We all read the Internet, realizing that it has been reading us itself for a long time. Or rather, it has already read us long ago.

We are left with unread books. The freest invention of mankind, which wants nothing from us. It just waits.

There's always something or someone waiting for us. Surprisingly, as a rule, the best and the real. Something better than us.

Maybe that's why for us today, yes, today, what awaits us is inconvenient, or annoying, or uncomfortable. Not interesting. No. Too high. Too much...

Scary — it's not «frying pans» of hell. Scary is when you lose what you were offered yesterday, and you didn't want it in your temporary «free» mode. What is not interesting today, tomorrow turned out to be the most important, bright and most importantly — free. It's scary when «tomorrow» is no longer with you, because yesterday you did not want it, did not expect it, did not believe in it. You exchanged it for today.

Book. A real book cannot be interesting or uninteresting. It doesn't need to be interesting, because it knows that it is created for those who already have an interest in it. It is written for the interesting. This book involuntarily forces you to induce now, so that it will be easy and free later. It wants the incomprehensible today to become clear, easy and necessary for you tomorrow. Book. You make us yawn with your silence. You don't sing, you don't dance in front of us. You disturb us with your silence and your dust, while in your silence there is a Word that can not be shouted over by anything producing sound. A Meaning awaits us in you, before which the movements of all thinking are silenced.

A thought. Sometimes it seems to me that thought and dream are something independent of this reality. And not only because of its indissoluble connection, as an action or inaction, which justifies you in front of this reality, allowing, for example, not to get up from the couch, but also because in it (in thought) there is a place for what this reality can no longer encompass.

Reality. No. Book. Have you ever thought about the distance between the nose and the book? It begins with high thoughts and feelings, and ends with a dull slap on the already falling asleep forehead or nose. It's a connection. The most expressive and precise connection between reality and the book. If you like, the beginning and end of our existence is in the territory of eternity. Again, I don't know how to end it. Maybe I didn't start.

Artist Dmitry Kustanovich
December 31, 2020