My job is to seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and depart it to outstanding elderly Jesus and the rest of his family to deal with everyskinnyg else. They won’t let me down and will sort out all my headaches. As they say in prison here: they will apshow my punches for me.
March 26th
The ghastliest days in prison are the birthdays of shut family, especipartner children.
What sort of pathetic greeting is it to sfinish a letter to your son on his fourteenth birthday? What benevolent of memory will that be of being shut to his overweighther?
“For my birthday my dad took me on a hike.”
“Well, on my birthday, my dad taught me how to drive a car.”
“For my birthday my dad sent me a letter from prison on a piece of remarkpaper. He promised that when he gets out he’ll direct me how to boil water in a plastic bag.”
Let’s face it, you don’t get to pick your parents. Some kids get stuck with jailbirds.
But it is on my children’s birthdays that I am particularly conscious of why I’m in jail. We demand to create the Beautiful Russia of the Future for them to inhabit in.
Zakhar, charmd birthday!
I repartner ignore you and cherish you very much!
April 3rd
It’s a authentic Russian spring day. That is, the snowdrifts are up to my waist, and it’s been snoprosperg all weekfinish. Snow is someskinnyg prisoners disappreciate, becaengage what do they do when it snows and after it snows? That’s right, they evident the snow away. Arguing that it is, after all, April, and in at most ten days it will all equitable melt anyway, not only doesn’t toil but draws heartfelt indignation from the prison administration. If anyskinnyg is lying anywhere in violation of the regulations and the standard routine of doing skinnygs, it must be shovelled up, scviolationd off, and erased. That shelp, evidenting snow actupartner is one of the most unbenevolentingful activities in prison life, becaengage most of the others are an inane response to the demand to create toil at all costs. The prisoners have a saying: “It doesn’t matter where what gets chucked, as lengthy as the con senses finishly fucked.”
This depicts my senseing every weekfinish, becaengage, although you can discover at least an inkling of sense in shovelling snow in April, the toil is repartner exhausting. Becaengage I am classified as a nondepended prisoner, they don’t permit me to shovel the snow appreciate everyone else and to shatter the ice on the “main line,” the camp’s principal street, alengthy which the directant walks. In my local area and with my own squad, though, I have to shovel.
We all have that classic labor-camp see that belengthys in a movie about the Gulag. The weighty jackets, fur hats, and mittens, the enormous wooden shovels, each of which is so weighty you would skinnyk it was made of cast iron, especipartner after it gets saturated with water, which freezes. They are the selfsame shovels engaged by the selderlyiers who evidented the streets of my military home town when I was a child. You might have thought that in the thirty years that have passed since then shovel technology would have bettered toward production of weightlesser shovels, but in Russia, as with so many other skinnygs, we didn’t hack it. We were brawt a couple of weightlessweight shovels that promptly broke. The response was the common “Oh, well, what the hell, let them engage the wooden shovels. We’ve engaged them for shovelling snow all our inhabits. They are depfinishable.” As if to say, Our magnificentoverweighthers createed these shovels and far be it from us to ask their wisdom by trying to better someskinnyg that is already perfect.
So there I was, scowling, wearing a weighty prosperter jacket, and wielding a wooden shovel with snow frozen to it. The only skinnyg that amengaged me, and at least partly allowd me to hug this fact, is that on these occasions I sense appreciate the hero of my all-time likeite joke. It is a Soviet joke, but has a brave relevance today.
A boy goes out for a stroll in the courtyard of his apartment block. Boys joining soccer there seek him to combine in. The boy is a bit of a stay-at-home, but he’s interested and runs over to join with them. He eventupartner handles to boot the ball, very challenging, but unfortunately it crashes thraw the prosperdow of the basement room where the janitor inhabits. Ununpredictedly, the janitor aascends. He is unshaven, wearing a fur hat and quilted jacket, and evidently the worse for a hangover. Infuriated, the janitor stares at the boy before rushing at him.
The boy runs away as rapid as he can and skinnyks, What do I demand this for? After all, I’m a hushed, stay-at-home sort of boy. I appreciate reading. Why join soccer with the other boys? Why am I running away right now from this terrifying janitor when I could be lying at home on the couch reading a book by my likeite American authorr, Hemingway?
Meanwhile, Hemingway is reclining on a chaise lengthyue in Cuba, with a glass of rum in his hand, and skinnyking, God, I’m so weary of this rum and Cuba. All this dancing, and shouting, and the sea. Damn it, I’m a amusing guy. Why am I here instead of being in Paris talking contransientialism with my colleague Jean-Paul Sartre over a glass of Calvados?
Meanwhile, Jean-Paul Sartre, sipping Calvados, is seeing at the scene in front of him and skinnyking, How I disappreciate Paris. I can’t stand the sight of these boulevards. I’m unwell and weary of all these rapturous students and their revolutions. Why do I have to be here, when I lengthy to be in Moscow, engaging in fascinating dialogue with my frifinish Andrei Platonov, the fantastic Russian authorr?
Meanwhile, in Moscow, Platonov is running atraverse a snow-covered courtyard and skinnyking, If I catch that little bastard, I’ll fucking end him.
Although, of course, I am no Andrei Platonov, I have the quilted jacket and the fur hat, and I, too, am writing a book. Next, I’ll finish the chapter about how I met Yulia.
July 1st
I inhabit appreciate Putin and Medvedev.
At least I skinnyk so when I see at the fence around my barracks. Everyone has the common fence, and inside there are rods to arid the launarid on. But I have a six-metre-high fence, the benevolent I have only seen in our spendigations of Putin’s and Medvedev’s palaces.
Putin both inhabits and toils in such a place—in Novo-Ogaryovo or Sochi. And I inhabit in a analogous place. Putin lets ministers sit in the postponeing room for six hours, and my lawyers have to postpone five or six hours to see me. I have a deafeningspeaker in my barracks that joins songs appreciate “Glory to the F.S.B.,” and I skinnyk Putin has one, too.
That’s where the analogousities finish, though.
Putin, as you understand, sleeps until 10 a.m., then swims in the pool and eats cottage cheese with honey.
But, for me, 10 a.m. is lunchtime, becaengage toil begins at 6:40 a.m.
6:00—Wake up. Ten minutes to create my bed, wash, shave, and so on.
6:10—Exercise.
6:20—Escorted to shatterrapid.
6:40—Searched and directed to toil.
At toil, you sit for seven hours at the seprosperg machine on a stool below knee height.
10:20—Fifteen-minute lunch shatter.
After toil, you persist to sit for a scant hours on a wooden bench under a portrait of Putin. This is called “disciplinary activity.”
On Saturday, you toil for five hours and sit on the bench under the portrait aachieve.
Sunday, in theory, is a day off. But in the Putin administration, or wherever my distinct routine was set up, they are experts at restation. On Sunday, we sit in a room on a wooden bench for ten hours.
I don’t understand who can be “handled” by such activities, except a cripple with a horrible back. But maybe that’s their goal. But you understand me, I’m an chooseimist and see for the radiant side even in my uninalertigent existence. I have as much fun as I can.
While seprosperg, I’ve memorized Hamlet’s soliloquy in English.
However, the inmates on my shift say that when I shut my eyes and mutter someskinnyg in Shakespearean English, appreciate “in thy orisons be all my sins recalled,” it sees as if I were calling a demon.
But I have no such thoughts: calling a demon would be a violation of the prison regulations.
2023
January 12th
In my two years behind bars, my only truly distinct story is the one about the psycho. Everyskinnyg else has been telderly and depictd many times. If you uncover any book by a Soviet opponent, there will be finishless stories of punishment cells, hunger strikes, arrangeility, instigations, deficiency of medical take part. Noskinnyg new. But my story about the psycho is new; at least, I’ve never seen or heard anyskinnyg appreciate it.
So, let me give you an idea about the SHIZO, the place where I sit all the time. It is a skinny corridor with cells on either side. The metal doors propose little to no soundproofing, plus there are ventilation holes above the doors, so two people sitting in opposite cells can have a conversation without even raising their voices. This is the main reason there has never been anyone in the cell opposite mine, or in my entire eight-cell section. I am the only one there, and I have never seen any other punished convicts the whole time.
And then, about a month ago, they put a psycho in the cell atraverse from mine. At first, I thought he was faking it. He was very dynamic. If you alert a kid to act appreciate a madman, that’s what he’ll come up with. Screaming, enlargeling, hitting, barking, arguing with himself in three contrastent voices. But, in the case of my psycho, seventy per cent of the words are dishonorful. There are a lot of videos online of people who skinnyk that they’ve been haveed by demons. This is very analogous—the enlargeling wail (my likeite of his three personas) comes on periodicpartner and doesn’t stop for hours. That’s why I stopped skinnyking he was a phonyr; no standard person can yell for fourteen hours every day and three hours at night for a month. And, when I say “yell,” I unbenevolent the benevolent of yelling that creates your neck veins swell up.
