Everything is happening very fast for us. Time is the same, but it doesn't want to reckon with anyone. We only managed to count to three: one-July, two-August, three-September... It's like opening a cherished door, not having time to see what's behind it, and slamming it shut immediately. Our vessel of life is bubbling, exploding, spraying juice, and overflowing. Inside, everything is turning over, being remade, twisting, and flying apart. But on the outside, it seems like nothing, a calm. This is only for us, what is happening inside. Because no one else can understand it. Having visited different corners of the globe, unfortunately, I won't be able to write a single line about many of them because I won't remember anything. Sooner or later, one has to say goodbye to memories. I write only because I don't want to get lost or confused later. Not to photograph or not to write down means to lose the connection with the past. I cling to my memories with claws, tightly, dead-set, so that they don't give me peace later. Circumstances were such that initially we were supposed to go to a more northern city, Providence, near Boston. We dreamed about it all year, made plans, looked for places, scheduled evenings and weekends. We truly fell in love with it. But three days before departure, we were redirected to Durham. It was inferior to Boston and Providence in everything - there were no large famous cities, skyscrapers, national parks, or amusement parks nearby, and besides, it is much smaller and more boring. We were going there without knowing what to expect, but there was no choice anymore. So, having spent half of June, July, and August here, we thought all this time that we were living in the most boring and unknown city in the world. No one would dare argue with the fact that it is boring. But then, sitting one evening in front of the TV in Sarasota, we were extremely lucky in finding a movie - painfully familiar landscapes of the Lucky Strike tobacco factory and the Durham baseball field flashed on the screen. Once upon a time, our city's baseball team secured victory so often that this story was taken as the script for a movie starring Susan Sarandon. It was considered the best sports film adaptation. Then, seeing this movie, we almost choked - living here for three months and not even knowing that Durham is so famous. But in general, it would hardly have changed anything. I am often asked a question (quite reasonable, though not accurate), what I like or dislike most about America. Like a big and good book, you can't say that you just like it or dislike it; that's not enough. America is a glorious country, with its own flaws and vices. In my stories, I can boldly speak out about Russia or America without mincing words. And what is the point of dodging and avoiding what everyone already knows? I can imagine the sincere shock of an American who was not lucky enough to come to Russia without preparatory courses or at least stories about the Russian mentality. What do they even know about Russians? Associations are roughly like this - "vodka", "cold". That's what the average American thinks, as shown by the frequent surprise of our foreign friends when we told them about Russia. It's funny and brings to mind thoughts of ignorance. We don't live behind such an iron curtain. Russians know everything about the American way of life; they read articles about them, create communities, don't miss a single American movie, buy notebooks, pads, keychains, and posters with the Statue of Liberty and skyscrapers, t-shirts with the American flag, and borrow more and more words from English, while Americans don't even know that they are a role model, and the only thing they remember about Russia is still that it's cold there. And they only borrowed "babushka" and "sputnik". You'll be lucky if you talk to an American and they don't ask you if you still live in the USSR. In this country, everyone is for themselves. People make friends more easily
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