The man who was in no hurry

A weak, but already in the autumn cold wind brought freshness from the bay, which the city lacked so much these summer months. He gave it absolutely free, unlike annoying sales agents with leaflets offering to buy something "almost for nothing."

Even here, on the outskirts of the city, all the streets were jammed with slowly creeping, belching exhaust cars. Recently, this phenomenon has begun to occur more and more often. “Where are they all in a hurry? Does every minute someone start a working day? ”

Some drivers kept beeping constantly, apparently considering everyone else to be idiots, standing just like that, and not allowing them to drive to their stuffy offices, with yellow cat-urine lamps, dirty windows and dead flies on dusty window sills.

Having appreciated the endless smoking line - naturally, it did not make sense to wait for the bus or call a taxi - I decided to walk.

I got to the station an hour later instead of the usual fifteen minutes. The clock on the station building showed eight. My train left, and the next one will be only in half an hour. Although it did not matter, because I was already late. Well, at least I have half an hour to come up with a reason.

It was already my third delay, and maybe now they will fire me. "No, they will certainly fire me !" I thought, feeling a sticky and nasty animal fear of losing something, albeit unpleasant, but familiar and allowing to exist.

After a minute, the wave subsided, and the sensation passed, giving way to stupid indifference, as is usually the case when you think of something terrible and inevitable, but still far away.

For example, about death.

I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate, but nothing came of it, and opening them again, through the gaps between people, I saw my reflection in a glass window: a lonely standing figure, like a ghost. After a moment, it again hid behind human bodies.

"How! I asked myself. “How could I get to this false illusion of life?”

To calm down and collect my thoughts, I decided to smoke a cigarette. I used to have my favorite cigarettes, but now for some reason it seems to me that they all taste like shit, so brands are more a matter of habit. Having taken the last out of the pack, I turned it in my hand for several minutes, not deciding to start.

A cigarette is like a human life: you can extinguish it right away, or you can light it up to the filter itself, but anyway, the result is still the same - it is finished and thrown into the trash bin. Or in a puddle. A cigarette butt trampled into the mud - what could be more symbolic?

Finally, the lighter's flame licked her. I inhaled, letting the smoke enter all corners of my lungs, and exhaled. I always liked to look at a spreading gray cloud, but this time a stubborn wind pulled smoke out of my mouth and carried it away without letting me enjoy this sight.

So where did it all start? Like probably any child I had a dream, but everyone told me that she was stupid, useless and worthless, and I did not have the courage to defend my opinion or just leave; as I did, however, many years later, but already being broken. Although it would be better to call it a flight.

As if experiencing unrequited love and avoiding any encounters with her object, I began to avoid any thoughts, any mention of my dream.

But it didn’t help much: you can get away from a person, but you can’t escape from your thoughts, from yourself, and my dreams - like Phoenix birds, reborn from the ashes - always popped up from the depths of my subconscious, no matter how I tried to forget them. And if I had not felt this on myself, I would never have believed that thoughts can cause real, quite tangible pain.

And then one day, unable to endure this eternal torture, I said to myself: “There was no past”, and he was gone, but with him there was no future, only I did not immediately notice it. Because it, like a plant with a chopped-off root, began to fade, fade and wither until it disappeared, exposing a gaping void.

My future

So now I don’t know what I wanted to become and what to do - I just didn’t have any memories of my dream, but I still remembered the emotions associated with it.

Sometimes, however, if I came across something that kindled a fire in my heart again, it began to seem to me that I was still alive, that I could still change, and live my life again. But soon the illusion was dispelled, and there came an understanding that I was just a ghost who looked into his own home, found himself in a familiar atmosphere and again felt alive, but finally realized with sadness that he had long died, and they live in his house completely alien people.

For many years I was dead, however, like all the living dead around me. I wonder why children love to draw, sing, write poetry and play games? Maybe because they don’t know how to do boring things? It is a pity that many of them die before they have done anything good.

From time to time I wonder: how would I raise a child so that he grows up alive? But I drive these thoughts away, perfectly understanding their protective psychological mechanism, a pathetic attempt to regain the meaning of life. This would be a wonderful trick: instead of their own, failed to live someone else's life. It seems to me that this is one of the few reasons why seemingly smart people still have children - in order to somehow justify their existence. But who can the dead bring up?

I got a job to earn money and, it seemed to me, to become free, but over time, the tool changed its purpose, and I fell into the vicious cycle of loans and salaries, becoming the same as those whom I hated in childhood.

It was not difficult: at the beginning you hate your work, after a while you don’t care, and in the end you no longer imagine yourself doing anything else.

I once believed that there was a line beyond which I would never cross, but in the process of life it turned out that it had all the properties of the horizon: it was simply impossible to cross, because as it approached it, it moved away from me , and things that seemed completely unacceptable to me yesterday were becoming quite common. Perhaps this is precisely how they become criminals, alcoholics and drug addicts.

You are sure that you can change your life at any moment - you just want to, but this is the problem: over time, you don’t want to change anything. Waking up in the morning, I dream that evening would soon come, and in the evening - that morning would never come. But contrary to all desires, it comes, and everything is repeated from the beginning.

It was sad and funny at the same time. As if sympathizing with me, the sky burst into tears in a shallow rain. From the opened umbrellas of various shades, the area became like a flower meadow. Everyone around was in a hurry somewhere, and it looked like I was standing alone. The prospect of getting wet did not appeal to me at all, so I began to look around for a place where there would be no water and people, since since childhood I did not like either the first or the second.

And then I saw him - a man who was in no hurry anywhere, but, of course, I did not know this yet, and considered him an ordinary person who was in no hurry. He sat on a bench in the middle of the square and looked through the crowd. What struck me most was that raindrops circled him, as if he were under an invisible dome, and all his clothes were dry. Moved rather by curiosity than by any other feeling, I headed towards him, periodically bumping into passers-by and trying to keep an eye on him.

He sat wrapped in a gray cloak, as if melted into our reality from another dimension, his long hair and clothes did not seem to notice the wind, and the rushing people reflected in the mirrored glasses hiding his eyes.

Approaching him, I asked:

- Can I?

He nodded, and I sat next to him, delighted to notice after a few minutes that the rain had begun to bend around me.

It’s not that I was very surprised at what is happening: after ten years of office work, you generally cease to be surprised at anything. Just next to him, I had the feeling that I had nothing to fear if a global catastrophe suddenly happened.

It was so pleasant and unusual that I couldn’t remember what kind of feeling it was - I hadn’t experienced it for so long - and finally remembered: it was a feeling of calmness and confidence for my life, as it had been in childhood.

I don’t know why, but I decided to tell him everything about myself, in any case what I remembered while standing in the square. I did not need any sympathy, no advice, or anything else. I just wanted to be listened to.

And they listened to me. Silently.

- Is it really my life? - escaped from me.

He was probably too busy with his problems to answer me. They were probably more important and certainly more interesting than mine. Maybe it was at this moment that he considered the right amount of hydrogen to ignite the next sun in the depths of space.

A few minutes passed in silence.

“Why don't they see you?” I asked, in order to keep up the conversation: I was afraid that the person would leave and take this wonderful feeling with him.

- Because they are too in a hurry“He suddenly answered.

In his voice, devoid of emotion, it was impossible to say: does he feel longing, contempt, or indifference.

“But I was in a hurry too ...” I objected, “... and yet I see you.”

“You were in no hurry ,” he answered. - And you were not late for a reason, - you wanted to be late to start a chain of events that you can’t influence anymore.

- And lose everything? I just didn’t have enough time! I said rather by inertia, because he was right: I could not admit it to myself, not to make an informed decision.

- Time? - It seemed to me - just seemed - that in his voice sounded irony. “Time is just an illusion ,” he said. - Remember this.

After these words, apparently serving as parting, the man stood up and, although there were almost no people in the square, as if he had disappeared into the air, in any case, I almost immediately lost sight of him.

And again I was left alone, however, contrary to expectation, the pleasant feeling did not disappear, and the rain still enveloped me, as if a man had left a part of himself with me.

Finally the rain ended and the sky cleared, I got up and, remembering the train, looked at my watch: “Wow! Have we talked for four hours? ” But looking at the clock on the station building, I was no less surprised: if you believe them, then only a few minutes have passed - you could still have time. But which one is true?

“Time is just an illusion,” I remembered, and at that moment I realized with full clarity that I no longer needed to rush.

* * *

In the shadow of the night cities, past neon signs and colored lights, through endless streets, now deserted, now busy, lies my way. Only a few passersby notice me, but they, having stumbled upon their reflection in the lenses of mirror glasses, are in a hurry to look away, and I immediately erase them from my memory like footprints on the seashore.

Time. I feel it like light tissue sliding between my fingers. I can crush it, I can stretch it, twist it and straighten it again. I can’t just tear it apart.

I was always: I saw the beginning of the universe; observed trilobites in the shallows of ancient oceans; wrapped in a gray cloak, stood near the first human bonfires and looked at the great battles of the past. 'Cause time is just an illusion- for me, but not for them. Born in vanity, they do not know that their whole world can turn out to be a mirage living in my imagination, they themselves are the shadows of my mind, and their lives are just my dreams.

But am I not myself someone else, perhaps my own illusion? The only question I have no answer to. However, I do not care, I do not feel anything, an invisible witness to the ups and downs of human civilization.

My name is ...