Svyatoslav Albireo's Blog: From Firokami - Posts Tagged "my-review"
Tales from the Pandemic, or How I Befriended a Mosquito, by Ivan Dimitrov
Tales from the Pandemic, or How I Befriended a Mosquito, by Ivan Dimitrov
"Unpack the shopping bag, everything needs washing. Rinse the jars and boxes too."
"Should I wash the sour cream as well?"
"Yes."
"Even inside?"
"Of course!"
One of our family conversations during the pandemic.
I couldn't grasp the psychological tragedy of the pandemic. You know, when people were climbing the walls, hating their partners they found themselves locked up with, and loathing their kids who stopped going to school. Folks, your problem isn't the pandemic; it's that you've been lying to yourselves up to your eyeballs about your life.
Loneliness? How have you been living that no one wanted to spend this pandemic with you? If a couple of hours a week was enough for you before, just Skype each other. The only ban that really bothered you was the one on peddling your mug. That's what you couldn't stand. What if happiness doesn't notice you? That's why you needed to wander endlessly.
For us, the pandemic passed as people's hysteria on the internet and the annoyance of having to wear masks in stores. We're the family for whom spending time together is a joy. It's another matter that we're immigrants, so we didn't need to go to work anyway. We all work online.
And I don't need to go anywhere when my loved ones are right beside me.
Of course, from the side, it was terrifying for the dying, scary for the doctors. I wanted to smash the hands of those writing that the virus was made up because nearby, entire houses of people were dying, and doctors had bloody wounds on their faces from masks and goggles.
I was infuriated by the worst of people who sat at home for weeks on end, but as soon as it became forbidden, they needed to go for walks every day. It's such a pathetic, such a miserable fight against the system and prohibitions, or rather, nurturing their erotic fantasies under the guise of fighting bans.
Why, when the system stones women, don't you want to unite and deceive it? Why, when the system bans entire layers of the population, don't you want to deceive it? Why, when the system forbids women to study, gays to marry, children to be themselves - you do nothing. Why your protest is always: "I'll never wear a mask, let everyone around die"? Why your protest is just to go around and infect others? Why all you can it's to harm?
On the other hand, the protection from governments was also hypocritical and deceitful. For instance, it's forbidden to go out on the street, but what about those who have nowhere to live but the street? I checked if governments did anything with people who took on the role of rats? No. So what kind of strict bans can we talk about? Street musicians were allowed to sing on European streets during the pandemic. I know this for sure. I have a friend who's a street musician.
"Stories about the pandemic", not a collection of stories, this is a creative collection of miniatures and lyrical essays. And he wrote so accurately about the madness of lonely, bored people. That's how it felt then. This collection is an excellent emotional cross-section of society at that time. Emotional, precisely.
On Goodreads, there's a boy who gave the book a two-star rating. I went to read his review. He says it's somehow superficial. The topic is important, he says, the design is wonderful, but it should be deeper somehow, and Dimitrov just reports how it was.
My dear boy, there's nothing to dig into. The terrifying scale of the book is precisely in this cross-section of the middle class, who made money by renting out their dogs for other such oddballs to walk, and these dogs just roamed the streets all day... for no reason.
I knew a girl, already in Bulgaria, who liked my friend (that same street musician). She would go out at lunch and walk with him for hours until she found where he was playing. And then she wouldn't leave until he left. This too was under the guise of - I'm walking the dog. Although the poor dog just lay there with its tongue out the whole time. Because it was tired from running around Burgas while the girl was looking for my friend.
The pandemic, where it was scary - where doctors were falling from exhaustion, where entire houses were dying in Italy, where people's loved ones were dying - no one wants to write or read about that. Well, maybe except those who faced it. We - the masses - remember the pandemic as a TV series post-apocalypse on a minimal scale. There was this layer of people whose close ones didn't die, just a friend of a friend. Something safe, but real. A game of hide-and-seek with the police, where losing only threatens a fine (but we're used to paying for games), where you can be indignant about bans and show displeasure and pull down the mask, if not the social one, then at least the cloth one, where you can bark, meow and walk through the park like a duck, venting your stress from the feudal-capitalist world without a future, and hiding behind the pandemic.
The pandemic became a way to let off a little steam, to look at your partner, to look at what kind of parent you really are, what you're spending your life on. A memento mori for those capable of thinking about life in the face of death. And those who aren't yet capable, well, let them... meow.
So the psychological problem of the situation itself was very superficial for real people. That's what's scary. How these momma's boys fighting the system tried to be "deeper" on empty ground. It's terrifying that they didn't care that someone might die because of their games. Real people understood the misfortune of the layer they were lucky not to fall into. Real people were glad that family was nearby. Real people really tried not to be carrier rats, not to go somewhere unnecessarily, not to drag the virus back and forth, so as not to become involuntary killers. And it was thanks to them that fake people could afford to go crazy and play, rather than coughing out their lungs.
I want to note the emotional impact of the book. Well, in general, this book is an anchor of time. It's relevant for those who lived through this time. They have something to recognize, something to laugh at or be indignant about. The absurdity of people's behavior, the absurdity of the authorities' behavior. In a hundred years, it will be incomprehensible what happened and even how it was. After all, we know nothing about the outbreak of pneumonic plague and the sixth cholera pandemic a hundred years ago.
But for me, having lived during the Covid Pandemic, during some miniature, there was an emotional immersion in that time. I even looked around and thought, is this pandemic not happening now, crazy panicking people on both sides, constantly changing prohibitions. And I remembered that no, the pandemic is over, now we have another madness. A scarier one.
Oh yes, throughout the book, I was curious whether the main character of the book really made friends with a mosquito or if it was a female mosquito? It turned out that it wasn't a friend at all. It was a female mosquito that wanted the main character's blood to lay eggs (blood is needed by female mosquitoes for reproduction, to provide enough protein). How this intriguing story of friendship ended, read in the book. Well, the instructive message might be - this is what happens if you pretend to be something you're not in a friendship.
I wanted to write a review in an artistic style because the book inspires such a mood. But I remembered in time that I write reviews for readers, not for writers. Even if I'm writing it on the writer's birthday. Because the birthday will end, but the review and the readers will remain. And that's good. Because Ivan Dimitrov deserves readers. And you, readers, deserve such a smart and insightful writer as Ivan Dimitrov. Read it, you won't regret it!
...I can't seem to finish...
After I closed the book and, while thinking about the review, opened another one, I had to close it and wait, because compared to this one, that one - quite good - somehow seriously faded. I'll go start his novel.
And you read, read, don't deprive yourself of good prose, there's not so much of it, despite the increasing abundance of information.
Разкази от пандемията, или как се сприятелих с един комар
"Unpack the shopping bag, everything needs washing. Rinse the jars and boxes too."
"Should I wash the sour cream as well?"
"Yes."
"Even inside?"
"Of course!"
One of our family conversations during the pandemic.
I couldn't grasp the psychological tragedy of the pandemic. You know, when people were climbing the walls, hating their partners they found themselves locked up with, and loathing their kids who stopped going to school. Folks, your problem isn't the pandemic; it's that you've been lying to yourselves up to your eyeballs about your life.
Loneliness? How have you been living that no one wanted to spend this pandemic with you? If a couple of hours a week was enough for you before, just Skype each other. The only ban that really bothered you was the one on peddling your mug. That's what you couldn't stand. What if happiness doesn't notice you? That's why you needed to wander endlessly.
For us, the pandemic passed as people's hysteria on the internet and the annoyance of having to wear masks in stores. We're the family for whom spending time together is a joy. It's another matter that we're immigrants, so we didn't need to go to work anyway. We all work online.
And I don't need to go anywhere when my loved ones are right beside me.
Of course, from the side, it was terrifying for the dying, scary for the doctors. I wanted to smash the hands of those writing that the virus was made up because nearby, entire houses of people were dying, and doctors had bloody wounds on their faces from masks and goggles.
I was infuriated by the worst of people who sat at home for weeks on end, but as soon as it became forbidden, they needed to go for walks every day. It's such a pathetic, such a miserable fight against the system and prohibitions, or rather, nurturing their erotic fantasies under the guise of fighting bans.
Why, when the system stones women, don't you want to unite and deceive it? Why, when the system bans entire layers of the population, don't you want to deceive it? Why, when the system forbids women to study, gays to marry, children to be themselves - you do nothing. Why your protest is always: "I'll never wear a mask, let everyone around die"? Why your protest is just to go around and infect others? Why all you can it's to harm?
On the other hand, the protection from governments was also hypocritical and deceitful. For instance, it's forbidden to go out on the street, but what about those who have nowhere to live but the street? I checked if governments did anything with people who took on the role of rats? No. So what kind of strict bans can we talk about? Street musicians were allowed to sing on European streets during the pandemic. I know this for sure. I have a friend who's a street musician.
"Stories about the pandemic", not a collection of stories, this is a creative collection of miniatures and lyrical essays. And he wrote so accurately about the madness of lonely, bored people. That's how it felt then. This collection is an excellent emotional cross-section of society at that time. Emotional, precisely.
On Goodreads, there's a boy who gave the book a two-star rating. I went to read his review. He says it's somehow superficial. The topic is important, he says, the design is wonderful, but it should be deeper somehow, and Dimitrov just reports how it was.
My dear boy, there's nothing to dig into. The terrifying scale of the book is precisely in this cross-section of the middle class, who made money by renting out their dogs for other such oddballs to walk, and these dogs just roamed the streets all day... for no reason.
I knew a girl, already in Bulgaria, who liked my friend (that same street musician). She would go out at lunch and walk with him for hours until she found where he was playing. And then she wouldn't leave until he left. This too was under the guise of - I'm walking the dog. Although the poor dog just lay there with its tongue out the whole time. Because it was tired from running around Burgas while the girl was looking for my friend.
The pandemic, where it was scary - where doctors were falling from exhaustion, where entire houses were dying in Italy, where people's loved ones were dying - no one wants to write or read about that. Well, maybe except those who faced it. We - the masses - remember the pandemic as a TV series post-apocalypse on a minimal scale. There was this layer of people whose close ones didn't die, just a friend of a friend. Something safe, but real. A game of hide-and-seek with the police, where losing only threatens a fine (but we're used to paying for games), where you can be indignant about bans and show displeasure and pull down the mask, if not the social one, then at least the cloth one, where you can bark, meow and walk through the park like a duck, venting your stress from the feudal-capitalist world without a future, and hiding behind the pandemic.
The pandemic became a way to let off a little steam, to look at your partner, to look at what kind of parent you really are, what you're spending your life on. A memento mori for those capable of thinking about life in the face of death. And those who aren't yet capable, well, let them... meow.
So the psychological problem of the situation itself was very superficial for real people. That's what's scary. How these momma's boys fighting the system tried to be "deeper" on empty ground. It's terrifying that they didn't care that someone might die because of their games. Real people understood the misfortune of the layer they were lucky not to fall into. Real people were glad that family was nearby. Real people really tried not to be carrier rats, not to go somewhere unnecessarily, not to drag the virus back and forth, so as not to become involuntary killers. And it was thanks to them that fake people could afford to go crazy and play, rather than coughing out their lungs.
I want to note the emotional impact of the book. Well, in general, this book is an anchor of time. It's relevant for those who lived through this time. They have something to recognize, something to laugh at or be indignant about. The absurdity of people's behavior, the absurdity of the authorities' behavior. In a hundred years, it will be incomprehensible what happened and even how it was. After all, we know nothing about the outbreak of pneumonic plague and the sixth cholera pandemic a hundred years ago.
But for me, having lived during the Covid Pandemic, during some miniature, there was an emotional immersion in that time. I even looked around and thought, is this pandemic not happening now, crazy panicking people on both sides, constantly changing prohibitions. And I remembered that no, the pandemic is over, now we have another madness. A scarier one.
Oh yes, throughout the book, I was curious whether the main character of the book really made friends with a mosquito or if it was a female mosquito? It turned out that it wasn't a friend at all. It was a female mosquito that wanted the main character's blood to lay eggs (blood is needed by female mosquitoes for reproduction, to provide enough protein). How this intriguing story of friendship ended, read in the book. Well, the instructive message might be - this is what happens if you pretend to be something you're not in a friendship.
I wanted to write a review in an artistic style because the book inspires such a mood. But I remembered in time that I write reviews for readers, not for writers. Even if I'm writing it on the writer's birthday. Because the birthday will end, but the review and the readers will remain. And that's good. Because Ivan Dimitrov deserves readers. And you, readers, deserve such a smart and insightful writer as Ivan Dimitrov. Read it, you won't regret it!
...I can't seem to finish...
After I closed the book and, while thinking about the review, opened another one, I had to close it and wait, because compared to this one, that one - quite good - somehow seriously faded. I'll go start his novel.
And you read, read, don't deprive yourself of good prose, there's not so much of it, despite the increasing abundance of information.
Разкази от пандемията, или как се сприятелих с един комар
From Firokami
Writer. Socialist. Psychologist. Translator. Cosmopolitan. Internationalist. Esperantist. Gay. Polyglot. Friendly. Ruiner of the communicative barriers. Xenophobia-hater. Religion - is evil. Family -
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