, dreams about the places that have faded away and the feelings that came out false and dreams about this little piece of flesh beating in one's chest and making the blood boil...
But dreams always end by the morning and another surreality starts which is known as real life and which is more illogical than the dreams one had last night.
I guess the Soviet Union was a dream too. Unbearable dream for some people. Utopia. And Utopia is nothing but surreal, isn't it?
So you can never blame this little (relatively) me of being irrational or too rational because I am a product of the gas lamp generation; the product of the lame American movies and the wall that has never been there even though the whole world claimed it was.
All my friends are the products too. Not only friends but all the people that lived around that time and by the end of the 90's did not know whether laugh or cry after becoming the citizens of so called democratic republics (for this I recommend you amazing German movie "Good bye, Lenin").
Democracy, my feet. As some people would say politely.
There is no such thing.
There's only dream, dreamers and G-d laughing at the latter.

Sometimes I do feel that life is not worth of eating oneself. Then I am carefree and laughing out loud realizing the vanity of being. I am not the first one to notice that becoming psychotic about things do not make them work actually, you only win when you are calm and self confident.
And again, does winning always means getting what you really want or need?
No it doesn't.

Therefore:

What you need you already have and what you want is just a matter of time, that's what would I suggest and keep smiling not minding my dark post-soviet childhood.

P.S. I've been 27 since last Friday :) that makes a girl think, no?

1 comment:

Andina said...

Such a nice quote from Drew Barrymore. Sometimes I take things too seriously, but to laugh and take things lightly is needed too I guess.