CHAPTER 5. CHILD'S TOY

April 5, 2007.

Twenty-seven-year-old bulldozer driver Cesar Mongrain was working a second shift in a row; he diligently performed his duties at night and was now doing the same during the day. The person who was supposed to replace him had suddenly fallen ill, so Cesar Mongrain continued to work in the place that people call a garbage dump. Due to accumulated fatigue, Cesar Mongrain's being was now in a state bordering on sleep and reality, and it occasionally, without him wanting it at all, saw truly amazing visions and memories. In these visions there was always the past and never the future! He didn't lose his connection with reality thanks to the continuously blaring radio waves, which at those moments partially destroyed the reign of human, but not technical, silence within the depths of this bulldozer. "The cruise liner 'Sea Diamond' sank off the coast of Santorini today..." Hearing this news, Cesar Mongrain pondered for a moment, "How can such a large ship sink so easily in the modern world? It's not some kind of child's toy, but the pinnacle of human thought and science... Although, for nature, this liner is exactly what a child's toy is for us..." Cesar Mongrain thought, and with special diligence, he pressed down on the lever, after which the hydraulic force revealed itself to this world. The bulldozer's blade rose up, and Cesar Mongrain suddenly saw a small plush teddy bear before his eyes. Seeing this object, the twenty-seven-year-old bulldozer driver was genuinely horrified—he had had the exact same bear as a child! Having parted with it at a young age, Cesar Mongrain had no idea what its fate was—could this really have been its destiny: to end up in a garbage dump among old, long-decayed photographs, once someone's incredibly vivid emotions, feelings, and thoughts? A whirlwind of childhood memories instantly overtook his being, both good and not-so-pleasant—in those moments, the blue plush teddy bear was always by his side. He remembered the first time he met and was given this bear—he received it as a gift for his sixth birthday. The last time he had seen it was in the branches of an ancient, tall tree: a neighbor's boy, Cesar's friend, had thrown it up there a long time ago. Later, swallows built a nest there, and for the first time in their lives, the boys discovered one of the countless truths of the universe: in the non-living, the living can be born! And, as a consequence, as an analogy—life can be born in perishable human flesh! Moreover, that bear, albeit from its unreachable height, was an unwitting witness to Cesar's first infatuation and his first relationships—being motionless, it saw everything, it felt everything, it sensed everything! It heard what Cesar said to his friend about his beloved, what Cesar's beloved said to his friend about Cesar, and what Cesar said to his beloved about his friend—it heard everything! Perhaps it grasped more than people that our world is a world of wrappers and covers. For Cesar to win over Leonora, he simply had to look good, even if he was weak-willed. Nowadays, girls and women prefer to choose a pretty picture instead of beautiful content, not at all thinking that this cover can be easily bought or changed. Oh, if only it could speak! Having completely heard this world, it would have told Cesar a unique truth—Steve Jobs, as an employer, doesn't run after potential future employees, he doesn't beg them to work for him: Steve Jobs considers the offers and options that come to him—and so it is with Cesar... It would have told Cesar, if it had been able to, that our world is global—not only because of its size, but also because of the nature of the processes that take place in it. Someone might have been born beautiful and someone else unsightly, but everything in it is determined not by a qualitative characteristic, but by a given, which in this case is the fact of birth, since the qualities and parameters of beauty and ugliness are established only by people. Both the beautiful and the unsightly exist and live, but some are admired by society in this world, while others are despised. Therefore, it follows that, in fact, beauty, as well as unsightliness, does not exist in this world—and yet, in the Middle Ages, what is now considered a laughing matter was considered beautiful... This child's toy, having tasted this world from the inside, fully understood that people, unlike it—for it did not know the definitions and forms of time—start each day with a clean slate that, over the course of the day, is somehow smudged by all sorts of information. Most people did not understand what was known to him—the little plush teddy bear. Looking at this world from the outside and passively participating in its processes, since active participation was not given to it due to the limitations of its nature, it discerned how people are born and die—it saw their past and future: always, regardless of the time, they were ungrateful. They did not thank the Almighty for what they had and, more importantly, for what they didn't have, and therefore for what He saved them from. They looked only at themselves and never into themselves. Someone who frantically admires the fact that in our current form we are capable of thinking and feeling in no way understands what will happen when they shed these mortal shackles—when they will be a clot of thoughts and feelings: a clot of energy, which is commonly called a soul! Then they will not need a mind to think—thought will be born and die directly, without instruments: the same goes for feeling... "And what if..? No, this is sheer madness, it's impossible! - such thoughts, under the influence of memories, now swirled in the head of twenty-seven-year-old Cesar Mongrain. - What if you never express your thoughts and emotions? Keep them locked up, like an animal or a person—don't let them see their kind from the outside! Let these thoughts and feelings live far away from everyone, in their own dark but saturated with its own, special, life forest—let them get food and shelter there, never having seen, but not necessarily never having known, many of their brethren... But... if you spend your whole life sitting inside a house, without leaving its boundaries, then no one will fall in love with you, no matter how beautiful you are—for someone to fall in love with you, you must reveal yourself, show this world that you exist: even in the most minimal and limited way... I remember how the red cat Thomas was living his existence on my childhood toy in the tree. At that time I thought about how much was available to him in this world—he had true freedom. He could run away from us and live with another family, but... absolute freedom is fraught with all kinds of dangers: here he has shelter, food, protection, and relative safety—he is certain of it, for he has verified all this physically, in practice. There, he may not get all this. Animals never follow ethereal and ephemeral benefits, except in cases where they are driven by instinct... How amazing this world is! Each of the living forms in it feels perfectly comfortable in its own corner of the universe—and no matter what form it is, it does not feel deprived or humiliated, even with a sometimes colossal difference from other forms. A hare doesn't say to another hare, 'Why am I not a lion?'—it is still a hare and fulfills the nature of its purpose... a lion, on the other hand, does not want to eat human cakes, for it is quite satisfied with raw meat, which, in turn, does not suit a human for consumption... A child's toy! Based on my life experience, I can only say one thing: the real toy in this world is a good person, because no one ever appreciates them and everyone always plays with them. No one understands that they are also human; they don't care, they get their benefit and pleasure from them, and then they throw them away... to the dump, to the garbage of their own lives! Such is our life! At times it is harsh and cruel... It is beautiful and successful only in movies and books—there, heroes can act according to their principles, for it is rarely punishable, and most importantly, there, heroes don't have to think about how to earn and spend money, about where to get food or sleep, not for a few minutes of a movie or book, but for many hours of their lives! And unlike books and movies, where you can live that story with the characters again and again, in life you can't re-watch or re-read the past, no matter how strong the memories... Memories! Our dowry for a future life, which is incomprehensible to us now!... Memories!.. I still think of you, Alexandra! Oh, truth! You were bad in my picture and paradigm of the world only because you did not act as I wanted you to at that local and fleeting moment! While I praised your beauty to the heavens, I cast your soul down into the depths of hell in my thoughts! How blind and stupid I was! But was there not also, objectively, a flaw in you, in your behavior? It used to be customary to fight for women with other men, but now you fight for a woman against her doubts, thoughts, and feelings... Back then, when my eyes admired you, your soul awakened only disgust in me—now everything is the other way around! Your appearance is a unique work of high art, but it's not the work of your hands: it was not created by you! The wrappers of candies, just like the candies themselves, whether they are the simplest or the most exquisite, are not created by the candies themselves! And you know your worth... or rather, the worth of your power over me, the worth of your beauty! Talking with you is intoxicating, like wine, but... it, while temporarily giving sweet feelings and euphoria, only brings us closer to our death! I yearn to drink you from your eyes, but I do not want to become dependent, and therefore die...”