Author : Zurab Medzvelia
What a wonderful thing this author’s column turns out to be – you can write about anything you want. Well, I’m going to write about what I’ve been thinking about the most in the last few days, but first I need to talk about a few of my family members’ current lifestyles and post a couple of photos from my family album. So, if you’re sick of reading about the personal lives of others like me, stop here – this magazine is free, you have nothing to lose.
This is the one before the last one. After that we did a New York jigsaw, but I must start with this Van Gogh story. But first let me say that we did not argue about who was the coolest in the family, but we argued no less fiercely about who was the coolest jigsaw puzzle master (we know all about all the other virtues – who is the coolest at something and who is the best at something else). Yes, Maiko would put together 20-30 pieces, I would add one or two, but then I would explain that it was due to those one or two that I found that allowed her to assemble 20-30 in a row. And justified it by saying that I graduated from a technical university, which means that in a job like assembling puzzles, I should be the supervisor or something like that. In response to this, Maiko said that then naturally I should always remember for how many and which pieces I found a place in a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle.
This remark of hers would not at all spoil the joy of finding a piece or two, and I simply would head for the study, only to return from there with my diploma and read aloud the name of the department I graduated from, which I couldn’t quite remember...
Anyway, let’s leave these passions aside and let’s focus on what has happened to this Van Gogh: We are approaching the finish line and we have noticed that this piece (see the first photo) is gone. There’s not a single fragment of this floor, or figure, or whatever it is. Well, we started looking here and there.
Maybe it’s under the couch, we started getting down on our knees and looking under the couch and all that stuff... Oops, Manana was here today, she tidied up… she might have emptied the hoover and threw it out with the rubbish? Yes!
What can you do!!!? And this in the last battle, and the last stretch of the finish line. Here it is! – shouted Maiko. We were very happy, very happy... when you start over, and when you find it, you are even more happy… in short, these are the little joys of playing a puzzle game…
Warning: Now I’m going to have to get to the more intimate details, and before it’s too late, stop asking questions – I’m going to talk about what these two family members are doing when they’re literally naked…
Well, I couldn’t stand it since childhood, and neither old age nor anything else helped – 5… 15 minutes at the most, then it’s an agony. Maiko can lie down for about an hour straight. You have to lie down, too – you’ve hardly got out, you’ve come to a nice beach and you need to sunbathe, don’t you – well, won’t it transform us this time and all that, but… anyway, while Maiko is reading for an hour under an umbrella, I’m walking along the beach, picking up nice shells and writing something in the sand with them. It’s really fun. Sometimes I intercept these shells from the wave at the last second. I spot a shell, but the wave is already here and if it gets ahead of me, it will sweep it away into the depths. And I am happy when I get ahead of it.
I add to the writing and go back for more shells. For an example, see the second photo, which I titled “NASA’s Latest Photo from Mars, 2014”. It took me around 15-20 visits to the beach to “create” it. It’s a nice beach in Tel Aviv, where we combined our week-long holiday with a concert of my favourite Rolling Stones, because during that time nobody destroyed the future masterpiece... Anyway, such are the little joys of shell collecting...
The impression that Maiko only swims and lies down would be mistaken.
No, she also walks and searches. Often, we look for pierced stones together. It’s Maiko’s infatuation, she’s been doing it with her dad since she was a little girl. It’s not the same as looking for shells – you walk over a lot of rocks, and there you have to find a stone or a pebble with a small hole in it. It was hard for me at first, but then I got into it. Some of them make you bend down and pick them only due to some premonition or inner feeling, and when you do, you immediately see the hole. And there are some that you take in your hands and do not see any hole, but you are not lazy, look at it in the sun at different angles, and suddenly, it turns out that it still has the smallest hole! In short, this is the joy of searching for the hole, and those who still follow this column should know that so far, I have told this story publicly only to the customs officers at the Tbilisi airport, who were surprised to see so many ugly stones and pebbles in our suitcases.
Beyond that, Maiko cannot be called a searcher, whereas I have other search hobbies. I have a football collection and I’m always happy when I add something to it. Especially when (and it has happened many times) the hope of finding something dies out and you suddenly find it not in a second-hand bookshop, but in wastepaper left by the rubbish bin.
And I have found things in perfect condition. In my dreams and fantasies, since the days of Captain Nemo, I have often searched for sunken objects at the bottom of the ocean. I watch and read about such stories, though I have put off pursuing professional searching until my next life. Like so many other things, including...
... I’m almost done. Yes, it turned out to be rather long but I started by saying that I am writing about what I’ve been thinking about the most in the past days. So here we are.
Imagine you’re walking on cobbles, rocks, scrap irons and a thousand other things. And it’s not a beach, it’s a huge collapsed building, and you’re not looking barefoot, carefree in beautiful weather for a stone with a hole in it or a seashell, or a book, or a photograph, or even the grave of Queen Tamar... there seems to be something, quickly..., but... No, it’s something perished. In a terrible way.
…and here’s the second one… and this one too… and that one… and one more… and another one… another hundred, two hundred, a thousand, forty-five thousand… in front of your eyes, in the dark and at minus five. When I walked around in a nice safe place for half an hour and would not find what I was looking for, I’d get nervous and upset. Can you imagine?!
And all of a sudden! Yes, the child is alive!!! After three days and nights! And again, even after a week...
Seeing something like this, I immediately give a shout out to Maiko. So, even yesterday, 261 hours (11 days) after that damned earthquake, they found a boy. With distraught eyes, who got even worse when a familiar voice from a mobile phone reached him, and he heard that all the people dear to him had survived and were coming to hug him… He kissed the hands of the owner of that mobile phone, the rescuer.
It’s an amazing joy. One that you will never forget, and every memory of which will delight you anew, sincerely, and deservedly.
You might have guessed that I am envious.
