It is a very intimate picture. Once at night I was driving from Kiev to Odessa. From a dense endless forest along the road insects were flying on the headlights. There were so many of them, that they looked like snow. They smashed against the bumper, head lights, my jeep's bonnet, and with a rustle of the rain died by tens of thousands. On the windscreen the layer of their remains was rapidly getting thicker. I had to switch on the wind screen wiper every ten minutes. I thought of some chess-like stratagem of life, of how to be on time for two exhibitions, and the pleasant thoughts about a model of a new calendar were interlaced with no less pleasant thoughts about obtaining the permission for permanent state in America. A relaxed ball of peacefully entangled thoughts was rushing together with the car through the night. And a layer of some broken circumstances, petty unfinished businesses, unfulfilled telephone calls and smashed insects was densely stuck on them. Suddenly from the left side of the forest a huge bird flew off, and a loud blow and a crunching pulled me out of this state.
At dawn I stopped to have some coffee. At the left on my bumper, on the bonnet and on head lights there were some feathers and spots of blood.
Later I recalled this unfortunate bird. We cannot help liking cars. We cannot help feeling sorry for birds, who have perished from them. One cannot give up cars. The birds cannot be saved either. This is life. It is rather simple to treat it philosophically. What can be done here?
Wars, hurricanes and catastrophes blow over scores of people. It is their remains that stuck on windscreen of events and circumstances.
A man is often an incomprehensible creature, prone to black humour and disgracefully coquetishly-curious. If he is told that tomorrow he will be erased by a bumper of history, all the same he'll be subconsciously interested, whether people inside the car will feel a blow against the bumper or the windscreen wiper will worthlessly and inconspicuously sweep away his smashed wings in the night?