We visited a Brand-New Orthodox Center and a Church of the Presentation of the Lord in Oryol. I am not a religious man and did it for fun and interest in architecture. There were shitloads of people. As usual the people praying around are mostly poor, semi-literate old hags in grey skirts and woolen shawls, who cannot tell Kirill of Alexandria from Empathy Kolovrat, who fill jars with tap water in front of Alan Chumak and read horoscopes at night.
Where did they come from, these gullible women? Imagination makes me think that these old women have moved to us in 2025 straight from the depths of the 19th century or, at least, from Stalin's collective farms. But this is not so. A typical 60-year-old grandma was 10 years old during my early childhood in 1975, and the 70-year-old was only 20 years old.
And I remembered the 20-year-old girls of 1975 in mini and maxi skirts, in flared trousers, thick-foamed “Sabo” shoes, dancing in the dark to the upbeat song “Money-Money,” kissing in the lilac bushes, riding in a ratty train to Sochi with a watermelon rind in hand, laughing at a regular guy passing by. The old hags were the pioneers from “One Hundred Days After Childhood” and the girls joining the ranks of the Komsomol. And I thought. HOW! HOW? How did a crowd of THOSE mini-skirted girls turn into THESE pious old women? My head broke. I still couldn’t figure it out. And then I picked my nose.
…And I thought, I am already the same greasy old man with pieces of ham in my beard. Well, okay, let's say I can tell Bille August from Arkady Ukupnik, but in appearance I already resemble those crazy women.
Soon I will have a goatee down to my belly.