CHAPTER 18. ACTING

April 18, 2018

“For several days, stopping only occasionally, we traveled deeper and deeper into the abyss of the desert—we were fleeing from war, from occupation, from evil: I, twenty-seven-year-old writer Gabriel-Victor Martin, my twenty-two-year-old wife Michelle, and our three-year-old son Eugene... For twenty-seven years, my entire life on this planet, all I had done was try not to commit any evil—and wasn't that enough?... but... war spares no one, neither the good nor the evil: no matter how you existed in a peaceful life, war levels everyone—it makes things bad for everyone! A few dozen kilometers remained to our destination, the nearest settlement, and we had already run out of water—our vehicle, a BMW X5 E53, with a heavy breath, but still, moved us forward nonstop: the M57 three-liter diesel engine had practically no oil, but our car did not fail us and still brought our exhausted bodies closer to the predetermined goal—what can be said about the endurance of people in such heat, if the machinery could barely tolerate it? My three-year-old son Eugene began to sob—he was thirsty: the thirst was merciless to his young body and no assurances that we had only a little way left to go helped in any way—I began to think about where I could get at least a few sips of water for my son and my wife right now, in the middle of the desert.

A crazy idea came to me, but it was certainly capable of granting us salvation—I remembered that the cooling fluid tank in my car now contained ordinary water, not antifreeze: thanks to the designers of the BMW car company, this engine model was capable of running without the slightest complaint for a significant amount of time on ordinary water. A few kilometers later, I stopped, turned off the engine, and began to wait for the water in the cooling tank to cool down—in these minutes, in minutes of silence, occasionally broken by the muffled groans of my child, my being reflected a lot on the nature of war, on the nature of man, and on my past.

Before I actually gained refugee status, I published my own books, earned an income from my own cafe, and was simply happy to be with my family—and even before that, I worked in a theater, as an actor. How amazing this world is! At this very moment, when I, a forced refugee, am about to drain water from my own car to partially quench the thirst of my child and wife, it is very likely that the children of those very people who made me a refugee were basking within the confines of my cafe and could freely drink any water they wished—how long does prosperity built on human misery last? Of course, not long! And an example of this is the prosperity of Germany in the late 1930s and early 1940s... God is just, but His justice often does not manifest itself in one form or another immediately... In my cafe, people bought goods, my books were read—in my small circle of acquaintances, I was revered by truly enlightened and dedicated people for my depth: by other people, I was revered for external, mortal, and transient forms and manifestations. Perhaps I won the hearts of ordinary people because my nature silently listened to their stories for a long time? It is very likely that they respected me only because I knew how to listen to their problems, their feelings, thoughts, and emotions—without having done anything good or bad to them, I became a good and worthy person in their eyes: this is what silence, inaction, and neutrality are capable of... Nevertheless, while respecting me, they did not at all comprehend or seek to comprehend my true nature—and did they need to? Sometimes it's better not to understand a person than, upon knowing them, to be disappointed in your perceptions of them... At times, due to the philosophy chosen by my pen, some of them even considered me strange. In those very minutes when they ranked my being among the series of "eccentric" people, I asked myself only one question—does it matter to you what I am, if my "abnormality" in no way interferes with the existence of your so-called "adequacy"? But could they have called me otherwise? They indulged in earthly pleasures when I enjoyed the metaphysical fruits of my own being—their food went into their stomachs, while my food ended up in my mind and in my soul... I was not at all interested in fashionable ways of earning money, popular clothing brands, or car brands—I was interested in answers to questions of a different scale and purpose: for example, what is easier to create in this world—a child or a brilliant work? These were my questions—these were my answers, for the latter already existed from the initial moment the former were conceived. The question of creating a child and a brilliant work gave me the answer to the meaning of life, including my own—anyone can create a person, but only a few can create a masterpiece: it turns out that the meaning of life is not in procreation, but in creativity and in other manifestations of one's exceptionality!

Looking down on me, some representatives of the human race did not realize that I was many times worse and better than them—my nature, and consequently my consciousness and my soul, was outside of human forms, shackles, boundaries, and definitions: while for them art consisted of exquisite canvases, for me it resided in every atom, in every blade of grass and drop of this world—often I took a small branch in my hands, the lived-out flesh of a large tree, and used it to draw unique images in the mud of a swamp. Thus, in the mud of a swamp, I managed to create landscapes of exceptional beauty, as well as extremely charming girls—does a portrait lose its beauty just because it is depicted not on the whiteness of a canvas, but on the darkness of a swamp? Are the material and the image connected to each other? Why, at the very moment you look at a picture drawn in mud, do you not perceive the mud as mud, but think about the charm of the girl depicted on it? Why does a spot drawn on an expensive canvas with the most exquisite paints remain only a spot and awaken nothing in your soul except disgust? Thus, the main role in our lives is played not by the material, not by the flesh, but by what we put into it—our ideas and our soul! This is also largely true for the interpretation of creativity—here is a spot: if someone says that it depicts the Universe or the Great Chaos, everyone will admire its appearance—even when the author did not put this into the idea of creating that work. So it is with global historical and social processes in this world...