мары ⁽²⁾

Night. The clock has just passed midnight. We turned off the lights. Finished talking. Stretched out to sleep. I look at the door frame. Its edges are illuminated by the moonlight, which somehow filters through the blinds and regular curtains. This frame fascinates me. Thoughts circle: if I don't fall asleep - I'll photograph this doorway, how it looks at night. If I fall asleep - I'll rest. Dasha sleeps, I lie down and look. I reach out to the phone, try to take a shot with a long exposure, but without a flash. The result is just one black spot, no way to recognize the door, but it's there. Took pictures, kept taking. Decided to go write. Now I'm sitting here, writing. Something indistinct resides inside me, wanting to express itself. What is it? I don't know. But I write with hope that it will soon emerge. Earlier, dark doorways used to be sources of fear for me. Now they're a mystery. You can gaze into them. To see the unseen. To see what's not there even in the light. To uncover a secret, an essence, something crucial, but always elusive. Lately, I find myself laughing at myself or at others when they claim to have grasped the very essence of things. All of it seems like the wind, which you can't catch. But you can feel it, you can set the sails and navigate through life. Just like that, jump out of bed and write incomprehensible texts. Give in to that unrecognizable force that inspires, that unveils the horizons of the unexplored.

Today, I've encountered several times the value of my knowledge in augmented reality. I tasted the flavor of the money revolving around the topic I was working on. In our small town, an AR application was developed to animate a historical castle for 50,000 dollars. For some reason, I felt that money should have been in my pocket. Later, I consulted an American acquaintance about the logic of AR applications and the construction of user experience. And a few days ago, I conducted my first paid English consultation on AR application development.

It's striking how different this is from what I'm doing now. There, I felt like an expert; here, I'm like a freshman loser. Over there, it smells like money; here, it resonates with purpose. There, I'm at the forefront of technology, but the sources of my knowledge here are Socrates and the psychoanalysts of the past centuries.

Perhaps this internal struggle within me hasn't fully resolved yet. But one question, what would I do if I had less than a year to live, directs me to where I am now. Here, where I am close to my sense of purpose, to my desires, to real life. Here, where I can genuinely talk to you about what's genuinely and cosmically significant.

Understanding oneself allows making decisions again and again. Over and over, choosing one's path. Counteracting determinism with freedom. And using it.