Status Updates From The Aviator

One time in Siverskaya I saw an airplane taking off from a poorly mown field. As it sped up along the runway, the aviator drove around potholes, bounced on hillocks, and—oh, joy!—suddenly ended up in the air. Watching that machine move spasmodically around the field, frankly, nobody expected flight. But the aviator took off.

Thinking about my thawing, I—in light of the number of years that passed—ask myself: did my thawing become the resurrection of an entire generation? After all, any detail that I can now recall automatically becomes a detail of the time. And perhaps this is not a matter of detail but the whole? Maybe I really was resurrected in order that all of us grasp once again what happened to us....

'You have only two paths,' Muromtsev uttered in a monotone, 'and both appear to lead to death.'
At least he was honest. I shrugged my shoulders.
'All paths lead to death.'

Paradise is the absence of time. If time stops, there will be no more events. Nonevents will remain. The pine trees will remain, brown and gnarled below, smooth and amber at the top. The squeak of the gate, a child's muffled crying at the next dacha, the first pounding of rain on the veranda roof ... all the things that changes in government and the falls of empires do not wipe out.

'It seems the struggle for happiness doesn't inspire you much, does it?' Valentina asked me.
'Basically, only tragedy comes from that,' I said.