I wrote and wrote for two days about what was strange this year
and about the “Story of a Girl”
and about friends in Kiev
and about instincts
and about frozen time
about friends and career…
lots of things

I wrote and looked at the cabbage on the window sill

It’s useless!
Just as well I could simply write “Happy New Year!”
But that seemed too small to me

Suddenly, having no more thoughts of my own
I’d rather repeat someone else’s words, quite like Redrick Schuhart did:

“…But if you really are… all-powerful… all-knowing… then you figure it out! Look into my heart. I know that everything you need is in there. It has to be. I never sold my soul to anyone! It’s mine, it’s human! You take from me what it is I want… it just can’t be that I would want something bad! Damn it all, I can’t think of anything, except those words of his… ‘HAPPINESS FOR EVERYBODY, FREE, AND NO ONE WILL GO AWAY UNSATISFIED!’”

(from ‘Roadside Picnic’, Arkady & Boris Strugatsky, transl. Antonina W. Bouis)

Text: Anton Adasinskiy
Photo: Elena Yarovaya

And so it goes.

Either due to lack of sleep or due to some general weariness but tears came right away when I’ve read „Boris Strugatsky is dead“.

I never knew it would entrain me so much.

He wasn’t a „writer“ or „sci-fi author“. It was just the easiest way to define Strugatsky brothers.

But it’s more complicated.

They were like a transmitter on a wave which is not hitting those who’s „harmless“.

Remember this? We all hear just one voice in each one’s telephone receiver, though we do hear different things. („Disquiet“ / „Snail on the Slope“)

Maybe sometime we’ll find out what their warnings, their discoveries, their predictions were about.

I’ve been pushing the „Snail…“ among all my friends, stoned admirers of Berdyaev, Crowley and Castaneda. But it wasn’t in fashion then.

Please read them now.

Boris Strugatsky didn’t die.

Aliens do not die. It must be some other word. We don’t know it yet.

Text: Anton Adasinsky
Photo: Sergey Aksenov (Anton Adasinsky as Don Rumata. Film auditions from 1999 for Hard to be a God by Alexey German, based on A. and B. Strugatsky’s novel)