5. the slough. n. the beginning.

The stuffiness of my body in a shell. Hot first days of September. I want to move around wearing shortened cashmere sweaters and tweed pants, to look like a beatnik. And I do exactly that. The sun outside burns the air, brings it close to 30 °C.

I was bloating out because of the nerves; to overeat the stress, not to think. Sitting at the kitchen. Pushing buttons around the touchpad. Waiting several days until I have access to the Internet. All those days would go according to a regular scenario: procrastination, apathy, watching hollow movies. They were so hollow that I add this aspect just mechanically since I remember nothing after my study hours at the university. Just a feeling of my brain melting inside my entrails filled with food. Inconvenience is so great that you cannot think about anything but difficulty with breathing. The method that I started to learn and implement instinctively just after the first university days. But thoughts that I wanted to suppress were cutting my consciousness, hanging around the heights of stuffed food in my stomach. Sometimes they were childish, naive, sometimes nihilistic. But I almost didn't care. I did not want them. Me-a-plant just wanted to breathe in the last effort, in the abundance of fertilizers in the soil of my planter. It lasted two months. Reacting to the change of environment, transplantation, I thus even in my movements showed this state - I did not want to go outside of my room, flat, stayed inside even at the study days, begged for a possibility to bury myself even deeper. My roots were exposed and wanted to go back to the ground. 

That day, we have been assembled in a hall. We had to take an English test so that our level of knowledge could be determined for us to enter a fitting student group. I knew that we would come to the table at the same moment, to hand over our tests. Sluggish by nature, I handed my test over one of the last. Ilya has for the first time looked at me directly, without hiding. Stood for a moment, then walked past me, slouching. When he moves, something always leans heavily on him. Dense pitchy eyebrows, an impressive dose of black tea dissolved in the eyes, light brown hair. There were no men like him in my home country. I liked something animalistic in his gaze. I liked that animalistic has the highest sense for me. I felt that I saw him already somewhere. Long ago. I wanted to scream about it, yet how could I?! Even when I thought that he feels the same and his gaze is justified by this feeling, I could not believe; I felt guilty because I tire myself too much in the university when the source of food is not available and both rational and intuitive inside me are free.

I have got acquainted with Natasha that same day. Before the English test. She bravely led me to the lowest floor to ask technical personnel where WC is. All those days before I thought I would better die than ask about it. Now I knew that her move was dictated by the desire to allow no thought that she had the same coward urges that I had. I did not know her, but an easy touch of premonition existed. Then, the Aleksandraŭski Park awaited us. Our arguing started just as we began to move there. Hearing for the first time an opinion of a human-political-dissident, human-plant fiercely held to her opinions. These last opinions have been grown by populism which a speaking box in our provincial guest room with columns was spreading. Being silent for ten minutes, thinking about our mutual degradation, throwing into neurons something like, "Fuck! What a stupid cunt!", we argued again and again. So it lasted for three hours. We left unchanged, and each of us decided not to say another anything but "hi/bye". This way the biggest friendship of my life began. It will remain such for ever.