Single house story

The only abandoned place upon visiting which I feel longing, sadness and ache in my chest is my grandmother’s house on the Hillfort in the city of Krasavino, Veliky Ustyug District, Vologda Region of Russia. Here my childhood passed, here I know every corner. And I realize that those days will never return.

I visit this house with only one purpose, so that it is not completely looted and dismantled for firewood, as was done with a neighbor.

They began to crawl into the house and broke it: pull out cast-iron parts from furnaces, scatter objects and things. I had to close out access to all the possible paths to the house. So far no one has climbed.

The house cannot be restored, and I wrote about this a long time ago when I visited this place last time. It must be recognized and accepted. It's all over here.

The area around the house is overgrown with young trees.

It all ends sooner or later. The only thing I regret is that I took little pictures of my grandmother and the house during my lifetime. If I returned to the past, I would have spent a lot of time and money, would have exhausted kilometers of film to capture every day spent in this house!

Here I first got acquainted with motorcycles, learned to ride and repair it. Here I learned everything about fishing tackle, learned to collect fishing rods, donks, look for a caddis for bait. Here I studied all the edible and not so mushrooms, learned the places where some of them grow. Here I learned to saw, stab, pin, drill, sharpen, plan.

Here I learned the basics of gardening. Here I met true friendship, love...

I’m kind of not old yet, but it feels like those days are some completely different life.

As if something clicked once...we became other, with different values, outlooks on the world...and the world itself became some other. But this was not gradual, but somehow abruptly happened.

But I can’t understand where is that border, where is the point through which we have so sharply stepped over? When did it happen?

You look back and see a completely different dimension. It is its own, dear, pleasant, but somehow detached from this world today. Is this really the past? Is it so supposed to act and influence a person?

It was as if I had lived two lives, and now I have it completely new, and as if I didn’t live that old one, I’m not to be today.

Or is it called growing up? It seems to me there is no smooth growing up. Here you are a child, you grow up, and still a child...and up to 25 years old you are the same child, and then once... you are some other, adult. Maybe you are still a child, but certainly already some other.

The circumstances that occur in life may play a large role. My grandmother lived and I was alone, and then she was gone and I became different. I know that everything around is changing intensively, but systematically, and then there is some kind of sharp global leap and again everything is changing systematically.

Nevertheless, I will argue that this leap is nothing but a transition to another dimension.

I wish I could learn to predict these transitions by measurements, somehow track them, prepare for them and even influence them!