Dear Phf,

I hear -- through intermediaries, because that's the right and proper way to talk to people, Hannah must hold me downⁱ and read outloud what you said in Stan's castle, we have no other manner of connecting nor did I ever realise just how much I missed junior high before -- that you gave some doctors in Moscow something to really earn their bread with ; which they did. Good for them! There's nothing more satisfying to the well equipped and well rested professional than a spot of serious work to be done, and if doctors are not always well rested nor universally well equipped... well what can you do, them's the breaks. I'm sure they're as grateful for your showing up in their ER as indeed can be.

Honestly, meeting you in Minsk was quite pleasant, if shockingly sterile. I enjoyed the frivolous conversation, there's a certain elegance involved in hurling through the air by the hundred verst to thereby discuss the weather upon landing, a certain old world savoir faire that I rather appreciated. It's true that in this I was complicit, as I myself didn't drive the discussion any harder than that ; I must confess the abusiveness therein involved altogether escaped me at the time, but then again the truth is I'm not that finely attuned to these things. I must say now that in retrospect I obviously see why you wouldn't have mentioned anything about it then -- after all, the girls were brandishing machine guns, and you had every reason to fear for your life at my hands (as the later unfolding of events clearly prove).

In the same line, I absolutely see the wisdom of not saying word one about your airplane-or-train dilemma. As it happens (though you had no way to know, it was evidently reasonable to assume) I did have the ability to ship you off to Moscow with a driver of your choice in either a car or a van (or even I suppose a hearse might also have been arranged for, in a pinch -- wouldn't that have made an impression on Moscow hospital staff, young man from Minsk coming out of a hearse!) -- that would then have poisoned you en route, stabbed you repeatedly with old discarded syringes found about roadside restrooms as per my express orders, as well as thrown you off a cliff.

It is, as you well know, very wise to keep your cards as closely glued to your chest as possible, in this evil world we live in, set as it is upon our painful if not necessarily immediate demise, which is why you did well to supress any mention whatsoever of your doubts about the quality of healthcare you were providing yourself, and forestall any questions as to possibly better alternatives. God knows that if you were to ask anyone in Minsk, it'd have absolutely had to not be me, a raving lunatic every bit as dangerously insane and incoherently deranged as my reputation deservedly indicates. And besides, it's simply not within the realm of the conceivable that any self-respecting lord of the republic would travel with large groups, or pre-arranged support systems on the ground, or keep lists of doctors like he keeps lists of nightclubs, restaurants and other dens of perdition, or have spare drivers at the ready or anything in the vein of slack at all. Because you don't, and that's therefore how it goes for me, also ; and besides, the food at some downtown restaurant happened to be at best dubious, which indeed is enough to prove all the foregoing by itself.

It's not in any case possible that a grouping of two million souls upon the earth presents some variety, such that it's possible to encounter outliers of any kind, as proven by the fact that when hanbot died a most avoidable deathⁱⁱ in my realm a year ago it was the absolute first thing we tried that also proved to be sufficient and the correct choice, and no widely cast net of physicians, managers &al were at all either needed or employed to find the one good hospital in the two million strong orc aglomeration. So successful was in fact this strategy of not talking to anyone back then, that none of us were heard from again ever since!

Let me not forget to extend my compliments to that misfortunate woman, whom you stubbornly refuse to as much as give a name to, stuck as she finds herself with a dork who's way too intelligent for her to get around him but way too fucking stupid to make anything of it. The one thing she evokes is a fly caught in a spider web. A fly caught a while ago, which the spider's silked over and maybe will eat later. Who knows. Any day now, you'll open your eyes and her life will begin, let's sing along now, "The rain falls down on last year's man... An hour has gone by and he has not moved his hand... Yet everything will happen if he only gives the word..."

Amen.

Unless, of course, you fucking die first. Unless you manage to die first, leaving her behind to wonder. Maybe if she said like this and so ? Maybe she should have asked thus and following ? Maybe when you grunted vaguely you really meant three psalms and a dozen scripture verses, if only she were smart enough to see the obvious in there ? Maybe the real meaning of the ferris wheel is death, in the manic-psychotic nightmare-dream her daylight's somehow become around you ?

She's got an inspiration, did she. I can rather imagine how that "inspiration" went, aged her half a decade, two or three more inspirations like that she's gonna grow white hairs. "Oh, it's the disease in me" -- no, it very well fucking isn't. I've got a girl in the other room who's cried herself to sleep quietly, her hide tanned in three different layers of bruises, none of which from yesterday, whom I've never treated as cruelly as this insane nonsense.

The Romanian expression goes "unde-i multa minte-i si prostie destula", and it fits you like a fucking glove. In this life I've enjoyed the bitterness of burying fifteen year olds, who as it happens weren't born as intelligent as you were, which is not something anyone either asked or didn't ask for ; but by the time they were done they had clawed themselves into manhood, on that limited power and in that limited time, such as it was and such as they had, so at least nobody had to bury any children in their name. It's something.

Do you realise you were nearly buried a twelve year old 30something, like fucking Naggum exactly ? Do you ? Does it do nothing in your fucking head, what the fuck are you here for ?! Nevermind me, "oh hurr durr, Minsk doctors are no good, MP is a meanie poopyhead, they deserve each other" -- where the fuck were you during all this ? You were being abusived, don't fucking tell me, you were ghosting about, dissociated from your own body to the degree you'll just surprisingly get sepsis one day. "Oh look what I can do!" Who the fuck is supposed to go around in that thing, a squirrel with lots of levers, for all you're concerned, "hi this is not phf" shall be the hole of the law ?

I guess we shall all wait quietly forever now. Realia altogether will patiently sit around to "see how things work out" henceforth, because some dork named Phillipe invented the ultimate time-control device : all the clocks stopped and the whole world frozen over in sheer terror at the manifest possibility of... perhaps doing the wrong thing ? Maybe saying the wrong thing ?

Here's a nickel's worth of clues : just because it paralyzes the insides doesn't mean it also works on the outside! Wonder of wonders, what the fuck were you doing at the age of five ? Being really smart & praiseworthy, learning how to read, or whatever other shit older year olds are supposed to do, I suppose ? All the while mising out on the basics, but who the hell needs those, right, soviet elite education of parts.

I've said the wrong thing more times than you can count. I'm not about to stop, either. Кто ты по жизни?

1. I don't read other people's logs, deliberately and systematically, not merely as a most convenient cover for my own laziness & self-centeredness, but so that I don't end up walnuting the world. (The walnut is a bitter tree, such that "not even grass can grow under it".) It has nothing to do with my dislking the respective lords, and everything to do with my liking them, you see. [↩]
2. Inexplicably she's popped back into living sometime hence, though perhaps it's really just a reconstruction of smoke & mirrors. [↩]