A Trip to Georgia

April was a month to experience a new country - Georgia. A lot of incredibly tasty food, nice and hospitable people, wonderfully beautiful landscapes, unique culture. Truly it is a place to recommend for visiting.

In the overall flow of experiences there, there were two especially touching moments/places for me.

The first of these places is Svetitskhoveli Cathedral in Mtskheta (old capital of Georgia, just outside Tbilisi). I just crossed the doorstep and literally no sooner had I taken a step than this church completely disarmed me. I was instantly plunged into an incredible sensation of the Spirit. Immediately the tears flowed.

The second place that particularly touched me in Georgia was the ancient cave city of Uplistsikhe. And especially the landscapes surrounding it. Now I seem to have two favourite landscapes: Finnish-Karelian selkä forests interspersed with lakes, and these stony-grassy places (I would also love to see the sea next to them). Basically, the second ones are somehow similar to selkä: areas covered with vegetation with occasional rock outcrops.

This landscape somehow reflected in me the feelings of a kind carefree life and luminous clarity of the world - sensations that are particularly well experienced as a child.

What are the features of magical realism?

The other day, we had a discussion with my friend Konstantin (who is also an excellent writer and musician) on how to describe the style of "magical realism". What's special about it? How is it different from other styles? What are its characteristics? We discussed the 'official' origins of the style – the Latin American writers, and the fact that before them the characteristics of this style were certainly found in the works of many authors. Some resources, for example, classify Gogol as one of them. We also discussed the fact that this style, although more richly represented in Latin America, certainly has no territorial limitations: Polish Tokarchuk, Chinese Mo Yan, British Gaiman... We compared it with symbolism and surrealism. And finally came to the idea that magical realism can be a little difficult to cram into the framework of techniques and definitions - rather, it is a feeling that arises from the reading. A general atmosphere that, regardless of the specifics of the plot, can be seen in the works of different authors.

It would be interesting to know the readers' opinion in this regard. How would you describe the style of "magical realism"? What is it, that common, you can feel in the works of Cortázar, Márquez, Murakami? Feel free to write back with your ideas and opinions!

For a brief foreword, I would like to attach a short piece – a sketch I wrote a few days ago.

"Skin furrows-canyons. Washed with oil. Which revives. You look closer, imagining yourself wandering on yourself. A mini version of yourself. A time of transformations-shrinkings. You'll walk to your nails, slip there, as you're just out of the shower, and your nails are wet and slippery. But you'll manage to catch on a little burr. You'll jump up like an acrobat, and land: not too hard, not too soft - just about right. You'll try stomping on your skin to test the pressure when you're miniaturised. And then suddenly you'll remember all your birthmarks - sacred places on your body map. And will go on a pilgrimage: first to one, then to a second, to a third. To all of them. And, on the way, you'll hear the gurgling and bubbling - the internal eruptions of your own body."

About the One

I currently listen to an online course on religious symbolism. In the last lecture about the symbolism of time and space, there was the following thought. Ancient people didn't separate time from space, it was one thing - the universe. As well as they didn't separate the visible world from the invisible. For example, in ancient Egypt there were three worlds: visible tangible, visible intangible, and invisible, but they all were united and inseparable from each other.

Then I've got a thought. It is said in the lecture that this is a feature of ancient people. In the course, it was also mentioned that people of different religions have something in common – craving for unity with the Beginning. It turns out that in this religious people are closer to the ancient. And there is a quite widespread thought (presented even in some branches of Buddhism), that humanity gradually loses this knowledge/feeling.

So, my thought is that it turns out that we have a way from the united to the separated. And the further we go, the more everything is divided. Why? Probably, the thing is in cognition and in the specifics of how people learn things. That is: people described something, studied it, learned, set boundaries to it, defined the key features, gave a name to it – and by that they distinguished it, and separated from the rest. In such a way people separated different sciences, distinguished different chemical elements, gave different names to music styles, etc. People have this tendency to distinguish, give names, categorize. And in this we get the way further and further away from the One.