(I don’t remember the exact date) The hotel was chosen because it was the only one we needed, the mood was super until we were brought to the hotel... in short, I’ll try to be shorter... the rooms are dirty, this is an understatement, a bunch of other people’s female hair all over the room, mold , everything is falling apart.
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(I don’t remember the exact date) The hotel was chosen because it was the only one we needed, the mood was super until we were brought to the hotel... in short, I’ll try to be shorter... the rooms are dirty, this is an understatement, a bunch of other people’s female hair all over the room, mold , everything is falling apart. In order to be relocated, you need to make a scandal, it’s like a tradition with them, probably, but nothing has changed, the only thing that looks lucky is the photos on the site? ahha! ) Complete nonsense, they probably closed the hotel for the day to set tables, etc. They stole things and not a few) the neighbor’s phone was generally removed from the charger on her last day of rest, the animator "Tarzan" is a miserable animal that offends you with a Russian obscenity if you do not agree to its paid services, discos and trips. The food is disgusting, I could withstand 2 days, after I bought everything with my own money, even though we had everything inclusive, the only one of all pleased Simon (the owner of the gift shop on site. ) In general, if you don’t want to ruin your vacation, go to another hotel)))
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This is the second time I stayed in this hotel, I went here, and I plan to do the same next year. Of course, if you are used to going out for dinner in an evening dress or a tuxedo, carry a bottle of alcohol with you to disinfect everything you touch, or gasp at any crack in the plaster - this hotel is not for you.
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This is the second time I stayed in this hotel, I went here, and I plan to do the same next year.
Of course, if you are used to going out for dinner in an evening dress or a tuxedo, carry a bottle of alcohol with you to disinfect everything you touch, or gasp at any crack in the plaster - this hotel is not for you. The most important advantage of Ponsiana is its good location. Hadaba area, to the Old Market half an hour on foot, to Farsha 25 minutes on foot, to Palm Beach 20 minutes at a leisurely pace. Across the road is El Mercato with shops, restaurants and dollar strawberries. The next street is the Leila entertainment complex and another row of shops, which has thinned out due to the lack of tourists. Civilization is everywhere, not a wasteland. The top management of the hotel has changed. There was a very pleasant guest relation. She has her own desk at the reception, she helps to resolve any issues, and even calls the numbers to find out if there are any problems? Does everything work? A device for replenishing the account appeared there - it accepts pounds, dollars, rubles. Wi-fi is free from 19:00 to 20:30. For the money there is in the rooms. The staff is very friendly, they remembered our company and were treated like best friends. Upon learning that we were at the hotel for the second time, they brought us fruit as a present. The food is normal. Of course, the abundance of pickles is not present, but quite tasty and healthy food. There is a bus to the beach every half an hour - an hour. There is an animator, but somehow I never managed to stay in the hotel in the evening to appreciate it. Yes, and during the day I preferred to swim with the fish. By the way, a major bridge was made on the beach with a very convenient entrance to the sea. Now on the pontoon you do not need to test your vestibular apparatus. On the beach on the bracelet tea, coffee, soda, hibiscus for free. The territory is green. The bougainvilleas are in bloom, the basil is fragrant, the lawns are mowed and watered. The room is clean, white bed, TV, hair dryer, hot water, sea view. In short, a normal budget hotel. The only thing - if you do not want to measure the level of your tolerance for the locals - do not plan a vacation from the end of January to mid-February, while the children have holidays there and Cairo and Alexandrians are brought by bus to almost all hotels.
Of course, if you are used to going out for dinner in an evening dress or a tuxedo, carry a bottle of alcohol with you to disinfect everything you touch, or gasp at any crack in the plaster - this hotel is not for you. The most important advantage of Ponsiana is its good location. Hadaba area, to the Old Market half an hour on foot, to Farsha 25 minutes on foot, to Palm Beach 20 minutes at a leisurely pace. Across the road is El Mercato with shops, restaurants and dollar strawberries. The next street is the Leila entertainment complex and another row of shops, which has thinned out due to the lack of tourists. Civilization is everywhere, not a wasteland. The top management of the hotel has changed. There was a very pleasant guest relation. She has her own desk at the reception, she helps to resolve any issues, and even calls the numbers to find out if there are any problems? Does everything work? A device for replenishing the account appeared there - it accepts pounds, dollars, rubles. Wi-fi is free from 19:00 to 20:30. For the money there is in the rooms. The staff is very friendly, they remembered our company and were treated like best friends. Upon learning that we were at the hotel for the second time, they brought us fruit as a present. The food is normal. Of course, the abundance of pickles is not present, but quite tasty and healthy food. There is a bus to the beach every half an hour - an hour. There is an animator, but somehow I never managed to stay in the hotel in the evening to appreciate it. Yes, and during the day I preferred to swim with the fish. By the way, a major bridge was made on the beach with a very convenient entrance to the sea. Now on the pontoon you do not need to test your vestibular apparatus. On the beach on the bracelet tea, coffee, soda, hibiscus for free. The territory is green. The bougainvilleas are in bloom, the basil is fragrant, the lawns are mowed and watered. The room is clean, white bed, TV, hair dryer, hot water, sea view. In short, a normal budget hotel. The only thing - if you do not want to measure the level of your tolerance for the locals - do not plan a vacation from the end of January to mid-February, while the children have holidays there and Cairo and Alexandrians are brought by bus to almost all hotels.
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Description of the hotel «Poinciana Sharm Resort» 4 * The hotel is located in the resort center of Sharm El Sheikh, in the Ras Um Sid bay area, 15 km from the airport, 7 km from the city of Sharm El Sheikh. Beach, 2nd line from the sea (remoteness from the sea up to 1000 m). Rooms The hotel has 182 rooms including: 128 Family Suites, 12 Villas, 58 guest rooms - overlooking the sea.
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Description of the hotel «Poinciana Sharm Resort» 4 *
The hotel is located in the resort center of Sharm El Sheikh, in the Ras Um Sid bay area, 15 km from the airport, 7 km from the city of Sharm El Sheikh.
Beach, 2nd line from the sea (remoteness from the sea up to 1000 m).
Rooms
The hotel has 182 rooms including: 128 Family Suites, 12 Villas, 58 guest rooms - overlooking the sea.
Restaurant, bars
- Fontana - the main restaurant of the hotel: breakfast, lunch and dinner, seafood dishes are offered; Laguna bar - the bar offers its visitors a large selection of drinks and snacks; Diamond beach bar - a place where you can have a light meal; Up-Stairs bar - This bar serves cocktails, snacks until midnight.
January 13.2016. Wednesday
First impressions of winter Egypt
Late evening. I just checked into one of the many hotels in Sharm El Sheikh. Some amazing silence. And autumn chill.
It seems that I arrived in my native Crimea somewhere in late September - early October after a violent summer season, when tired of hundreds of thousands of vacationers, the resort wearily relaxed and tamed its seemingly indomitable ardor. Only in one place, in all likelihood, in a luxury hotel, was disco music heard. But my hotel is only four stars and I have to be content with silence. However, the main reason is not in the category of the hotel, but in the fact that now there are only sixty people in the hotel, instead of a quarter of a thousand according to the plan. According to the plan of the hotel administration, but not according to the plan of Politics in the megaplan (Russian President Putin, after blowing up (? ) an airplane over Sinai with 228 Russians, banned tours from Russia to Egypt). And this megapolitics has reduced the number of tourists in Egypt several times.
On the one hand, this is good for tourists from other countries: prices for tours have fallen sharply (all according to the same laws of Karl Marx set forth in his “Capital”, when the price of goods / services depends on demand / supply. But they suffered, first of all , the Egyptians, because they are losing billions from the under-working of the area in which they have invested huge amounts of money and which is now unprofitable. The people of Russia suffer from such geopolitics, for whom Egypt, with budget prices for tours, is almost the only opportunity to have a good rest. Slavs, like last summer with Roma from the Moscow region ...
And today is my first evening in the winter Sharm El Sheikh. I wrote "winter" and immediately felt a certain disharmony between the calendar season and my usual ideas about winter. And thus there was a certain pun. Winter in my mind is dog cold with a frost of twenty or more degrees, snow, snowdrifts, a blizzard and its terrible howl. And this is how our classics described winter - masters of not only words, but also brushes, as well as composers. And so, leaving the Sharm El-Sheikh airport and stepping on the land of the Sinai Peninsula, I experienced an unusual feeling: there is no frost familiar to this season (although in Ukraine sometimes the mercury column of the thermometer rises to the positive zone), but there is also no that scalding sultry wind of the desert, which every time I met on the land of Egypt in my previous summer visits to it. And there was the usual autumn chill of Indian summer.
That was my first impression of winter Egypt at Sharm Ed Sheikh airport.
I'm already at the hotel. Late evening. Today is the New Year according to the old style. Taking the “quarter” I brought with me, I went to look for a company with whom I could celebrate the New Year (and spend the old one). But disappointment awaited me: on the territory of the hotel, and it is huge, several hectares, not a single living soul. And twilight. It would be darker, perhaps there would be ghosts. Or, as in the film with Kramarov: “…Night. Silence… And the dead with scythes stand…” But it didn’t come to that in my case. Slowly walked around the entire territory of the hotel. I saw and fixed in my memory all its “sights” in order to use them the next day and in the future. Everything is great: two swimming pools, and a green well-groomed territory, and a lot of all sorts of design attributes that delight the eye with their originality, which were noticeable even at dusk in poor lighting.
Only, the only thing that is a pity is that it is far to the sea, about two kilometers. And I cannot go to the sea every evening or early in the morning before breakfast, intercept and listen to its healing breath. But I think that during the day I will try, although partially, but to make up for what I will not receive in the morning dawn.
After wandering around the hotel and finally losing all hope of finding at least one living soul (everyone was in their rooms, a sign of which was the yellow light in their windows), I decided to take a walk around the city outside the hotel.
The streets are also empty. The crisis has just begun. He is not yet three months old. And what will happen next? . . Only taxis dangle and honk briefly, as if asking if their service is required? I felt a little sorry for them (taxi drivers): they drive around for nothing the whole evening, they burn gasoline, but there are no passengers.
The only thing that compensates for this pity is their arrogance with which they “bend” double or even triple fees for travel routes that are usual in such cases, and Ukrainians who do not know this specifics of trade not only taxi drivers, but everywhere in Egypt or the Russians are falling for it. And, what else, to which I can’t get used in any way, is the sugary obsession of shopkeepers. And not only them, but also intermediary gunners who, like tentacles, are stretched from shops in all directions and capture passers-by - potential buyers. Both invite people to the store, saying: “my store”, in fact they are sellers or intermediaries who receive commissions from sellers “for a tip”.
The only place where the nightlife "seethed" was the entertainment complex "1001 Nights" - on a vast territory in the whole block. I did not dare to go inside, but outwardly - in the style of Arabian fairy tales - the sight is impressive!
It would seem that an impossible fabulous quick change of seasons has now occurred with my participation within four hours. And this was facilitated by an increased speed of 850 km / h, which gave my body weighing almost a centner new opportunities - to move from one season to another in these four hours. Oh, this mysterious speed! At the first cosmic speed, it allows you to leave the Earth, at the second - to become an independent satellite of the solar system, and at the third - to leave the solar system.
Weather in Sharm El Sheikh
After the beer, everything goes according to plan: lunch, the sea, the beach ...We need to have time to sunbathe, because in three days it will be, as for the conditions of Egypt, a cold snap: only +18? . And the wind is 6 m/sec. Such a cold snap is not terrible here, but the wind ...But the natives say so, but as a matter of fact, we will live, I will describe everything.
I'm sunbathing.
The sun here is not the same as we have in the summer in Europe: after two in the afternoon it already loses its midday heat, and after three - already at sunset. Therefore, you can safely sunbathe without fear of sunburn.
I'm trying to resume yesterday's theme of the sensations I experienced during a sharp change in the seasons: from winter in Kyiv to summer in Egypt. But while I feel the sensations of a fabulous transformation, and not deeper. It is not yet possible to explain in more depth. Yesterday's explanation of this phenomenon of the sensitivity of the soul with the help of speed, today seems "far-fetched", wretchedly technocratic and does not fit into the foundations of spiritual concepts. Still do not combine two concepts: Winter and Egypt. After all, in fact, as we understand it, there is no winter in Egypt.
Nature of Egypt
I can't tell about all of Egypt its Nature.
This is such a vast and diverse country that it is hardly possible for me to visit all its corners and express my opinion about them. What is worth one desert: it would seem, the ultimate monotony - sands, dunes, only saxaul and snakes ...But how many emotions! Emotions, as well as writing based on them, are an inexhaustible storehouse. And I remember this despite the fact that I saw the real Egyptian desert only from the window of a tourist bus about ten years ago, when I went to see the pyramids from Sharm El Sheikh.
But in all subsequent cases, I saw Egypt only from the territory of hotels, small watered oases in the desert, when the sun, almost 364 days a year, and the abundance of water do a miracle: they create such conditions for plants that in this contrast with the conditions of the desert, you wonder . So this morning, the huge territory of the Poinciana Sharm Resort hotel of five hectares allowed me to do this. And I fell into my element - into the element of Nature.
In that part of it that is closest to me and which I love the most - this is the plant world and, in particular, trees. And I didn’t need much to start with: just one small tree, with a trunk ten to fifteen inches thick and two and a half to three meters high. This tree was called "shagaro". It attracted me to itself with invisible magic. As soon as I saw him, as if spellbound, I reached out to him, went up and gently, like a girl, hugged his camp - for the soft to the touch and pleasant-looking light, like our birch trees, the trunk. And for the first time in this season in Egypt, I had tears of tenderness of the sensitivity of the Soul. And I revived: finally, after several days of intense searching, I found a channel through which I can perceive the Nature of Egypt and state what I perceive in my essays.
In addition, I had associations with a birch in Melezhy in the Vladimir forests during my hermitage in those distant nineties ...Today I perceived this tree exactly the same way as then, but more clearly, because those emotions, despite their exceptional the penetration and even the storm that arose then in the Soul, over the course of decades, began to gradually fade in the memory of the Soul. And now I have restored them again here in Egypt. But then my emotions materialized into this world in the form of poetry, now I will try to state everything that I felt in prose words.
When I touched the trunk of this tree, and then mechanically hugged it, I felt, despite the heat of twenty-eight degrees, a coolness. And in this coolness - a certain individuality, the isolation of this tree from everything that, according to the laws of physics, should absorb heat and be just as hot and sultry.
And this original personality of this tree I liked most of all in it. And then more surprise and admiration awaited me. Hugging and stroking the trunk of a tree, I felt its inner trembling and some kind of sensitive reaction to my touch: the tree opened its soul before me! For some short moment, which lasts a fraction of a second in our material world, and in that other world it turns into infinity, I experienced and learned a lot that neither I nor anyone else can transfer to our world, describing everything it's words. And what I am writing now is just a part of what I felt there ...
No wonder my communication, as they say now, on a subtle level with this cute tree, is similar to communication with a girl. And all because their nature is similar.
And besides, this is one of the easiest ways to move to a sensitive perception of the surrounding world, this is the channel through which you can easily and easily get from this world into the world of a sensitive Soul - into the Spiritual World. And the benefit in this, and not only in terms of knowledge, but also purification and spiritual growth, is enormous.
I physically felt how, under my palm, streams of water were moving in a continuous stream through the smallest capillaries from the roots up to the leaves. My inner ear even perceived the noise of these streams. And a certain substance moves back into the earth in the form of gratitude to the Earth for its honor to grow this plant on itself. The Earth and the tree have mutual harmony, which ensures the growth and prosperity of one and the qualitative improvement of the other. But I perceived this and much more on a physical level. And on the subtle level of spiritual perception, everything was much deeper and more significant.
But most of what I perceived remained inside me, even with some “taboo” on its transfer to our world. In my sixty years, I discover a new spiritual life in myself, like that baby, from his pre-natal purely spiritual life passes into the life of our material world, but only I - in the opposite direction. And the circle of physical life closes, just for a little while. For some dozens (maximum up to a hundred) years, we were allowed to go out of our spiritual essence into our physical essence, so that at the end of this period, either by improving our spiritual essence and magnifying it, or by casting it into the abyss of vices, enter it again. I would say that our physical life is a test of our soul “for lice”!
And such moments as communication on a subtle level with plants, with the Sea, the Sun or the Wind, their sensual perception and, moreover, their creative reproduction, which requires their kind and favorable will, and there are moments of the greatest spiritual self-improvement . And life in the world, that is, in society among people, is the hungry and greedy life of a spider in a jar among hungry spiders like you. And how can one refrain from filth (I use Christian terms that most accurately reflect the essence of the phenomenon), and not undergo a spiritual fall in the name of physical survival? Therefore, in order not to completely ruin their souls, creative people, including the author of these lines, live a double life: spiritual and physical, separating them by assigning the spiritual part of the personality - a pseudonym. And each not only does not climb into the life of another, but also does not enjoy either fame, or contempt and persecution of the other.
This is on condition that he finds the strength in himself to arrange the dualism of his life in such a way.
While resting in the Crimea, as well as here, at the Egyptian resorts, I noticed that people, having come to rest, become completely different, move into the life of Good, as if having removed all the negativity from themselves for this time. And at the same time they exalt their spiritual essence. They return to their usual rhythm of life - and again, as before, they fall into the cloaca of physical life, fall, almost to the bottom of their spiritual essence. Because they are forced to do this by society and the need to live and survive physically. Therefore, I perceive the resort - not as a health resort for the physical body, but as a health resort for the Soul! After all, Nature provides for a physical health resort for the body - this is daily sleep, when the body relaxes and almost completely restores its physical strength - and all this is done on autopilot, without any conscious control.
During sleep, spiritual forces are also restored to some extent. But this is not enough.
Breaking for a while from the theme of the narrative, as the time comes for the dawn of the next day ...
Kaleidoscope
Every day is significant by the fact that it begins with dawn and sunrise, each time different and not similar to one another. So today, the morning does not begin with sunrise, but with solid clouds all over the sky. And only in the east by seven in the morning, when the Sun should have already been high above the horizon, like yesterday morning, today there is only a small segment of the sky with a slightly lighter tone. And, what else upsets good morning is the increased number of flights of military supersonic aircraft at prohibitive heights. They leave their unkind mark on the originally good sky in the form of long silvery tails. If yesterday he was alone, today there are three. And logically, it will be six tomorrow! ? ..
January 19.2016. Tuesday
Baptism
We are accustomed to Epiphany frosts on this day, to rivers and lakes encased in ice, to ice holes in which both old and young swim ...But for me and for several hundred of my compatriots today, on the day of Epiphany, there is an exception: water in the sea even warmer than yesterday - 24? above zero, the air is even higher, only that a strong wind cools a naked body, especially when you get out of the water. But all this holiday was celebrated with friendly swimming in the Red Sea. For many, including me, such a bathing in an open reservoir at Epiphany is the first time in their lives. There will be something to remember not a single year later.
Everyone tuned in to the fact that today water all over the world is special with increased positive energy and therefore healing. In addition, I tried to convince myself that, in addition to healing properties for the body, today water also helps to heal the soul, cleansing it from filth. The main thing is to believe in it. And it is being implemented.
Everyone who was on the beach huddled together under a rock near the water, where the wind did not reach, which still persistently and strongly continued to blow from the peninsula to the sea. In addition, we all got the opportunity to sunbathe, as the sun was on our side in the afternoon. This is how the resort holiday for Epiphany turned out for many tourists of Sharm El Sheikh.
Just before going to bed, I remember how I sat on my cherished stone for more than an hour, catching lonely waves with my feet, trying to jump out onto land as far as possible. With a glance without any purpose, I wandered over the surface of the Sea, my thought followed my gaze, and the feelings of the soul, if any, were waiting for their cherished hour to manifest themselves in any topic. But, unfortunately, no topic worthy of my attention has matured, and the sheet of paper on which I had to transfer this topic has remained clean ...
January 25.2016.
Monday
Winter has come to Egypt?
Today I learned what winter is in the resorts of Egypt. And I can share my impressions with you, my readers…
During the day, as usual, it was hot, but only in the sun. In the shade after a few minutes you start to feel cold. And how to be here? After a sleepless night of seeing friends off, I really wanted to sleep. But the sun burned like summer, and in the shade it was like autumn - this, of course, is tied to the concepts of "summer" and "autumn" in Ukraine. After being pretty baked, and then freezing to the same extent, besides splashed with water from lawn sprinklers here, near the pool, I am a little dissatisfied with the real climate (at the same time I forgot that Nature has now bestowed a real winter on Ukraine at twenty-five degrees of frost), rushed to fill up to his room ...
The whole day was warm, even hot. And windless silence in Nature.
The natural sounds of human civilization, such as: the noise of cars, the rumble of planes flying in for landing, the shouting of Arabs - hotel servants, etc. , I did not take into account.
But by evening everything changed. As if out of nowhere, a strong wind appeared and began, like crazy, to drive throughout the hotel. Yes, so much so that the trees, and these are mostly tall palm trees, staggered in time with the gusts of wind, and their fan tops shook in different directions with such intensity that it seemed as if some kind of monster wanted to tear them out of their settled places. The wind in the hotel did not have a specific direction. He swooped down on me, like a predatory beast, from different sides, as if trying to take me by surprise and grab the exposed parts of the body with his teeth. My body, compressed into a ball, still remembering the warmth of the day and the last refuge - the room, steadily resisted.
More precisely, I felt it on my own skin. Every 3-4 hot days and velvety-warm nights, as if from the underworld, a feisty windbreaker broke out and put things in order - as evil and disgusting as he himself.
The wind was terrible and unpleasant only for us old people. The youth completely ignored him. Having dressed warmly, they went to the city in pairs and small groups for various shows and entertainment. Fortunately, there are more than enough of them in Sharm El Sheikh, as in any other resort town.
But it was all just a prelude to a real Egyptian winter with a terrible (by the standards of Egypt) coldness ...
The evening of the next day
If the day before the cold was created by a strong wind, today after sunset and without wind it became so cold, as if the territory of the hotel plunged into a kind of refrigerator, in which, it seemed, there was not a single living soul, except for the bartender Mahmud, who was forced to stay there on duty .
But everything changed dramatically when I presented these weather cataclysms not as terrible and depressing, but as spiritualized natural phenomena with which one can communicate on an equal footing and, moreover, understand, explore their essence, and even command them? ! And only realizing this, I realized how lucky I was to visit Egypt for such a cheap fee and discover the new Egypt, previously unknown to anyone, to the whole world. To open Egypt not from a physical point of view, in which it is known far and wide, and even deep into the Red Sea and the underground labyrinths of the Pharaohs' Pyramids, but from a spiritual point of view. I just discovered such inexhaustible possibilities for myself, and, abstracting into the spiritual sphere, I stopped feeling cold and all discomfort, and fell asleep in such bliss ...
And after dinner...
I will not continue to describe the Nature of winter Egypt for the sole reason that I simply cannot describe it in its true light.
And to make an unnatural verbal cast of it is to waste your personal time and offend Nature, showing that it is as you describe it, which is far from being the case. I just don't have the skill to do it. And so we'll talk about something else.
I planned to go to Jerusalem today. And even everything was ready for this, right down to the food supplies that I had prepared over the previous two days, in a simple hidden (and, in fact, thieves') way, taking it away in parts from lunch and dinner. And here comes the crash. People ask me if I'm upset about the cancellation of the trip due to unforeseen bad weather - washed out roads in the resort town of Taba on the border with Israel? I answer them that I knew about it in advance and everything that happens is all for the good.
So, today after lunch, the ban on alcohol was lifted for me personally. I took it off for myself, in connection with the cancellation of a trip to Israel to holy places.
It's time to go home, to dear Ukraine ...Yes, and it suddenly became lonely and empty in my soul after the departure of a noisy company of my friends.
And in order to overcome external physical loneliness, I am looking for a way out inside myself: I look in there and, surprisingly, I really find the gardens of Eden inside me. It turns out that I am not empty inside myself, but there is something ...And there is an inner world, and what a one! And everything that I wrote before and write now is a reflection of my inner world. And not only this…
Creations of man and the creative genius of Nature
Something painfully quickly, I got used to the "masterpieces" of human hands in the form of design creations on the landscape of the hotel. Already on the fourth day, they became ordinary for me, ceased to attract special attention and delight in the same special way.
Two options arise here: either they have exhausted themselves in terms of originality and as an object of knowledge and admiration, or I have exhausted myself in terms of the opportunity to know the “masterpieces” presented to my attention. In any case, the territory of the hotel has already passed the stage in terms of knowledge and admiration for me, it remains only to take a few pictures as a keepsake in order, if desired, to restore the impressions of the Poinciana Sharm resort that are fading over time. There are inexhaustible pictures of Nature left. To this end, guided by a subconscious movement of thoughts and intentions, I already woke up at half past five in the morning and was surprised at the darkness in the room, but immediately gave an explanation for this: on the eve of dawn, they turn off the lights on the hotel territory - why burn electricity in vain when you can save money.
But, in the east, a section of the sky near the horizon began to gradually brighten.
This Sun, an hour before its appearance in this world, began to prepare a springboard bed for itself to jump out into the sky. And so it went on for an excruciatingly long time. Why painfully long is only for me, because, having heard a lot of reviews about the meeting of dawn from holidaymakers who have been on a safari, who claim that the Sun rises with amazing speed, I also expected to see the imminent process of its appearance. But one thing is its movement across the sky, another thing is the background of its appearance. And the second is many times longer in time than the first. This went on for about an hour with a slow lightening of the horizon line in a small area of the sky and its expansion both in breadth and in height. But such lighting was not very impressive. And only the appearance of pink clouds illuminated from below, from behind the horizon, radically changed everything. And this happened about ten minutes before the appearance of the sun.
And the igniting of the clouds from slightly pink to purple-red, and then fiery red, was truly impressive and delighted to the point of holding your breath with excitement. And as soon as a small piece of solar fire appeared, at first bright yellow, and then an ever-increasing and reddening segment of the disk, the euphoria of happiness contemplating this miracle of Nature reached its climax ...
Comparing two paintings: stable, man-made (in this case, the landscape design of the hotel) and non-repeating original paintings of Nature (the current sunrise), I am once again surprised at the inexhaustibility of the diversity of Nature. And to understand this, one does not have to be extremely insightful. But, to know the beauty of Nature to the very bottom is impossible due to its inexhaustibility. Moreover, to know Nature with the mind, as scientists are trying now, and in the past, it is impossible to do this.
The closest to the knowledge of Nature are artists (brushes, words), composers and other representatives of Bohemia, who strive to comprehend Nature with the feelings of the Soul. And, having felt and conveyed with the instruments of our world, these wonders of Nature in the form of casts from it, more or less plausible copies, allow us to admire the beauty of Natural phenomena even after these wonderful moments, and at any time. This is why the Nature of the Red Sea with eternal summer is valuable to me, at a time when in Ukraine, and indeed in the entire European zone, living Nature goes into a lethargic sleep. And here, on the Red Sea, even in January, at the height of winter, I can make sketches from nature in the form of essays and provide them to the reader so that he, like me, can feel and admire this beauty. But this is my global goal, and in order to achieve it, it is necessary to make more than one hundred test sketches. And this essay on Nature is one of the attempts to do so.
Mornings in E g and p t e
Early morning in Sharm El Sheikh
Early morning. It's still an hour and a half before dawn. I was awakened by the mullah's drawling voice, calling on Muslims to perform the morning prayer. I quickly dressed lightly and jumped out onto the terrace of the third floor to really feel all the delights of a resort winter morning in Sinai.
Early morning crossed out all the fears of the night. Summer freshness, as it should be, for the early morning, a barely caught fresh breeze caresses the long palm leaves, tugging at their feathers ...
The mullah continued to sing his song. On a quiet pre-dawn morning, his voice was clear with distinct sounds, floating from the mosque and far beyond Sharm El Sheikh. The night windbreaker subsided, retired to its underworld, leaving instead of itself a light breeze, barely felt by open areas of the body. The windmill disappeared, and where did all the hatred and panic fear of the furious elements go! The morning calm has arrived.
Only the full moon, as before, imperturbably hung in the sky like a bright matte dime and was also framed by a matte glow. But no longer overhead, as in the dead of night, but closer to the western part of the sky. She slowly, imperceptibly to the eyes, but crawled over the horizon line, as if feeling the arrival of the luminary-Sun in this world - the daytime owner. There was still an hour left before dawn. And the sky was still dark with occasional clouds in it and an even rarer gleam of stars. Like fading fragments from these stars on Earth, among the hotel buildings, trees and bushes, as well as along the streets and roads, they gleamed, and some even flickered to the beat of some music inaudible to the human ear, the lights of human hands - numerous lighting lamps. Only one feature of the current period of winter Sharm El Sheikh: each hotel was lit differently.
These are holiday-makers, having finished the prescribed period of rest, hurried to their buses to go to the Airport and further to their frosty and winter country. Therefore, despite the warm morning, they were dressed in winter. In different parts of the resort town, the engines of buses of various travel companies rustled: they must collect it to take ex-tourists to the Airport.
An Arab in an Arafat coat clicked his heels on the paving slabs, after which, as if by magic, the spotlights of the night lighting of the hotel territory went out. And after that, the palm trees turned from bright green into dull night ghosts. And the territory of the hotel, for half an hour before dawn, fell into darkness. But then the sky in the east began to grow stronger and brighter. And at the very horizon - a wide strip becomes pink. And the plants on the territory of the hotel began to acquire their natural color and shape.
It differed from the moon only in size and speed of entry into this world. As the sun rose, it turned from a bluish segment into an increasingly yellow disk. And the yellowness from it passed to the entire space of the sky above it. Until the Sun completely emerged from this muddy-dirty barrier, uneven horizontal stripes were visible on its body - condensations from the remnants of this barrier. But no terrestrial barriers interfered with the powerful movement of the Sun. And by seven o'clock it was already hanging quite high above the horizon in the form of a bright yellow disk and continued to move towards its zenith without delay. Say what you like, but the Sun, it turns out, loves glory, showing off at its zenith, so that everyone on Earth shows honor and respect for it. But it well deserves it!
By eight in the morning, the Sun had already turned into a hot, dazzling yellow disk, which is impossible to look at without protective glasses.
And the heat exuding them caressed and pleasantly warmed the exposed parts of the body. Because today, after two days of cold weather, people were still walking around, almost in fur coats, in which they boarded a plane in Kiev "Borispol" in order to move in a few hours, as if at the behest of a pike, into the hot African eternal summer. And these long two days of autumn cold with squally wind were an exception to the rule. And the beginning hot day was a confirmation of this ...
And I didn’t want to remember Kyiv with its frosts, snowstorms, as sometimes happens in January, up to a meter or more in snowdrifts. After all, there was very little left to be in the fairy tale of the African summer. And in February, in our opinion, each of us still has to experience the fierceness of winter. Moreover, the authorities promised in January the complete depletion of gas reserves. And how are they going to heat our homes?
So, in the remaining few days of the summer bestowed on us personally, we will listen with particular greed to the heat of the resort summer on the Sinai Peninsula and, just as camels accumulate food and water in their humps, we will also strive to accumulate this warmth in ourselves, at least in our memories. Even so, it will still be easier to survive the rest, but the most severe, period of the Ukrainian winter.
W y m e M e r e v Sh arm – El – Sheikh
The sea today, just like yesterday, is noisy. He also gives his voice in the surf, as in the Crimea. But what the Sea wants to convey through this noise remains a great mystery to me, a mystery of mysteries that I have not been able to unravel for decades. And the Sea is in no hurry to let me in on its secrets.
The only explanation for the current noise of the surf, in comparison with its quiet, peaceful state in July-August last year, which I observed here, in Egypt, is the indignation of the sea against the cooling of water and air, a protest against Nature. And this anger is clearly evident in his voice. Moreover, this morning there was a storm of several balls. It was so angry and angry that it could kill one of the vacationers. Therefore, a red flag was hung on the rescue bridge on the pontoon: “Swimming is prohibited! » But even after lunch, no one swam: the water stirred up by the storm was cool. But I still, just before leaving the beach, managed to communicate with the Sea for several minutes - directly, at a distance and at arm's length.
Such closeness is fascinating, because, in addition to the visual perception of the Sea, you also hear its voice of the sea surf, breathe its smells and subconsciously perceive many other, yet unknown to us, sense organs of the Soul. But the main thing is that at such closeness, the Sea takes possession of everything you do, not giving a chance to extraneous phenomena and objects to distract you from yourself. And what did I see, hear, feel? - Words cannot describe: our language seems to be painfully miserable. Apart from consciousness, everything passed directly into my Soul and brought it unusual grace and benefit… And I felt this pacifying grace as I climbed the steps to the high bank to go to my hotel. And the state was such, as if I had visited the cathedral, cleansed myself of filth and filled with spiritual grace ...
Tidal bore
Today, the Sea, despite its internal problems of adjusting to the upcoming storm, nevertheless turned out to be generous and revealed some of its secrets. At first glance, this may seem to be the result of the desire of my inquisitive mind to link a number of phenomena into one whole, in accordance with the laws of physics already known to me from school. But this is not so, since the Sea is the largest and most ancient element of water on Earth and therefore is endowed with the functions of a master on Earth. And not only life. And so the owner himself decides what of his secrets to reveal to Man, and what to hide behind seven locks. After all, many secrets of Nature determine the life of Nature itself, the disclosure of which may endanger the existence of Nature itself ...
Watching the waves, I concluded that nothing appears from nowhere and does not disappear without a trace; everything has a beginning and an end, and everything is explained by the physical laws of our material world.
But this is on condition that this or that phenomenon does not go beyond the limits of our world ...And after such an explanation, I calmed down and continued to observe the wave running ashore, as if it were a living creature that could move, then carry out its transformations as form as well as content. At the end of its influx on the shore, the wave weakens several times, not because it loses strength, having spent all the energy to overcome this short distance inland, but because it almost completely disappears. But not without a trace. Most of the water from this wave seeps into the sand of the coastal strip! And this is especially clearly visible not from the front, but from the side, when the water, almost gurgling, goes into the sand. And only a very small part of it goes into the sea along the sand surface already saturated with moisture, when the sand can no longer accept it.
And since the coast is always above sea level, then under the force of gravity, the water from the sand, having passed as if through a filter, returns back to the sea, already purified. It is the latter that is the main and significant phenomenon for the Sea. With the help of the sea surf, the Sea is self-purifying! And the Sea prepares a filter for this for itself, throwing a few grains of sand from its bottom ashore with each wave for hundreds of thousands of years, before breaking the coastal stones into grains of sand with its wave.
This is the picture I saw today, when I, immersed in the problems of the Sea and the sea surf, tried to unravel one of the mysteries of the Sea. And how many more similar and more frank mysteries does the Sea hide? “God only knows. And will I be worthy of the Sea revealing at least one more of its secrets to me?
wave voice
I'm at the water's edge.
The sea, trying to either play with me, threw one wave after another ashore, trying to get me and refresh me with its healing moisture. And, not getting it, it rustled with its displeased voice of the sea surf. I bare my legs and walk towards the wave, and it happily splashes them periodically. And it seems to me that she rejoices, having reached her goal. It's nice to feel her light tickle ...
I draw in the breath of the Sea with my nose to my full chest, its smells, which, in the form of a thick invisible veil, roll from the surface of the sea onto land and, stopping at a sheer cliff, are concentrated here, on the narrow edge of the coast. That is why, for several hours, lying there, higher up on the beach, I did not smell the sea - the way I feel it here, at the very water. And here the smell of the Sea is so strong that it covers all other smells, including the smells of human civilization. The smell of the sea, penetrating into me, slightly fogs my consciousness and makes me dizzy ...
But not only smells affect me the Sea and take possession of me. Its more distinct manifestation is in the sounds of the sea surf, which I perceive as the voice of the Sea. Listening to the voice of the Sea, but not yet trying to penetrate its content, I set out to determine what components the voice of the Sea consists of. Watching the waves periodically rushing ashore, I noticed that the so-called surf noise arises as a dispute between one wave rolling on the shore and another wave, already extinguished in its strength and, it seemed, giving up in its desire to jump out as far as possible on the shore. shore to find out: what is going on there, outside the sea element? And the oncoming strong wave, as it were, says to the tired wave: “Don't interfere!
Let me try the happiness of being chosen among the waves and reach the highest limit in the knowledge of the coastal world unknown to us ”...But, after 3-5 seconds of her intense desire, she dries up and, like a jellyfish, sluggishly and lazily spreads along the coast, seeps through the grains of sand into the underground channels of return to the Sea, and those who did not have time, as a weakened and dried up wave, return back to the Sea, towards a new strong wave. And, as before, when they meet, there is a characteristic sound of the surf. And so after 5-7 seconds everything repeats again ...
It seems that the wave is strong as long as it is inextricably linked with the Sea. You can watch how intensely and for a long time the wave rolls its crests there, far from the shore. I heard this force behind me when I was swimming far from the shore: some kind of noise and a loud splash, and I saw a lot of air bubbles in that place when I looked back. At that moment I thought: “Shark!
Thank God, it was just a splash of a wave…
But, breaking away from the Sea and jumping ashore, the wave loses its strength, as it breaks its connection with the Sea, and therefore, as such, disappears, turning into streams of water. And in this I see the enormous power of the Sea, which flows into everyone who is with her and in her. And leaves the one who leaves her element for good. I can imagine what efforts it took to hold on and not die for the first living organisms that left the sea element in ancient times and crawled out onto the still warm land, not cooled down from volcanic magma. Perhaps that is why every living organism on Earth today has such a force of life!
I absorbed this power of the Sea last summer, relaxing in Hurghada. Then the sea temperature allowed me to stay in the water for several hours, which I did. At the same time, my body entered into harmony with the sea element, I felt my unity with it. At the same time, my body, every organ and every cell of it healed.
Here, under the protection of the rock and under the hot Sun (which is about two o'clock in the afternoon), one could even decently get burned while lying on the mattresses taken from the wooden sun loungers up there. So few of those who decided to go to the beach in such a breeze did. But I decided to continue my earlier experiments of possible rapprochement with the Sea: I sat on a boulder at the very edge of the water, and therefore my legs were periodically overwhelmed by the waves. I was in close proximity to the sea and felt it with all my senses: tactilely - with bare legs, when the wave periodically ran up and tickled them, with my ears I heard the sound of the surf, with my eyes I contemplated the sea in breadth, into the distance and even deeper. Only I did not hear the smell of the sea as I expected: the wind carried all the smells into the sea - there, beyond the horizon. I felt the sea as I had hundreds of times before, and this incident brought nothing new.
If I describe what I have now seen, heard and tangible, then it will be cloyingly banal and uninteresting. My attempts to perceive the Sea with the feelings of the soul did not give a positive result. Apparently, the Sea was not in the mood to communicate with me today. He had more important problems, in connection with the impending cataclysms in Nature. After all, tomorrow, and maybe even tonight, there will be a real storm with huge and accelerated movements of air masses, pressure drops, temperatures, etc. And the life of the Sea and all its inhabitants is directly related to such changes in the atmosphere. It is possible that there may be losses. Therefore, for the Sea and its inhabitants, any cataclysm in Nature is a test of strength, a test of the truth of the place occupied in this life, and, in scientific terminology, a process of natural selection.
At such moments in Nature, the best indicators of vitality are developed and consolidated. And I, with my obsessive desire for communication, was clearly out of place and out of time. But the fact that I felt and understood the problems of the Sea already said that I was on the right track.
windmill
As the weather forecast promised, since January 19, when Epiphany frosts are cracking in Ukraine, here in Sharm El-Sheikh, from nowhere the wind has risen so strong that it’s just right, like some kind of marmot, to hide deep in a mink and not point your nose at the light of day. I have not seen such a wind since my stay in Alushta and life in a wooden house. But then a strong wind, which seemed to tear the roof of my house to shreds, was also accompanied by a heavy downpour and a thunderstorm. And it seemed even scarier. Now I am in a stone hotel and I am “not afraid of a gray wolf” in the guise of a windmill.
But, at the same time, behind this stone armor, I do not feel all the “charm” of the storm, which is so necessary for me in order to describe it with maximum authenticity and brilliance. And so I was forced to go out into the street, towards the elements.
The wind of considerable strength covered not only the territory of the hotel, where my eyes reached, but the whole of Sharm el-Sheikh and, in all likelihood, the entire Sinai Peninsula. It was Nature that evened out the pressure imbalance between Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. And, judging by the direction of the wind from west to east, the increased pressure front was over Africa. Something like a pipe was formed, through which air was intensively chasing. And somewhere in the middle of this pipe was our hotel "Poinciana Sharm resort" and I was in it.
The tallest trees on the territory of the hotel - palm trees - were the first to perceive the gusts of wind. Amazing plants in terms of wind resistance and optimal windage.
Long palm leaves were in the form of a fan only at the top. The lower ones, long since shrunken and fallen off, or, more often, neatly cut, formed a thick trunk, which took the main load from the wind. But it only wobbled a little. Our trees in Ukraine with a wide crown, from such winds, would have been uprooted long ago and would lie on the ground. And the palm trees stood imperturbably, in different directions, waving their panicles-leaves at their very top. The flexible stalks of palm leaves themselves coped with gusts of wind, without in the least puzzling the trunk from which they fed and through which the sun's gifts processed by the chlorophyll of the leaves came to the roots. And these ten long leaves, open wide with a diameter of six meters, were enough to provide the plant with everything necessary with their help.
Much lower than the palms are low-growing trees and bushes with flexible branches and translucent crowns, for which the wind, even of great strength, is not terrible. They sway in all directions and only rustle the leaves under his impulses.
And again the wind...
N-th day of my rest. I don't remember what the number is, but it doesn't matter, and it's so nice. That I am in the South, but in such a South, where it is warm in winter, but not hot. But, most importantly, the Sea, even this winter, is always warm and the water temperature in it does not fall below +24? S. And the air, how will it turn out: can it go down to +18? S. Everything depends on the wind and the Sun. By the way, the sun is like the moon. Naturally, I was not there, but according to the stories of eyewitnesses and theorists, the temperature difference in the sun is +60? C and in the shade -60? C, what is 120? WITH! But in Egypt, everything is simpler: the air temperature is mainly determined not by the Sun, but by the wind. And for four days the wind of increased strength has been blowing.
And, despite the hot Sun, the wind feels cold, and you freeze wildly, especially when you get out of the water.
Wind
Nine o'clock in the morning. Slight intermittent wind. But the sea is noisy with a continuous continuous rumble with pronounced periodic impacts of waves in shallow water near the shore. And that continuous sound of the sea comes from a distance beyond the reach of the eye and rolls at me from all the latitude of the sea: from the island of Tiran and beyond the cape of the peninsula, from the Gulf of Aqaba to the open Red Sea. What can be compared to the continuous sound of the sea? And with the noise of rain, and with the intense noise of a downpour, and with the noise of oak forests, as well as with the noise of many tens, if not hundreds of car tires on wet asphalt. But this analogy is only a rough comparison.
But the wind in the winter on the Red Sea is unusual.
He always, even in hot weather, on his wings brings cold, very noticeable to any vacationer, makes him wrap himself in beach towels or, even worse, put on warm sweaters. I noticed that it is not the air that warms the holiday-makers in Egypt in winter, but only the only sun: while you are in the sun, you are thrilled with bliss and you can even get burned from its excess. And as soon as a cloud comes up or a breeze blows, "goosebumps" instantly appear and an unpleasant cold begins to pierce the body to the very bones.
We have such a stubborn wind during the "Jewish groups", usually in March - three weeks before Easter. But only with the scent of spring. And I most clearly felt this aroma in Berdyansk on the shores of the Sea of Azov, when after winter it carried spring and therefore I heard the smell of spring in it. And here, in Sharm El Sheikh, the wind does not carry such obvious smells: what can be smells in the desert, except for the smells of sand.
It's time for me to write my story "The Old Man and the Wind. " And it will, as a first approximation, look like this:
January 29.2016. Friday
The Old Man and the Sea Wind
Late morning. I, along with other tourists, on the beach. The gentle African sun is already high and well warms our European bodies, despite the inertia of our thinking and the freshness in memory of the severity of Ukrainian January frosts of twenty-five degrees Celsius. And here, in the very south of the Sinai Peninsula, the sun is very hot and the air temperature is the same twenty-five degrees Celsius, only with a plus. A slight difference in the sign, but what comfort for the body and Soul...
But comfort usually does not last long.
Soon, out of nowhere, a strong wind swept across the entire coast of the Red Sea.
He rumbled with the poorly reinforced floorboards of the lifeguard’s observation tower above my head, began to rip mattresses off the sun loungers and carry them all over the beach, raise handfuls of sand with his palms and pour them into the eyes of the vacationers ...Where and who let out such an evil? No one could answer this question...
I will be 63 this year. Why am I not an Old Man? And therefore I write in the first person and give myself and my impressions of my struggle with the Wind as with the elements, setting out everything as it was from fresh memory and first hand. Moreover, I write down everything that happens in Nature, what the Wind creates and what I feel, and how I oppose myself to all this, from nature, right there, as they say, “on the spot”.
I do not argue, the Sea and the Ocean are a much more severe element than the Wind, and with them I would hardly have passed the test and won, as the Old Man won in E. Hemingway's story “The Old Man and the Sea”. But here I still have a chance. But it's only at first glance...
I am lying on the beach under the hot southern sun (even though the calendar says January). This circumstance already presupposes comfort and pleasure for the body and modest joy for the Soul. If there was no strong Wind, more precisely, Vetrugana. And this strong windmill, as they say, spoils all the raspberries. And the first confidence in an easy victory over the elements soon quickly disappears somewhere. In combination with a cold wind (and where did it absorb so much cold from, because it blows from Africa, almost from the equator? ), the Sun turns into a bright fake disk above your head, at its zenith, which, like the night Moon, shines, but not warm. Yes, I note, the Sun has already given up its main positions in front of the powerful element of the Wind. On the one hand, this inspires some fear of the power of the Wind element, on the other hand, the desire for rivalry and struggle, to win! This is the sweet word "Victory". Tell me, what man does not dream of Victory?
Yes, the whole essence of it is laid down by Mother Nature herself in this word. Without her, he is nothing! And, fueled by the desire to enter my natural state of a wrestler and win, I already internally set myself up for a long and difficult struggle. After all, such a unique case was given to me by Fate! ..
I'm lying on the edge. In front of me is the sea, so black that it seems that more than one hundred tankers of oil were poured into it and washed away so as not to bear any responsibility for it. And only frequent white crests of waves are visible on its surface - this is in order to show an even greater blackness of the sea against this contrast of white and black. And I suddenly thought: “After all, my distant ancestors called the Black Sea black in vain: they probably did not see the Red Sea under the pressure of a strong Vetrugan, as I see it like that. They would definitely change their minds in favor of the Red Sea, calling it the "Black" ...
And then I caught myself on one of my unethical behavior in relation to the Wind: I address him in the third person: “he”, “him”, etc. Who will like it? And I decided to correct myself...And enter into a dialogue with him...I do not want such a strong natural element as the Wind to be my Enemy. I'm not going to declare war on the Wind - a man is too weak for this, although for the most part he magnifies himself exorbitantly, take, for example, his self-styled "Crown of Nature". Ugh, on him! What kind of crown are you if you are the executioner of Nature! And in general, I am surprised how long you, a person, still exist in this Nature, and indeed in this World, when you are a foreign body in them! Only, perhaps, because all your Evil that you do in this world is compensated by a small number of righteous people in your midst who do great Good...
And now I want to stand before the elements of the Wind on the shores of the Red Sea, not as an enemy to the Wind, but as a friend to it.
Moreover, try, if possible, to become a part of this element. I know that in our material world it is impossible, in contrast to the world of animate phenomena of Nature. And therefore, in order to show my predisposition to the Wind, I begin a monologue, hoping for a dialogue with him.
Monologue with the Wind.
"Wind. Mighty wind!
I came to visit you on the seaside to admire you in all your strength and your greatness! For this I respect you, I bow before you.
Wind, I'm trying to breathe you. I catch your breath and fill my chest with it in all its breadth and depth. To the very bottom. Each alveoli of my lungs enriches my blood with you and it carries you throughout my body, to every cell of my body. You, the Wind, are all in me, and therefore I am with you as one whole ...
You, the Wind, are the great element of Nature, and in vain you are underestimated by your brothers and sisters - other elements and phenomena - the inhabitants of Nature, including humans.
And that is why you are sometimes angry and in your rage you do exorbitant Evil. I'm not trying to be your friend: I'm too small, weak and miserable in my essence to become friends with you on an equal footing. And I will not refuse your patronage, if it is your will.
For myself, I want to find out: where does Evil come from in Nature, in its essence, woven from absolute Good. Including yours, Wind. Maybe you are so angry and angry because you are not understood? I would also be angry for this with the whole World, if not more ...But maybe you show your strength, beauty and power in order to attract attention to yourself and establish yourself in Nature at a worthy level. If this were not the case, who would pay attention to you, would know that you exist at all? Is it just me, who knew you still on the Black Sea, gentle and quiet, carrying on its light wings the aroma of mountain herbs and the smells of the Sea ...And how much then did I devote my poems and aphorisms to you? ..
It is always better to be a friend than an enemy.
I know and am friendly with your, Wind, real friends: with the Sky, under which you live and walk freely - the way you want. And it forgives all your pranks. The role of Heaven in your life, according to the concepts of our human life, is “protection”. A true friend to you is the Earth and its entire surface, with lakes, seas and oceans. After all, they, together with the Sun, give birth to you the way you are: overheating in one place and undercooling in another create favorable conditions for your birth - the pressure difference. And then you appear with your good mission - you eliminate the imbalance in this world. And that on the way you created something, so these are trifles, in comparison with the great work that you do in Nature. This explanation is based on physics, that is, a very primitive interpretation, so that a person understands the essence.
The real magic of your birth is incomprehensible to a person, due to the inferiority of his mind and the underdevelopment of his feelings of the Soul, oppressed by the power of the mind. If the strength of the Soul's feelings prevailed over the strength of the mind, a person would explain all the phenomena in the World and in Nature in a completely different way. And I hope that you, the Wind, as my mentor and teacher, will help me to do this. I know that you, the Wind, will demand from me devotion and fidelity to you, and also establish a taboo on the subtleties of our relationship. And all because our common mother with you - Nature has established between itself, its constituent parts - the phenomena to which you, the Wind, and man belong - an insurmountable border so that this upstart is a man (the hand does not rise to write it with a capital letter ) did not blow up and did not drag himself along with all of Nature, and even our entire World, - to the Underworld !! ! »
I sent my verbal, or rather, mental message to the Wind and waited for an answer.
And this time the sea began to ebb. And the sea, leaving the land with the wind as a gift of a hundred meters of rocky area with shallow water, went beyond the sheer cliff of corals, into its bottomless depth - to where, immediately behind the coral reef, there is a cliff tens of meters deep. And from there he makes his claims to the wind. The characteristic voice of the oncoming wave is no longer heard, but continuous noise is heard. And this noise seems to me like a many-voiced choir of many thousands of particles of the sea. What are they singing about, or maybe arguing, not listening to each other, but only to themselves? Hard to say.
Resolving a dispute with the elements
And the Wind, having tamed the sea, returned to the shore. He saw me, his old acquaintance, with whom he did not finish the argument: who wins? The element of man or man the element? And he began to circle around me, wanting to continue the interrupted debate. The friendship that I proposed in a mental message, in all likelihood, he rejected ...or left for later.
I, like a baby, quietly snoring in my towel-cocoon, soon blissfully and even smiling, fell asleep to the monotonous sound of the sea and the howling of the Wind, no longer terrible for me.
I don’t remember what I dreamed about, but I assume that the Victory over Vetrugan. It couldn't be otherwise. And he woke up late, when there was no one on the beach, and the Arab beach worker Mohammed clicked folding wooden deck chairs, prepared them for the night and in the morning, so that the morning beachgoers could use them comfortably. And the Wind continued to walk along the deserted beach, but having already significantly extinguished its impudence and desire to be a dictator in this life ...He did not touch me: he knew that in our dispute "Who is whom" I won.
Women
Metamorphoses of a man at a resort
Here, at the resort, in the conditions of a small Paradise, people are an order of magnitude kinder. Because many problems that usually cause negativity disappear.
At the same time, they rejoice at their exclusivity and that they can afford such southern exoticism in the middle of winter. Although, to be honest, there are practically no single women at the winter resort. If such appear, then, most often, with girlfriends. All other women are with husbands, lovers or friends. And all because it is much more difficult for a woman to raise money for a tourist trip than for a man. This is our "gender" policy...
Here in the resort of Sharm El Sheikh, I identified several (which I managed in such a short period of time) types of women. Here they are:
mother woman
What mother would not want to take her child to the sea? And they do, if the opportunity arises. I watched with tenderness how a mother spoon-feeds a one-year-old child in a hotel restaurant. And he uncontrollably shouts at the whole restaurant, demanding this or that edible dish. And until you give it to him, he will not calm down.
Having fed her young child to the full, until belching and reaching a relaxed half-asleep state (the process of digestion also requires the mobilization of considerable internal forces), only then the mother herself begins to eat ...No less touching picture of a mother with a child playing in the sand on the shore by the sea . But that's not what this is about.
It is much more interesting to watch a woman-mother taking care of her husband like a child (? ! ) You rarely see this in everyday life and in a full-length version, but here at the resort it is quite a common occurrence. Here is an example of a real case:
In our company there was also a woman from Dnepropetrovsk, who took care of her husband for all seven days of her vacation, like a child. She already has two adult sons who live their own lives and do not need maternal care.
But the desire to be a mother in terms of upbringing and direct supervision of every step of her ward has remained, like a not passing atavism. What’s more, my husband loved it. Moreover, over time it became his vital need. Especially during periods of frequent drinking. And at the resort in the "All inclusive" system, everything contributes to this: spirits - at least five types, as well as wine and beer. The latter, however, in limited quantities, and then in small plastic cups - a lot to be completely drunk, you can’t drink! But with the help of vodka, gin or any similar drink, it is easy to achieve, provided, of course, that the bartender does not dilute them.
So, our friend got used to the bar with a frequency greater than he breathed, and with the same need.
And the Arab bartender Mahmud with a company of his fellow tribesmen gladly poured him every time, as soon as our Sasha (that was his name) expressed a desire to drink, moreover, without drinking, and without eating anything but a cigarette. And so on up to several dozen times. They poured him alcohol and had fun, watching how this process goes: from sober to drunk. In addition, the exorbitant norms of one-time consumption of alcohol were supported by a pack of cigarettes as a gift to the bartender Mahmud. When this process brought Sasha to condition, his wife Olga stepped into her role as a caring mother ...We don’t discuss the details, and they are so obvious. But the equanimity and confidence of Sasha in his rightness, delighted me. And so it was every day. If the guardianship of the wife was weakened, thanks to the magic word from Sasha's lips: “I'm dying! ”, everything was restored with renewed vigor and zeal.
But, according to our mutual friend Yura, who, by the way, played an important role here, Sasha’s trick was more like blackmail ...
To our advice from the outside: “Drop it! ”, was accompanied by the answer: “Yes, it’s a pity, a person will die. ” Having learned later, during the period of revelations, the true cause of Sasha's binges, I, as if anticipating, expressed my opinion to Olga that she was to blame for this ...The question: "Where is the way out? " - remained open ...
Femme fatale
Here in Sharm el-Sheikh I happened to meet another type of woman - Larisa from Odessa - a femme fatale.
Widow for six years, followed by three repetitions. And each time he receives a large inheritance. But why she, with such legacies, is now resting in such a mediocre hotel as the Poinciana Sharm Resort, remains a mystery to me. It is possible that the Odessa woman in our friendly company has exhausted all means and is now in search of a fourth contender for her hand and heart.
About the latter, including her desire, Larisa spoke openly to her friends. And the fact that the applicant is also on the tragic conclusion of the pathologist, Larisa for some reason is silent.
The women of our company at the same age as Larisa were surprised by her beauty and youth in appearance. To their direct question about this, the standard answer followed: “I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I lead a healthy lifestyle. ” But to look like that, it was clearly not enough! And at the same moment, like a flash, the thought arose in me: “But isn’t our Odessa witch Larisa? » After all, there are Kyiv witches, there are also Zhytomyr ones, and why shouldn’t there be Odessa witches? And the vacant place for Larisa is quite suitable for all her indicators. Only one thing is embarrassing: Larisa laid eyes on Yura from our own company, to which Olya reacted violently. Something unkind feels her mother's heart. Or for some other reason...
Olya from Odessa
Late evening. The bar is already closed.
And therefore, in order to soften the upcoming meeting with a frosty and slushy winter in our homeland in a few hours, we gave ourselves over to the power of humor. Moreover, the inhabitants of Odessa are easy-going in this matter. And the beautiful Larisa set the tone for this, to whom I presented a volume of my resort sayings the day before. They most of all concerned the woman at the resort. Olga read them together with Larisa and both burst into laughter, which could not attract the attention of Olga's husband Alexander. By the way, in my aphorisms on the resort theme, husbands do not always look in the ideal perspective (they may someday beat me for this). In my opinion, a husband, especially at a resort, should carefully follow every movement of his wife, and even the movement of her Soul. Indeed, in the resort, unlike ordinary life, there are so many temptations!
Despite the non-working bar (according to the schedule, for some reason it worked until 21-30, and not until 23-00, as everywhere else), we sat at the bar for several hours, not noticing the time. My (according to my new acquaintances) funny aphorisms were perceived at the rally and caused a strong reaction. And my comments, regarding the specific conditions in which they were created, enhanced the effect ...
And then I noticed that Olya, the wife of Alexander, whom I am almost twice as old as, began to look at me very mysteriously, putting her beautiful curly head on the bar and smiling mysteriously. She was serious. At the same time, when her husband was tearing his stomach from another aphorism that Larisa was reading ...
And I remembered the essay “The Aesop Effect” I recently wrote here in Sharm El Sheikh and the recommendation that my husband was immediately written down to be attentive to any movement of his wife at the resort and, above all, the movement of her soul ...
But in general, a wife without attention is someone else's wife.
But the Odessans still flew away ...
CREATIVITY IN THE RESORT
Moment of creativity
I am the last days on the Red Sea. Two or three more days of heavenly life - and I will again plunge into the European winter of the "fierce" month. In Africa there are no such names even during the winter months. In particular, February in Egypt is called "Sabbath" and is not at all the same interpretation as in Ukraine. The last days of my winter summer ...Some kind of pun turned out. And I, as if for the last time before a long time period, try to breathe in, absorb all the charm of this unusual summer in the middle of winter with every cell of my physical body, every convolution of the fibers of my soul. And I write. I write non-stop and without any restrictions - everything that will gush over me in addition to my consciousness and will. I hasten to write what appeared for a moment and will never visit me again. And I will lose him forever. When else will this happen again?
This picture was prepared for me even before my birth and it is called “Destiny”. The task of my life is to lay out puzzles according to a pre-prepared picture. And as soon as I put the last puzzle into the matrix, my life will end ...
Service at the resort
"Hour of the Wolf" in Egypt
11 o'clock cheers. As it was in the Soviet Union and went from Moscow, the hour of the Wolf. I want to remind those who did not live in Moscow at that time, and indeed under the Soviet Union, alcohol was sold in those days starting at 11 am. And why is this the hour of the Wolf - this is because on the clock of the puppet theater building of S. Obraztsov in Moscow, next to the number "11" on the clock face, a figure of the Wolf was depicted. And people who drink and suffer often differ in originality of thinking and therefore very successfully connected these two events ...So it was customary to call this hour, a fixed hour for all drinkers in the USSR, the name of the beast - the Wolf.
This is partly because it was cheap and there was such a disgusting smell after it ...Now beer has remained like beer, with the same taste, color and smell, but with preservatives that guarantee its suitability for six months (previously it was 2-3 days - and already was considered stale, it was possible to pour it out), much more expensive and, thanks to advertising, prestigious, especially among young people. Beer production has become very profitable. Business is business.
Beer here in Egypt, other than water, is more or less a real drink with minimal chemicals. And, most importantly, they are opened in glass bottles and in front of you. In my opinion, strong alcoholic drinks in Egypt are made on the basis of alcohol from oil (fortunately, there is no shortage of oil here and nearby in the countries of the Middle East). Then they are flavored and painted over in the desired color, in accordance with the name on the bottle label (also plastic).
Vodka in Russia is not much better, as it is made from the material abundant in this country - “driven from sawdust”. (Remember, Vysotsky: “If vodka was not driven from sawdust, what would we have from five bottles? ”). Ukraine has a problem with oil and forests. Russia raises prices for oil, despite the fall in the world barrel, and the forests in the Carpathians - the cat cried: almost everything was cut down by enterprising businessmen when protecting corrupt officials and embezzlers in local and higher echelons of power). But on the other hand, there is a lot of wheat, and therefore alcohol is made from grain - that is why Ukrainian vodka is famous all over the world! Even here, in Egypt, at every step you hear: "Chenzh ... , I will buy Ukrainian vodka. " I confess, I myself am a sinner; during a previous trip to Sharm el-Sheikh, instead of having a drink with friends, he exchanged one of the two bottles of vodka put at customs for a bucket of strawberries at the local market.
An interesting detail: at the end of this barter, which is quite common for Egypt, the Egyptian immediately, in front of me, opened the bottle and checked its content for taste: is it water? And what does the ban on the Koran have to do with it, when business demands to be careful and prudent in such transactions...Another time I changed a bottle of vodka with a small surcharge for a kilo of hibiscus tea...
"All inclusive" in the restaurant "Poinciana Sharm Resort"
Due to the reduction in the flow of tourists from Russia, Great Britain, Germany and other countries of Western Europe, the service climate in hotel restaurants, including the Poinciana Sharm Resort, has also changed. And I especially clearly felt this, who, two or three months before the start of the crisis, was in two hotels in Sharm El Sheikh and Hurghada of the 3 * and 4 * categories, and therefore there is something to compare with.
The range of dishes has been reduced compared to last year.
And so that their number remains the same, the cheapest product, for example, cabbage, is laid out in five different forms: cut into strips, cubes, rings, lengthwise and across. Sometimes you wonder at the skill of the cook: how skillful his hands are! I can imagine how much of this cabbage is thrown away after some of these salads are served the next day under the guise of "fried vegetables"! But it’s not a pity to throw it away - after all, a cheap product, it’s not cheaper. But from the assortment of dishes on the display flickers in the eyes.
But the problem is with meat. This is one of the most expensive products in Egypt (but not chicken, which is grown, as elsewhere, on biostimulants). But even here the hotel administration found a way out: they put 2-3 small pieces per plate on the only meat dish of the cook with a limited distribution. Begging for another piece is a whole problem, and it’s a shame: you sink to the level of a begging beggar in an underpass.
Like any of our men, I like to have a good snack after 3-5 glasses of strong at 35-40? , mind you, not divorced "Sambuca" (or "Yozo") - the restaurant is not a bar, they do not breed here! And I think meat is the best snack. Who will argue with me? Moreover, I am a descendant of the Zaporizhzhya Cossacks, who loved to eat so heartily that after dinner they fell dead into the penates of the god of sleep, Morphius, and gave all of themselves to his power. Among the Arabs, the god Morphine appears in a completely different role ...
But, apparently, it is a novelty for the Arabs to drink so much (they, Muslims, have a ban on alcohol) and eat so much. I'm afraid they will soon, to our great chagrin, abandon the "All inclusive" system and switch, as in the Emirates, to one breakfast.
But back to our "rams".
I finally realized that this Arab was trained with one Russian phrase so that he would run around the restaurant and, poking his finger into the plate, would say to everyone who took the second portion: “Not in the bag! »
After I realized this, what could I do? Crack this insolent fellow on his protruding ears? So I wasn't drunk enough. Start proving that I don't even have a bag? I considered below my dignity. And I decided to do the opposite: to the surprise of the bartender, I ordered three more glasses of Ouzo, and, despite the persecution of the importunate Arab, and not paying attention to his chirping, I ate this drink with three more servings of meat. And, leaving the restaurant, he turned his pockets inside out ...What was thought, at the same time, the Arab and whether he was ashamed, I was no longer interested. I began to understand how different people we are all ...And I ceased to be more surprised ...
Criticism of negative hotel reviews
And where did your conscience go to scold the hotel like that? Why should the hotel suffer from your negative criticism on the Internet, just because you have become poorer and cannot afford a more expensive hotel?
In connection with the foregoing, I suddenly “ripened” an aphorism: Hotels (as well as alcohol intake) should be taken according to the increasing category of stars. Then there will be no misunderstanding. After all, everyone knows that everything is known in comparison. For me, for example, the conditions of the Poinciana Sharm Resort hotel seemed very chic, compared to the living conditions in a bungalow (like a hermit's cell in the caves of the Kyiv Lavra - even the windows are like that! ) of the Al Samaka Beach hotel in Hurghada ...I'm not going to create a negative opinion about any hotel, because for someone who has previously been in a 2* or "starless" hotel, "Al Samaka Beach" will seem like Paradise ...So, in general: Blame not life is not cool, but myself unlucky.
All of the above are the blessings of the mortal body.
Only an animal can evaluate its external conditions of life in this way and choose the most acceptable for it. But a person often forgets that, unlike an animal, he also has a Soul. And this Soul requires appropriate living conditions for itself. And these conditions are not given as a gift from the outside, but a person often creates them himself. With regard to the conditions of recreation in the resorts of Egypt. Nature has given the initial conditions for the good of the soul: the warm Red Sea at any time of the year, corals and the underwater world diverse in terms of inhabitants ...and then, you yourself take it all and develop it, perceive it to the fullest extent, how deeply you are able to do it, and enjoy this. I do not suggest that everyone reach the highest limit of spiritual bliss, for example, by creating spiritual values on their own - this is the lot of those chosen by Fate.
It is enough to enjoy the already created Nature and do not forget to share it with others, on the same Internet.
At the same time, on the Internet, as a reflection of our everyday life, one “everyday life”, and so stated, as if everyone is trying to contrive in front of each other, to find and express as much negativity in the topic under discussion as possible. After reading these reviews, I don't want to go anywhere. Nevertheless, you go by choosing the hotel where there are the least negative reviews. Although there are spots on the Sun. And no hotel is without flaws. And negative reviews are a purely subjective opinion, and I was convinced of this in practice by choosing one of the hotels, about which there are dozens, if not hundreds of negative reviews on the Internet. The hotel turned out to be quite decent for such a price - $ 25 per day with a flight! Where else can you find such a "freebie"?
I thought about this phenomenon and asked myself the question: Maybe human nature is woven from a continuous negative and a person is looking for in any phenomenon what is dearest to him: negativity! "Birds of a feather flock together". I once expressed the following thought on this subject: “If you want to know a person: is he good or bad, ask him himself: What is his environment like? . . "But this is not worthy of a Man with a capital letter, in which the positive should prevail over the negative. And in the world around him, he must see what is closer and dearer to him - only the positive aspects of this or that phenomenon, admire, enjoy them, share these impressions with others, trying through his perception to transfer this joy of the Soul to everyone else. For example, here, on the Red Sea, what do those minor flaws in hotel rooms mean compared to the miracle that Nature gives us?
And also what the owners of this land - the Arabs - arranged in the form of beautifully designed pools, original design developments and landscape projects on the territory of the hotel? Yes, these “crumbs” of shortcomings are mouse fuss! And these dozens of authors of negative reviews are perceived by me as small people impoverished in Soul, who do not disdain to delve into dirty linen. Apparently, by their nature, they are not able to describe with the same inspiration how they savor minor flaws, the delights of the underwater world and living corals, the beauty of landscape design, the fact that here, in this area, in winter it is two to three degrees warmer than in other places. and the winds are much weaker ...Yes, a lot more positive and amazing can be found in simple things that bring joy to a holiday in this hotel! And then minor material and everyday shortcomings, in comparison with the truly great Spiritual, will turn into nothing, into dust.
And now I have already passed half the term of this good. If you have a link to life, as to the time of day, then the current time can be called noon. And it will stretch for another nine (! ) days - until my departure to Winter with a twenty-degree frost, snow drifts, and, which is not excluded, with a cold apartment, galloping inflation and rising prices for everything. And worst of all, war. And, the worst thing is that this “worst of all” has become familiar and ordinary for us. And you are resting here, on the Red Sea, together with your fellow countrymen and trying not to think about all this.
Nine days have passed on the Red Sea. How long and short at the same time. Long from the mass of new and unusual experiences that Nature itself has given you and developed by their Arab owners here, on a small plot of land between the mountains and the Red Sea.
It was impossible to walk through the restaurant...And that's why I was left hungry today...
R e l and g and i. Faith
Mirage of the Holy Places of Israel
Now I had the opportunity to relax in Sharm El Sheikh for almost three weeks and at a ridiculously low price - only $500! . After the passage of half of this period, when I knew almost everything in this place and enjoyed everything that these places give, the question arose of expanding my horizons. And, above all, a unique opportunity to visit Israel, the holy places associated with the earthly path of Jesus Christ. When else will there be such an opportunity? During my last stay in Sharm El Sheikh, I learned that people, in order to save money on a trip to Israel to holy places, specially take tourist tours to Sharm El Sheikh, from where you can organize a daily trip to Israel for just $60-$100.
And many people go, not only tourists, to see everything with their own eyes, but also those who suffer, with their own problems of the mortal body: incurable and incurable diseases, in the hope of recovery, but also in order to heal the Soul.
Applied to yourself. As such, threatening my life, the disease, thank God, I do not have. But my Soul, in the current period of my life, when I devote most of myself to creativity - this sublime action, approaching the Almighty, requires the right direction in its impulses. I thought about this last summer. And even, as it seemed to me, he was ripe for this: there was an irresistible desire to go to the Holy Places. But, alas, external forces did not let me join the shrine. And I flew away, instead of Sharm El Sheikh, for fourteen days to Hurghada, from where it is no longer possible to go to Israel, but to fly is problematic. And here I am again in Egypt and in the places of the most auspicious trip to Israel.
It seems that fate itself gives me such an opportunity - to visit the shrines. All conditions have been created for this… All that remains is to cultivate in oneself an irresistible desire to visit those places. My goal also contributes to this: to dedicate the rest of my life, as long as the Almighty gives me, to creativity, the discovery of new channels for comprehending the Truth, which is impossible without divine power. And I believe that through these holy places, as through a kind of channel, such a path can open for me. With my inner vision I am trying to penetrate this idea and check whether this is really so ...And I see that this is true: in my work I need the blessing of Jesus Christ himself, so that he will allow me to create what, perhaps, He did not have time to finish to people, when in his life on Earth he was a God-man and could communicate directly with people and convey the Truth to them through the Word of Truth.
It is precisely the Word of Truth that I lack in my work. The devil's lies are leaking out more and more. And, perhaps, that this is because of the vices that overcome me ...
I imagine that in the Holy Places of Israel there is a bright Light of Truth. And he began to open up to me by the fact that I clearly imagine him, closing my eyes. And all the places where the foot of Jesus Christ stepped are shrouded in a fertile yellow light, which gives inexhaustible blessing to the Soul to all those who have opened their Soul for this and have a great desire to absorb it into themselves ...I see this with my inner vision and I will be ready for all this, if all the long and dangerous journey to Israel I set myself up for a meeting with Jesus Christ… And if in the process of this I have tears of the sensitivity of the Soul, then I am on the right path…
My thoughts were interrupted by a mullah calling Muslims to lunchtime prayer...
I listened to the mullah.
Evening. I'm in a hotel near the pool, at the bar. Hell, I drink beer.
The sun sets behind the mountains. Daylight fades.
And then, from the city array, the voice of the mullah begins to sound, calling on Muslims to perform the evening prayer.
I, an outside observer, an adherent of Christianity - a completely different religion. But did he pluck up the courage to understand what the mullah is talking about, which is not really clear even to the Muslims themselves? But what makes me feel like this! I do not know Arabic, but listening to the voice of the mullah, it is not necessary to know Arabic, just as listening to music, it is not necessary to know the native language of the composer who composed this music, or musical notation. How do I perceive the voice of the mullah? - This is a call not only to prayer - the prayer of Muslims for the glory of Allah, but more deeply - a call to the world to follow the laws from Allah set forth in the Koran. The mullah's voice is a reminder to all Muslims how they should live in righteousness, which will make them eternal.
Why the East, if the main part of Egypt is located in the northeast of Africa? And only a small part of it - the Sinai Peninsula and in its southern part - Sharm El Sheikh - on the border between Asia and Africa.
“The East is a delicate matter” - for the first time, loudly, for the whole world and for the widest possible audience, the protagonist of the film “White Sun of the Desert” made the definition of this part of the world. I knew about the greatness of the East not from school history books, but even earlier. And I still have a reverent attitude towards the East, especially towards its ancient culture.
The East is difficult for us, Europeans, to know. This is a completely different world, different from ours, different customs, different religion, different mentality. Although our religions have a single basis. Thanks to this basis, true religions exist for thousands of years, despite severe persecution in certain periods of time.
Religion is the same theory of consciousness.
I’m not talking about a sharp drop in the saturation of hotels with vacationers even in such pearls of resort Egypt as Sharm El Sheikh or Hurghada, Ukrainians are increasingly beginning to master them due to cheaper tours and closing the border to Crimea. In addition, surprisingly, as my marketing research showed, holidays, even with air travel, in Egypt are much cheaper than holidays of this class in the Crimea or the Carpathians ...Whoever does not believe can compare prices for an hour by going to the Internet. Moreover, where else can you find such a “cheap freebie” in the form of “All inclusive” with such an unlimited abundance of spirits and snacks, as in Egypt with swimming in the warm exotic Red Sea in winter? And we must hurry, because, in my opinion, such a “freebie” may soon end: this system is painfully unprofitable for Egyptian restaurateurs due to a sharp decrease in the number of vacationers.
After all, such a system is beneficial only with a large number of vacationers in the tens and hundreds of thousands of people a year. So hurry up, my countrymen and potential holiday-goers from other countries, before such an opportunity becomes a long-forgotten rarity.
But now it's not about that at all. And about the fact that a rare Russian can now fly to Egypt, just like Gogol: “a rare bird can fly to the middle of the Dnieper”! Although Gogol's is a clever technique of hyperbole in literature, and an unprecedented incident with a Russian in Egypt is in kind! And I personally had a chance to see this unique case today, on the first day of the New Year in the old style in Sharm El Sheikh, at the Poinciana Sharm Resort, a rather cozy hotel.
Imagine, we are sitting with our friendly small company in the "Active Pool Bar" and drinking: who is tea, who is coffee, and who is whiskey or rum - each according to his personal preference and desire. We all came from Ukraine: from Kyiv, Kremenchug and other cities.
Therefore, we talked about politics ...Although, this morning I made a word to myself about politics at the resort not a word. I came to this decision because we now have this “policy” in Ukraine, in connection with the war in Donbass with tens of thousands of victims, millions of refugees, and in addition to this, terrible corruption and embezzlement at all levels of government, bringing the people of Ukraine to poverty. And because of this, the whole soul is overwhelmed with such negativity that the white whale wants to howl in despair. And breaking out of this cesspool into a corner of the earthly Paradise - to the Red Sea, it would be a real blasphemy here, at the resort, to add the same negative to yourself. And this despite the fact that there is an opportunity for a week or two to forget about all this and absorb that inexhaustible grace of the Soul, which is provided by the resort Sharm El Sheikh.
But, alas, we did not manage to exclude this topic of politics at all.
The whole situation and the low occupancy of our and other hotels in Egypt by vacationers did not allow us to completely exclude this topic from our communication. And when, by the way, about the Russians, one lady from our company said that she was Russian, at first no one paid attention to such a message: you never know people of various nationalities live in Ukraine, not only Russians, but also Germans, Uzbeks, Tatars, Jews … And they are all citizens of Ukraine. But when the lady began to pull out a passport with a double-headed eagle from her red purse, everyone except her husband, who was already accustomed to this, fell silent for a moment and froze with their mouths open ...But if you saw what a transformation happened to our bartender, who in that moment came by chance to our table. Where did his sour sadness of facial expression go: he broke into a wide smile, so wide that everything else was not visible behind this smile. After all, such a miracle happens!
And for me it was no longer a miracle to contemplate the red double-headed document of a Russian woman, the transformed bartender with his widest smile on his face made a much greater impression. I imagined what was going on in his head behind this smile: those very pleasant moments in his life that warmed his soul and filled his pockets with dollars until recently and seemed that they would be eternal ...And for a long time after that, that smile and tender expression did not leave from his face and he was completely, as if enchanted, under the impression of those recent memories. And his work: he took orders, poured, served - he did it mechanically ...And only after some time, the realities of real life brought him back to reality. And again that sad smile that had hitherto taken possession of his face.
And we have a new topic: we began to make plans for how much the bartender will pour us more and without any restrictions on beer and spirits, because in our company there is such a “masterpiece” that amazed the bartender and caused him such admiration and a favorable expression on his face and smile.
But, at the same time, someone from our company turned this medal to the other, negative side and reminded us how five days ago two failed ISIS fighters broke into one of the hotels in Hurghada in search of Russians in order to get even for Russian attacks in Syria and staged massacre. Innocent holiday-goers from European countries suffered. There were no Russians there...Now, in our situation, it may turn out to be similar.
And now the hour of separation has come - to cut off on the living that which has become a single whole. And we became a single whole thanks to the fact that we have a lot in common. Common to all, first of all, is a single place of stay - the resort of Sharm El Sheikh, which, with its uniqueness, like strong cement, can unite people of different characters, tastes and preferences. And he brought us together.
And therefore, thanks to the conditions of the small earthly Paradise that Sharm El Sheikh provided us, and to the positive changes that have taken place here with us and between us, we became friends so easily and naturally. Moreover, a person is a social being and cannot live outside of society, not be friends with anyone and not communicate, if he is not a hermit, for example, during creative inspiration, as sometimes happens with the author of these lines.
And so, yesterday was our last, farewell evening.
And in every possible way, first of all, due to sleep and the upcoming hard and vain day of the flight, we tried to extend the hours and minutes of our friendship and live direct communication. And on this evening, turning into deep night, and then, almost into the morning, each of us learned much more about the other than during the entire previous stay here at the resort. And this trust brought us even closer.
But, the uncontrollable laws of Time, despite our protests (and what are we, miserable people, on some small planet Earth, compared to the Universal Space and Time? ), brought the moment of separation closer. And it inevitably arrived...
And in the morning I was alone. But the loneliness of the body was not so terrible as the oppressive loneliness of the Soul. From such a terrible state, I wanted to howl at the whole world.
Such a sharp drop between the cheerful life of the body with no less stormy joy of the Soul and the oppressive loneliness of the body and Soul after the departure of friends can be compared with the moment of transition to another world ...
I had to live here at the resort for another eleven days. Involuntarily, this moment after parting with friends, with a terrible state of emptiness and loneliness, was prolonged for these eleven upcoming days. And longing knew no bounds...
But not much time has passed. I almost overslept breakfast (and before that I got up very early to add my impressions of the previous day in my Diary, often even met the dawn), I noticed that in the morning a lot of vacationers drove into the hotel - fresh and joyful from the upcoming vacation with swimming in the warm Red Sea.
And, perhaps, joyful from the fact that at least for a while they escaped from the clutches of the war in Ukraine, the oppressive problems with the increase in all sorts of tariffs and prices, severe frosts of twenty-five degrees at the risk of being left without heating in apartments and houses from February? And so the thought flashed through my mind: "A holy place is never empty. " And newcomers also tend to create small friendly companies ...Perhaps I will be lucky to be in one of them. And this will not be my betrayal of my previous company, friends who flew away this morning. After all, no one made any promises to anyone, Even if some of us had very close relationships ...A resort is a resort!
A small remnant of happiness
There are five days left of my holiday in the winter Sharm El Sheikh. I started counting the rest of the days.
When there were a lot of them, you don’t appreciate and don’t count, you think that there are an infinite number of them, and in recent days you grab hold of every minute, and then a moment, to prolong it ...But, alas, in our world everything ever comes to an end . It's good when the bad ends. But the same fate awaits all good things. And the last one is so offensive that it happens. But, on the other hand, it’s fair: there should be enough good for everyone. Not only some. And therefore, every day from the rooms of our hotel, from five in the morning already rested, they leave for the airport, breaking the silence of the predawn morning with the sound of the wheels of suitcases at the junction of paving slabs. And new ones come in their place, eager to relax under the southern sun and swim in the warm Red Sea in winter. There is a kind of circulation of human flows between continents, like flows of water in a heated vat ...
January 30.2016. Saturday
The last two of twenty (! ) days of my vacation on the Red Sea.
Tomorrow afternoon - departure, and in the evening - departure. The end of heavenly life on the Red Sea. And again - winter. And that's why such a resentment instills in me for the fact that fate gives so little good in our life. I internally resent and protest, but what can I do? - Absolutely nothing! That's how bad it is sometimes in life. And all because in seventeen days I got used to a carefree life in the comfortable conditions of a resort summer, when it is winter in my homeland, and I began to think that this would always be the way for me. Bad habit!
The only consolation is that I will live for a long time, even there, in Ukraine, in the harsh conditions of the Ukrainian winter, with memories of the times spent on the Red Sea that delight the Soul. And if, by and large, then at any moment I can jump out of our, not always responsive and kind world, into another world, full of joy and happiness, and enjoy life there.
It is a pity only for its spiritual essence.
January 31.2016. Sunday
On the eve of the "deportation" from Paradise
Three hours left before leaving the hotel. I obey the laws of external circumstances and become attached to the bus that will come for me, the only passenger from the Poinciana Sharm Resort, at 17-00. Next - at 19-25 binding to the plane, which will lift me into the air and in less than four hours take me to Kyiv, where I will again be free. I do not want to fly away from Sharm El Sheikh - this warm region, where it is so good, cozy and comfortable. And therefore I estimate this time of 17-00 as the beginning of my forced, in addition to my desire, deportation from Egypt. But these are just my feelings, which do not always appear in unison with the desires of the body. And therefore, my sound mind, as a referee, puts things in order, putting everyone in their places: I signed a contract, paid money only for that period of Paradise, which ends today at 17-00 - please fulfill your contractual obligations!
And you begin to enter into the realities of the life that was before flying to Sharm El Sheikh, and in the contrast of these two lives you understand: what a terrible and cruel our real world is!
But there is nothing to do, because I am an integral part of this real world and these nineteen days on the Red Sea are just its outlet of my real world ...
And therefore I give myself up to complete dependence on external circumstances. And in all this, there is only one thing that worries me: these three and a half hours, from the moment the wheels of the aircraft landing gear come off the concrete slabs of Sharm El-Sheikh Airport and until the moment they touch the concrete slabs of the Borispol airport in Kyiv. From concrete to concrete! And I have to go through these three and a half hours with anxiety for my life ...Three and a half hours, like my whole life ...
How long time is running out today. Even sleep cannot cut it.
As before, boats from walks to the island of Tiran are drawn to their bay in a string.
Only a little, and for a short time, some shadow of doubt and fear appears only during takeoff and landing, as well as during turbulence. But not enough to wake up the poet's sleeping Soul. Having made such a conclusion, I was horrified: is it really necessary to drive a creative person to the brink of life and death to create a real work?
The hotel is located in the resort center of Sharm El Sheikh, in the Ras Um Sid bay area, 15 km from the airport, 7 km from the city of Sharm El Sheikh.
Beach, 2nd line from the sea (remoteness from the sea up to 1000 m).
Rooms
The hotel has 182 rooms including: 128 Family Suites, 12 Villas, 58 guest rooms - overlooking the sea.
Restaurant, bars
- Fontana - the main restaurant of the hotel: breakfast, lunch and dinner, seafood dishes are offered; Laguna bar - the bar offers its visitors a large selection of drinks and snacks; Diamond beach bar - a place where you can have a light meal; Up-Stairs bar - This bar serves cocktails, snacks until midnight.
January 13.2016. Wednesday
First impressions of winter Egypt
Late evening. I just checked into one of the many hotels in Sharm El Sheikh. Some amazing silence. And autumn chill.
It seems that I arrived in my native Crimea somewhere in late September - early October after a violent summer season, when tired of hundreds of thousands of vacationers, the resort wearily relaxed and tamed its seemingly indomitable ardor. Only in one place, in all likelihood, in a luxury hotel, was disco music heard. But my hotel is only four stars and I have to be content with silence. However, the main reason is not in the category of the hotel, but in the fact that now there are only sixty people in the hotel, instead of a quarter of a thousand according to the plan. According to the plan of the hotel administration, but not according to the plan of Politics in the megaplan (Russian President Putin, after blowing up (? ) an airplane over Sinai with 228 Russians, banned tours from Russia to Egypt). And this megapolitics has reduced the number of tourists in Egypt several times.
On the one hand, this is good for tourists from other countries: prices for tours have fallen sharply (all according to the same laws of Karl Marx set forth in his “Capital”, when the price of goods / services depends on demand / supply. But they suffered, first of all , the Egyptians, because they are losing billions from the under-working of the area in which they have invested huge amounts of money and which is now unprofitable. The people of Russia suffer from such geopolitics, for whom Egypt, with budget prices for tours, is almost the only opportunity to have a good rest. Slavs, like last summer with Roma from the Moscow region ...
And today is my first evening in the winter Sharm El Sheikh. I wrote "winter" and immediately felt a certain disharmony between the calendar season and my usual ideas about winter. And thus there was a certain pun. Winter in my mind is dog cold with a frost of twenty or more degrees, snow, snowdrifts, a blizzard and its terrible howl. And this is how our classics described winter - masters of not only words, but also brushes, as well as composers. And so, leaving the Sharm El-Sheikh airport and stepping on the land of the Sinai Peninsula, I experienced an unusual feeling: there is no frost familiar to this season (although in Ukraine sometimes the mercury column of the thermometer rises to the positive zone), but there is also no that scalding sultry wind of the desert, which every time I met on the land of Egypt in my previous summer visits to it. And there was the usual autumn chill of Indian summer.
That was my first impression of winter Egypt at Sharm Ed Sheikh airport.
I'm already at the hotel. Late evening. Today is the New Year according to the old style. Taking the “quarter” I brought with me, I went to look for a company with whom I could celebrate the New Year (and spend the old one). But disappointment awaited me: on the territory of the hotel, and it is huge, several hectares, not a single living soul. And twilight. It would be darker, perhaps there would be ghosts. Or, as in the film with Kramarov: “…Night. Silence… And the dead with scythes stand…” But it didn’t come to that in my case. Slowly walked around the entire territory of the hotel. I saw and fixed in my memory all its “sights” in order to use them the next day and in the future. Everything is great: two swimming pools, and a green well-groomed territory, and a lot of all sorts of design attributes that delight the eye with their originality, which were noticeable even at dusk in poor lighting.
Only, the only thing that is a pity is that it is far to the sea, about two kilometers. And I cannot go to the sea every evening or early in the morning before breakfast, intercept and listen to its healing breath. But I think that during the day I will try, although partially, but to make up for what I will not receive in the morning dawn.
After wandering around the hotel and finally losing all hope of finding at least one living soul (everyone was in their rooms, a sign of which was the yellow light in their windows), I decided to take a walk around the city outside the hotel.
The streets are also empty. The crisis has just begun. He is not yet three months old. And what will happen next? . . Only taxis dangle and honk briefly, as if asking if their service is required? I felt a little sorry for them (taxi drivers): they drive around for nothing the whole evening, they burn gasoline, but there are no passengers.
The only thing that compensates for this pity is their arrogance with which they “bend” double or even triple fees for travel routes that are usual in such cases, and Ukrainians who do not know this specifics of trade not only taxi drivers, but everywhere in Egypt or the Russians are falling for it. And, what else, to which I can’t get used in any way, is the sugary obsession of shopkeepers. And not only them, but also intermediary gunners who, like tentacles, are stretched from shops in all directions and capture passers-by - potential buyers. Both invite people to the store, saying: “my store”, in fact they are sellers or intermediaries who receive commissions from sellers “for a tip”.
The only place where the nightlife "seethed" was the entertainment complex "1001 Nights" - on a vast territory in the whole block. I did not dare to go inside, but outwardly - in the style of Arabian fairy tales - the sight is impressive!
It would seem that an impossible fabulous quick change of seasons has now occurred with my participation within four hours. And this was facilitated by an increased speed of 850 km / h, which gave my body weighing almost a centner new opportunities - to move from one season to another in these four hours. Oh, this mysterious speed! At the first cosmic speed, it allows you to leave the Earth, at the second - to become an independent satellite of the solar system, and at the third - to leave the solar system.
Weather in Sharm El Sheikh
After the beer, everything goes according to plan: lunch, the sea, the beach ...We need to have time to sunbathe, because in three days it will be, as for the conditions of Egypt, a cold snap: only +18? . And the wind is 6 m/sec. Such a cold snap is not terrible here, but the wind ...But the natives say so, but as a matter of fact, we will live, I will describe everything.
I'm sunbathing.
The sun here is not the same as we have in the summer in Europe: after two in the afternoon it already loses its midday heat, and after three - already at sunset. Therefore, you can safely sunbathe without fear of sunburn.
I'm trying to resume yesterday's theme of the sensations I experienced during a sharp change in the seasons: from winter in Kyiv to summer in Egypt. But while I feel the sensations of a fabulous transformation, and not deeper. It is not yet possible to explain in more depth. Yesterday's explanation of this phenomenon of the sensitivity of the soul with the help of speed, today seems "far-fetched", wretchedly technocratic and does not fit into the foundations of spiritual concepts. Still do not combine two concepts: Winter and Egypt. After all, in fact, as we understand it, there is no winter in Egypt.
Nature of Egypt
I can't tell about all of Egypt its Nature.
This is such a vast and diverse country that it is hardly possible for me to visit all its corners and express my opinion about them. What is worth one desert: it would seem, the ultimate monotony - sands, dunes, only saxaul and snakes ...But how many emotions! Emotions, as well as writing based on them, are an inexhaustible storehouse. And I remember this despite the fact that I saw the real Egyptian desert only from the window of a tourist bus about ten years ago, when I went to see the pyramids from Sharm El Sheikh.
But in all subsequent cases, I saw Egypt only from the territory of hotels, small watered oases in the desert, when the sun, almost 364 days a year, and the abundance of water do a miracle: they create such conditions for plants that in this contrast with the conditions of the desert, you wonder . So this morning, the huge territory of the Poinciana Sharm Resort hotel of five hectares allowed me to do this. And I fell into my element - into the element of Nature.
In that part of it that is closest to me and which I love the most - this is the plant world and, in particular, trees. And I didn’t need much to start with: just one small tree, with a trunk ten to fifteen inches thick and two and a half to three meters high. This tree was called "shagaro". It attracted me to itself with invisible magic. As soon as I saw him, as if spellbound, I reached out to him, went up and gently, like a girl, hugged his camp - for the soft to the touch and pleasant-looking light, like our birch trees, the trunk. And for the first time in this season in Egypt, I had tears of tenderness of the sensitivity of the Soul. And I revived: finally, after several days of intense searching, I found a channel through which I can perceive the Nature of Egypt and state what I perceive in my essays.
In addition, I had associations with a birch in Melezhy in the Vladimir forests during my hermitage in those distant nineties ...Today I perceived this tree exactly the same way as then, but more clearly, because those emotions, despite their exceptional the penetration and even the storm that arose then in the Soul, over the course of decades, began to gradually fade in the memory of the Soul. And now I have restored them again here in Egypt. But then my emotions materialized into this world in the form of poetry, now I will try to state everything that I felt in prose words.
When I touched the trunk of this tree, and then mechanically hugged it, I felt, despite the heat of twenty-eight degrees, a coolness. And in this coolness - a certain individuality, the isolation of this tree from everything that, according to the laws of physics, should absorb heat and be just as hot and sultry.
And this original personality of this tree I liked most of all in it. And then more surprise and admiration awaited me. Hugging and stroking the trunk of a tree, I felt its inner trembling and some kind of sensitive reaction to my touch: the tree opened its soul before me! For some short moment, which lasts a fraction of a second in our material world, and in that other world it turns into infinity, I experienced and learned a lot that neither I nor anyone else can transfer to our world, describing everything it's words. And what I am writing now is just a part of what I felt there ...
No wonder my communication, as they say now, on a subtle level with this cute tree, is similar to communication with a girl. And all because their nature is similar.
And besides, this is one of the easiest ways to move to a sensitive perception of the surrounding world, this is the channel through which you can easily and easily get from this world into the world of a sensitive Soul - into the Spiritual World. And the benefit in this, and not only in terms of knowledge, but also purification and spiritual growth, is enormous.
I physically felt how, under my palm, streams of water were moving in a continuous stream through the smallest capillaries from the roots up to the leaves. My inner ear even perceived the noise of these streams. And a certain substance moves back into the earth in the form of gratitude to the Earth for its honor to grow this plant on itself. The Earth and the tree have mutual harmony, which ensures the growth and prosperity of one and the qualitative improvement of the other. But I perceived this and much more on a physical level. And on the subtle level of spiritual perception, everything was much deeper and more significant.
But most of what I perceived remained inside me, even with some “taboo” on its transfer to our world. In my sixty years, I discover a new spiritual life in myself, like that baby, from his pre-natal purely spiritual life passes into the life of our material world, but only I - in the opposite direction. And the circle of physical life closes, just for a little while. For some dozens (maximum up to a hundred) years, we were allowed to go out of our spiritual essence into our physical essence, so that at the end of this period, either by improving our spiritual essence and magnifying it, or by casting it into the abyss of vices, enter it again. I would say that our physical life is a test of our soul “for lice”!
And such moments as communication on a subtle level with plants, with the Sea, the Sun or the Wind, their sensual perception and, moreover, their creative reproduction, which requires their kind and favorable will, and there are moments of the greatest spiritual self-improvement . And life in the world, that is, in society among people, is the hungry and greedy life of a spider in a jar among hungry spiders like you. And how can one refrain from filth (I use Christian terms that most accurately reflect the essence of the phenomenon), and not undergo a spiritual fall in the name of physical survival? Therefore, in order not to completely ruin their souls, creative people, including the author of these lines, live a double life: spiritual and physical, separating them by assigning the spiritual part of the personality - a pseudonym. And each not only does not climb into the life of another, but also does not enjoy either fame, or contempt and persecution of the other.
This is on condition that he finds the strength in himself to arrange the dualism of his life in such a way.
While resting in the Crimea, as well as here, at the Egyptian resorts, I noticed that people, having come to rest, become completely different, move into the life of Good, as if having removed all the negativity from themselves for this time. And at the same time they exalt their spiritual essence. They return to their usual rhythm of life - and again, as before, they fall into the cloaca of physical life, fall, almost to the bottom of their spiritual essence. Because they are forced to do this by society and the need to live and survive physically. Therefore, I perceive the resort - not as a health resort for the physical body, but as a health resort for the Soul! After all, Nature provides for a physical health resort for the body - this is daily sleep, when the body relaxes and almost completely restores its physical strength - and all this is done on autopilot, without any conscious control.
During sleep, spiritual forces are also restored to some extent. But this is not enough.
Breaking for a while from the theme of the narrative, as the time comes for the dawn of the next day ...
Kaleidoscope
Every day is significant by the fact that it begins with dawn and sunrise, each time different and not similar to one another. So today, the morning does not begin with sunrise, but with solid clouds all over the sky. And only in the east by seven in the morning, when the Sun should have already been high above the horizon, like yesterday morning, today there is only a small segment of the sky with a slightly lighter tone. And, what else upsets good morning is the increased number of flights of military supersonic aircraft at prohibitive heights. They leave their unkind mark on the originally good sky in the form of long silvery tails. If yesterday he was alone, today there are three. And logically, it will be six tomorrow! ? ..
January 19.2016. Tuesday
Baptism
We are accustomed to Epiphany frosts on this day, to rivers and lakes encased in ice, to ice holes in which both old and young swim ...But for me and for several hundred of my compatriots today, on the day of Epiphany, there is an exception: water in the sea even warmer than yesterday - 24? above zero, the air is even higher, only that a strong wind cools a naked body, especially when you get out of the water. But all this holiday was celebrated with friendly swimming in the Red Sea. For many, including me, such a bathing in an open reservoir at Epiphany is the first time in their lives. There will be something to remember not a single year later.
Everyone tuned in to the fact that today water all over the world is special with increased positive energy and therefore healing. In addition, I tried to convince myself that, in addition to healing properties for the body, today water also helps to heal the soul, cleansing it from filth. The main thing is to believe in it. And it is being implemented.
Everyone who was on the beach huddled together under a rock near the water, where the wind did not reach, which still persistently and strongly continued to blow from the peninsula to the sea. In addition, we all got the opportunity to sunbathe, as the sun was on our side in the afternoon. This is how the resort holiday for Epiphany turned out for many tourists of Sharm El Sheikh.
Just before going to bed, I remember how I sat on my cherished stone for more than an hour, catching lonely waves with my feet, trying to jump out onto land as far as possible. With a glance without any purpose, I wandered over the surface of the Sea, my thought followed my gaze, and the feelings of the soul, if any, were waiting for their cherished hour to manifest themselves in any topic. But, unfortunately, no topic worthy of my attention has matured, and the sheet of paper on which I had to transfer this topic has remained clean ...
January 25.2016.
Monday
Winter has come to Egypt?
Today I learned what winter is in the resorts of Egypt. And I can share my impressions with you, my readers…
During the day, as usual, it was hot, but only in the sun. In the shade after a few minutes you start to feel cold. And how to be here? After a sleepless night of seeing friends off, I really wanted to sleep. But the sun burned like summer, and in the shade it was like autumn - this, of course, is tied to the concepts of "summer" and "autumn" in Ukraine. After being pretty baked, and then freezing to the same extent, besides splashed with water from lawn sprinklers here, near the pool, I am a little dissatisfied with the real climate (at the same time I forgot that Nature has now bestowed a real winter on Ukraine at twenty-five degrees of frost), rushed to fill up to his room ...
The whole day was warm, even hot. And windless silence in Nature.
The natural sounds of human civilization, such as: the noise of cars, the rumble of planes flying in for landing, the shouting of Arabs - hotel servants, etc. , I did not take into account.
But by evening everything changed. As if out of nowhere, a strong wind appeared and began, like crazy, to drive throughout the hotel. Yes, so much so that the trees, and these are mostly tall palm trees, staggered in time with the gusts of wind, and their fan tops shook in different directions with such intensity that it seemed as if some kind of monster wanted to tear them out of their settled places. The wind in the hotel did not have a specific direction. He swooped down on me, like a predatory beast, from different sides, as if trying to take me by surprise and grab the exposed parts of the body with his teeth. My body, compressed into a ball, still remembering the warmth of the day and the last refuge - the room, steadily resisted.
More precisely, I felt it on my own skin. Every 3-4 hot days and velvety-warm nights, as if from the underworld, a feisty windbreaker broke out and put things in order - as evil and disgusting as he himself.
The wind was terrible and unpleasant only for us old people. The youth completely ignored him. Having dressed warmly, they went to the city in pairs and small groups for various shows and entertainment. Fortunately, there are more than enough of them in Sharm El Sheikh, as in any other resort town.
But it was all just a prelude to a real Egyptian winter with a terrible (by the standards of Egypt) coldness ...
The evening of the next day
If the day before the cold was created by a strong wind, today after sunset and without wind it became so cold, as if the territory of the hotel plunged into a kind of refrigerator, in which, it seemed, there was not a single living soul, except for the bartender Mahmud, who was forced to stay there on duty .
But everything changed dramatically when I presented these weather cataclysms not as terrible and depressing, but as spiritualized natural phenomena with which one can communicate on an equal footing and, moreover, understand, explore their essence, and even command them? ! And only realizing this, I realized how lucky I was to visit Egypt for such a cheap fee and discover the new Egypt, previously unknown to anyone, to the whole world. To open Egypt not from a physical point of view, in which it is known far and wide, and even deep into the Red Sea and the underground labyrinths of the Pharaohs' Pyramids, but from a spiritual point of view. I just discovered such inexhaustible possibilities for myself, and, abstracting into the spiritual sphere, I stopped feeling cold and all discomfort, and fell asleep in such bliss ...
And after dinner...
I will not continue to describe the Nature of winter Egypt for the sole reason that I simply cannot describe it in its true light.
And to make an unnatural verbal cast of it is to waste your personal time and offend Nature, showing that it is as you describe it, which is far from being the case. I just don't have the skill to do it. And so we'll talk about something else.
I planned to go to Jerusalem today. And even everything was ready for this, right down to the food supplies that I had prepared over the previous two days, in a simple hidden (and, in fact, thieves') way, taking it away in parts from lunch and dinner. And here comes the crash. People ask me if I'm upset about the cancellation of the trip due to unforeseen bad weather - washed out roads in the resort town of Taba on the border with Israel? I answer them that I knew about it in advance and everything that happens is all for the good.
So, today after lunch, the ban on alcohol was lifted for me personally. I took it off for myself, in connection with the cancellation of a trip to Israel to holy places.
It's time to go home, to dear Ukraine ...Yes, and it suddenly became lonely and empty in my soul after the departure of a noisy company of my friends.
And in order to overcome external physical loneliness, I am looking for a way out inside myself: I look in there and, surprisingly, I really find the gardens of Eden inside me. It turns out that I am not empty inside myself, but there is something ...And there is an inner world, and what a one! And everything that I wrote before and write now is a reflection of my inner world. And not only this…
Creations of man and the creative genius of Nature
Something painfully quickly, I got used to the "masterpieces" of human hands in the form of design creations on the landscape of the hotel. Already on the fourth day, they became ordinary for me, ceased to attract special attention and delight in the same special way.
Two options arise here: either they have exhausted themselves in terms of originality and as an object of knowledge and admiration, or I have exhausted myself in terms of the opportunity to know the “masterpieces” presented to my attention. In any case, the territory of the hotel has already passed the stage in terms of knowledge and admiration for me, it remains only to take a few pictures as a keepsake in order, if desired, to restore the impressions of the Poinciana Sharm resort that are fading over time. There are inexhaustible pictures of Nature left. To this end, guided by a subconscious movement of thoughts and intentions, I already woke up at half past five in the morning and was surprised at the darkness in the room, but immediately gave an explanation for this: on the eve of dawn, they turn off the lights on the hotel territory - why burn electricity in vain when you can save money.
But, in the east, a section of the sky near the horizon began to gradually brighten.
This Sun, an hour before its appearance in this world, began to prepare a springboard bed for itself to jump out into the sky. And so it went on for an excruciatingly long time. Why painfully long is only for me, because, having heard a lot of reviews about the meeting of dawn from holidaymakers who have been on a safari, who claim that the Sun rises with amazing speed, I also expected to see the imminent process of its appearance. But one thing is its movement across the sky, another thing is the background of its appearance. And the second is many times longer in time than the first. This went on for about an hour with a slow lightening of the horizon line in a small area of the sky and its expansion both in breadth and in height. But such lighting was not very impressive. And only the appearance of pink clouds illuminated from below, from behind the horizon, radically changed everything. And this happened about ten minutes before the appearance of the sun.
And the igniting of the clouds from slightly pink to purple-red, and then fiery red, was truly impressive and delighted to the point of holding your breath with excitement. And as soon as a small piece of solar fire appeared, at first bright yellow, and then an ever-increasing and reddening segment of the disk, the euphoria of happiness contemplating this miracle of Nature reached its climax ...
Comparing two paintings: stable, man-made (in this case, the landscape design of the hotel) and non-repeating original paintings of Nature (the current sunrise), I am once again surprised at the inexhaustibility of the diversity of Nature. And to understand this, one does not have to be extremely insightful. But, to know the beauty of Nature to the very bottom is impossible due to its inexhaustibility. Moreover, to know Nature with the mind, as scientists are trying now, and in the past, it is impossible to do this.
The closest to the knowledge of Nature are artists (brushes, words), composers and other representatives of Bohemia, who strive to comprehend Nature with the feelings of the Soul. And, having felt and conveyed with the instruments of our world, these wonders of Nature in the form of casts from it, more or less plausible copies, allow us to admire the beauty of Natural phenomena even after these wonderful moments, and at any time. This is why the Nature of the Red Sea with eternal summer is valuable to me, at a time when in Ukraine, and indeed in the entire European zone, living Nature goes into a lethargic sleep. And here, on the Red Sea, even in January, at the height of winter, I can make sketches from nature in the form of essays and provide them to the reader so that he, like me, can feel and admire this beauty. But this is my global goal, and in order to achieve it, it is necessary to make more than one hundred test sketches. And this essay on Nature is one of the attempts to do so.
Mornings in E g and p t e
Early morning in Sharm El Sheikh
Early morning. It's still an hour and a half before dawn. I was awakened by the mullah's drawling voice, calling on Muslims to perform the morning prayer. I quickly dressed lightly and jumped out onto the terrace of the third floor to really feel all the delights of a resort winter morning in Sinai.
Early morning crossed out all the fears of the night. Summer freshness, as it should be, for the early morning, a barely caught fresh breeze caresses the long palm leaves, tugging at their feathers ...
The mullah continued to sing his song. On a quiet pre-dawn morning, his voice was clear with distinct sounds, floating from the mosque and far beyond Sharm El Sheikh. The night windbreaker subsided, retired to its underworld, leaving instead of itself a light breeze, barely felt by open areas of the body. The windmill disappeared, and where did all the hatred and panic fear of the furious elements go! The morning calm has arrived.
Only the full moon, as before, imperturbably hung in the sky like a bright matte dime and was also framed by a matte glow. But no longer overhead, as in the dead of night, but closer to the western part of the sky. She slowly, imperceptibly to the eyes, but crawled over the horizon line, as if feeling the arrival of the luminary-Sun in this world - the daytime owner. There was still an hour left before dawn. And the sky was still dark with occasional clouds in it and an even rarer gleam of stars. Like fading fragments from these stars on Earth, among the hotel buildings, trees and bushes, as well as along the streets and roads, they gleamed, and some even flickered to the beat of some music inaudible to the human ear, the lights of human hands - numerous lighting lamps. Only one feature of the current period of winter Sharm El Sheikh: each hotel was lit differently.
These are holiday-makers, having finished the prescribed period of rest, hurried to their buses to go to the Airport and further to their frosty and winter country. Therefore, despite the warm morning, they were dressed in winter. In different parts of the resort town, the engines of buses of various travel companies rustled: they must collect it to take ex-tourists to the Airport.
An Arab in an Arafat coat clicked his heels on the paving slabs, after which, as if by magic, the spotlights of the night lighting of the hotel territory went out. And after that, the palm trees turned from bright green into dull night ghosts. And the territory of the hotel, for half an hour before dawn, fell into darkness. But then the sky in the east began to grow stronger and brighter. And at the very horizon - a wide strip becomes pink. And the plants on the territory of the hotel began to acquire their natural color and shape.
It differed from the moon only in size and speed of entry into this world. As the sun rose, it turned from a bluish segment into an increasingly yellow disk. And the yellowness from it passed to the entire space of the sky above it. Until the Sun completely emerged from this muddy-dirty barrier, uneven horizontal stripes were visible on its body - condensations from the remnants of this barrier. But no terrestrial barriers interfered with the powerful movement of the Sun. And by seven o'clock it was already hanging quite high above the horizon in the form of a bright yellow disk and continued to move towards its zenith without delay. Say what you like, but the Sun, it turns out, loves glory, showing off at its zenith, so that everyone on Earth shows honor and respect for it. But it well deserves it!
By eight in the morning, the Sun had already turned into a hot, dazzling yellow disk, which is impossible to look at without protective glasses.
And the heat exuding them caressed and pleasantly warmed the exposed parts of the body. Because today, after two days of cold weather, people were still walking around, almost in fur coats, in which they boarded a plane in Kiev "Borispol" in order to move in a few hours, as if at the behest of a pike, into the hot African eternal summer. And these long two days of autumn cold with squally wind were an exception to the rule. And the beginning hot day was a confirmation of this ...
And I didn’t want to remember Kyiv with its frosts, snowstorms, as sometimes happens in January, up to a meter or more in snowdrifts. After all, there was very little left to be in the fairy tale of the African summer. And in February, in our opinion, each of us still has to experience the fierceness of winter. Moreover, the authorities promised in January the complete depletion of gas reserves. And how are they going to heat our homes?
So, in the remaining few days of the summer bestowed on us personally, we will listen with particular greed to the heat of the resort summer on the Sinai Peninsula and, just as camels accumulate food and water in their humps, we will also strive to accumulate this warmth in ourselves, at least in our memories. Even so, it will still be easier to survive the rest, but the most severe, period of the Ukrainian winter.
W y m e M e r e v Sh arm – El – Sheikh
The sea today, just like yesterday, is noisy. He also gives his voice in the surf, as in the Crimea. But what the Sea wants to convey through this noise remains a great mystery to me, a mystery of mysteries that I have not been able to unravel for decades. And the Sea is in no hurry to let me in on its secrets.
The only explanation for the current noise of the surf, in comparison with its quiet, peaceful state in July-August last year, which I observed here, in Egypt, is the indignation of the sea against the cooling of water and air, a protest against Nature. And this anger is clearly evident in his voice. Moreover, this morning there was a storm of several balls. It was so angry and angry that it could kill one of the vacationers. Therefore, a red flag was hung on the rescue bridge on the pontoon: “Swimming is prohibited! » But even after lunch, no one swam: the water stirred up by the storm was cool. But I still, just before leaving the beach, managed to communicate with the Sea for several minutes - directly, at a distance and at arm's length.
Such closeness is fascinating, because, in addition to the visual perception of the Sea, you also hear its voice of the sea surf, breathe its smells and subconsciously perceive many other, yet unknown to us, sense organs of the Soul. But the main thing is that at such closeness, the Sea takes possession of everything you do, not giving a chance to extraneous phenomena and objects to distract you from yourself. And what did I see, hear, feel? - Words cannot describe: our language seems to be painfully miserable. Apart from consciousness, everything passed directly into my Soul and brought it unusual grace and benefit… And I felt this pacifying grace as I climbed the steps to the high bank to go to my hotel. And the state was such, as if I had visited the cathedral, cleansed myself of filth and filled with spiritual grace ...
Tidal bore
Today, the Sea, despite its internal problems of adjusting to the upcoming storm, nevertheless turned out to be generous and revealed some of its secrets. At first glance, this may seem to be the result of the desire of my inquisitive mind to link a number of phenomena into one whole, in accordance with the laws of physics already known to me from school. But this is not so, since the Sea is the largest and most ancient element of water on Earth and therefore is endowed with the functions of a master on Earth. And not only life. And so the owner himself decides what of his secrets to reveal to Man, and what to hide behind seven locks. After all, many secrets of Nature determine the life of Nature itself, the disclosure of which may endanger the existence of Nature itself ...
Watching the waves, I concluded that nothing appears from nowhere and does not disappear without a trace; everything has a beginning and an end, and everything is explained by the physical laws of our material world.
But this is on condition that this or that phenomenon does not go beyond the limits of our world ...And after such an explanation, I calmed down and continued to observe the wave running ashore, as if it were a living creature that could move, then carry out its transformations as form as well as content. At the end of its influx on the shore, the wave weakens several times, not because it loses strength, having spent all the energy to overcome this short distance inland, but because it almost completely disappears. But not without a trace. Most of the water from this wave seeps into the sand of the coastal strip! And this is especially clearly visible not from the front, but from the side, when the water, almost gurgling, goes into the sand. And only a very small part of it goes into the sea along the sand surface already saturated with moisture, when the sand can no longer accept it.
And since the coast is always above sea level, then under the force of gravity, the water from the sand, having passed as if through a filter, returns back to the sea, already purified. It is the latter that is the main and significant phenomenon for the Sea. With the help of the sea surf, the Sea is self-purifying! And the Sea prepares a filter for this for itself, throwing a few grains of sand from its bottom ashore with each wave for hundreds of thousands of years, before breaking the coastal stones into grains of sand with its wave.
This is the picture I saw today, when I, immersed in the problems of the Sea and the sea surf, tried to unravel one of the mysteries of the Sea. And how many more similar and more frank mysteries does the Sea hide? “God only knows. And will I be worthy of the Sea revealing at least one more of its secrets to me?
wave voice
I'm at the water's edge.
The sea, trying to either play with me, threw one wave after another ashore, trying to get me and refresh me with its healing moisture. And, not getting it, it rustled with its displeased voice of the sea surf. I bare my legs and walk towards the wave, and it happily splashes them periodically. And it seems to me that she rejoices, having reached her goal. It's nice to feel her light tickle ...
I draw in the breath of the Sea with my nose to my full chest, its smells, which, in the form of a thick invisible veil, roll from the surface of the sea onto land and, stopping at a sheer cliff, are concentrated here, on the narrow edge of the coast. That is why, for several hours, lying there, higher up on the beach, I did not smell the sea - the way I feel it here, at the very water. And here the smell of the Sea is so strong that it covers all other smells, including the smells of human civilization. The smell of the sea, penetrating into me, slightly fogs my consciousness and makes me dizzy ...
But not only smells affect me the Sea and take possession of me. Its more distinct manifestation is in the sounds of the sea surf, which I perceive as the voice of the Sea. Listening to the voice of the Sea, but not yet trying to penetrate its content, I set out to determine what components the voice of the Sea consists of. Watching the waves periodically rushing ashore, I noticed that the so-called surf noise arises as a dispute between one wave rolling on the shore and another wave, already extinguished in its strength and, it seemed, giving up in its desire to jump out as far as possible on the shore. shore to find out: what is going on there, outside the sea element? And the oncoming strong wave, as it were, says to the tired wave: “Don't interfere!
Let me try the happiness of being chosen among the waves and reach the highest limit in the knowledge of the coastal world unknown to us ”...But, after 3-5 seconds of her intense desire, she dries up and, like a jellyfish, sluggishly and lazily spreads along the coast, seeps through the grains of sand into the underground channels of return to the Sea, and those who did not have time, as a weakened and dried up wave, return back to the Sea, towards a new strong wave. And, as before, when they meet, there is a characteristic sound of the surf. And so after 5-7 seconds everything repeats again ...
It seems that the wave is strong as long as it is inextricably linked with the Sea. You can watch how intensely and for a long time the wave rolls its crests there, far from the shore. I heard this force behind me when I was swimming far from the shore: some kind of noise and a loud splash, and I saw a lot of air bubbles in that place when I looked back. At that moment I thought: “Shark!
Thank God, it was just a splash of a wave…
But, breaking away from the Sea and jumping ashore, the wave loses its strength, as it breaks its connection with the Sea, and therefore, as such, disappears, turning into streams of water. And in this I see the enormous power of the Sea, which flows into everyone who is with her and in her. And leaves the one who leaves her element for good. I can imagine what efforts it took to hold on and not die for the first living organisms that left the sea element in ancient times and crawled out onto the still warm land, not cooled down from volcanic magma. Perhaps that is why every living organism on Earth today has such a force of life!
I absorbed this power of the Sea last summer, relaxing in Hurghada. Then the sea temperature allowed me to stay in the water for several hours, which I did. At the same time, my body entered into harmony with the sea element, I felt my unity with it. At the same time, my body, every organ and every cell of it healed.
Here, under the protection of the rock and under the hot Sun (which is about two o'clock in the afternoon), one could even decently get burned while lying on the mattresses taken from the wooden sun loungers up there. So few of those who decided to go to the beach in such a breeze did. But I decided to continue my earlier experiments of possible rapprochement with the Sea: I sat on a boulder at the very edge of the water, and therefore my legs were periodically overwhelmed by the waves. I was in close proximity to the sea and felt it with all my senses: tactilely - with bare legs, when the wave periodically ran up and tickled them, with my ears I heard the sound of the surf, with my eyes I contemplated the sea in breadth, into the distance and even deeper. Only I did not hear the smell of the sea as I expected: the wind carried all the smells into the sea - there, beyond the horizon. I felt the sea as I had hundreds of times before, and this incident brought nothing new.
If I describe what I have now seen, heard and tangible, then it will be cloyingly banal and uninteresting. My attempts to perceive the Sea with the feelings of the soul did not give a positive result. Apparently, the Sea was not in the mood to communicate with me today. He had more important problems, in connection with the impending cataclysms in Nature. After all, tomorrow, and maybe even tonight, there will be a real storm with huge and accelerated movements of air masses, pressure drops, temperatures, etc. And the life of the Sea and all its inhabitants is directly related to such changes in the atmosphere. It is possible that there may be losses. Therefore, for the Sea and its inhabitants, any cataclysm in Nature is a test of strength, a test of the truth of the place occupied in this life, and, in scientific terminology, a process of natural selection.
At such moments in Nature, the best indicators of vitality are developed and consolidated. And I, with my obsessive desire for communication, was clearly out of place and out of time. But the fact that I felt and understood the problems of the Sea already said that I was on the right track.
windmill
As the weather forecast promised, since January 19, when Epiphany frosts are cracking in Ukraine, here in Sharm El-Sheikh, from nowhere the wind has risen so strong that it’s just right, like some kind of marmot, to hide deep in a mink and not point your nose at the light of day. I have not seen such a wind since my stay in Alushta and life in a wooden house. But then a strong wind, which seemed to tear the roof of my house to shreds, was also accompanied by a heavy downpour and a thunderstorm. And it seemed even scarier. Now I am in a stone hotel and I am “not afraid of a gray wolf” in the guise of a windmill.
But, at the same time, behind this stone armor, I do not feel all the “charm” of the storm, which is so necessary for me in order to describe it with maximum authenticity and brilliance. And so I was forced to go out into the street, towards the elements.
The wind of considerable strength covered not only the territory of the hotel, where my eyes reached, but the whole of Sharm el-Sheikh and, in all likelihood, the entire Sinai Peninsula. It was Nature that evened out the pressure imbalance between Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. And, judging by the direction of the wind from west to east, the increased pressure front was over Africa. Something like a pipe was formed, through which air was intensively chasing. And somewhere in the middle of this pipe was our hotel "Poinciana Sharm resort" and I was in it.
The tallest trees on the territory of the hotel - palm trees - were the first to perceive the gusts of wind. Amazing plants in terms of wind resistance and optimal windage.
Long palm leaves were in the form of a fan only at the top. The lower ones, long since shrunken and fallen off, or, more often, neatly cut, formed a thick trunk, which took the main load from the wind. But it only wobbled a little. Our trees in Ukraine with a wide crown, from such winds, would have been uprooted long ago and would lie on the ground. And the palm trees stood imperturbably, in different directions, waving their panicles-leaves at their very top. The flexible stalks of palm leaves themselves coped with gusts of wind, without in the least puzzling the trunk from which they fed and through which the sun's gifts processed by the chlorophyll of the leaves came to the roots. And these ten long leaves, open wide with a diameter of six meters, were enough to provide the plant with everything necessary with their help.
Much lower than the palms are low-growing trees and bushes with flexible branches and translucent crowns, for which the wind, even of great strength, is not terrible. They sway in all directions and only rustle the leaves under his impulses.
And again the wind...
N-th day of my rest. I don't remember what the number is, but it doesn't matter, and it's so nice. That I am in the South, but in such a South, where it is warm in winter, but not hot. But, most importantly, the Sea, even this winter, is always warm and the water temperature in it does not fall below +24? S. And the air, how will it turn out: can it go down to +18? S. Everything depends on the wind and the Sun. By the way, the sun is like the moon. Naturally, I was not there, but according to the stories of eyewitnesses and theorists, the temperature difference in the sun is +60? C and in the shade -60? C, what is 120? WITH! But in Egypt, everything is simpler: the air temperature is mainly determined not by the Sun, but by the wind. And for four days the wind of increased strength has been blowing.
And, despite the hot Sun, the wind feels cold, and you freeze wildly, especially when you get out of the water.
Wind
Nine o'clock in the morning. Slight intermittent wind. But the sea is noisy with a continuous continuous rumble with pronounced periodic impacts of waves in shallow water near the shore. And that continuous sound of the sea comes from a distance beyond the reach of the eye and rolls at me from all the latitude of the sea: from the island of Tiran and beyond the cape of the peninsula, from the Gulf of Aqaba to the open Red Sea. What can be compared to the continuous sound of the sea? And with the noise of rain, and with the intense noise of a downpour, and with the noise of oak forests, as well as with the noise of many tens, if not hundreds of car tires on wet asphalt. But this analogy is only a rough comparison.
But the wind in the winter on the Red Sea is unusual.
He always, even in hot weather, on his wings brings cold, very noticeable to any vacationer, makes him wrap himself in beach towels or, even worse, put on warm sweaters. I noticed that it is not the air that warms the holiday-makers in Egypt in winter, but only the only sun: while you are in the sun, you are thrilled with bliss and you can even get burned from its excess. And as soon as a cloud comes up or a breeze blows, "goosebumps" instantly appear and an unpleasant cold begins to pierce the body to the very bones.
We have such a stubborn wind during the "Jewish groups", usually in March - three weeks before Easter. But only with the scent of spring. And I most clearly felt this aroma in Berdyansk on the shores of the Sea of Azov, when after winter it carried spring and therefore I heard the smell of spring in it. And here, in Sharm El Sheikh, the wind does not carry such obvious smells: what can be smells in the desert, except for the smells of sand.
It's time for me to write my story "The Old Man and the Wind. " And it will, as a first approximation, look like this:
January 29.2016. Friday
The Old Man and the Sea Wind
Late morning. I, along with other tourists, on the beach. The gentle African sun is already high and well warms our European bodies, despite the inertia of our thinking and the freshness in memory of the severity of Ukrainian January frosts of twenty-five degrees Celsius. And here, in the very south of the Sinai Peninsula, the sun is very hot and the air temperature is the same twenty-five degrees Celsius, only with a plus. A slight difference in the sign, but what comfort for the body and Soul...
But comfort usually does not last long.
Soon, out of nowhere, a strong wind swept across the entire coast of the Red Sea.
He rumbled with the poorly reinforced floorboards of the lifeguard’s observation tower above my head, began to rip mattresses off the sun loungers and carry them all over the beach, raise handfuls of sand with his palms and pour them into the eyes of the vacationers ...Where and who let out such an evil? No one could answer this question...
I will be 63 this year. Why am I not an Old Man? And therefore I write in the first person and give myself and my impressions of my struggle with the Wind as with the elements, setting out everything as it was from fresh memory and first hand. Moreover, I write down everything that happens in Nature, what the Wind creates and what I feel, and how I oppose myself to all this, from nature, right there, as they say, “on the spot”.
I do not argue, the Sea and the Ocean are a much more severe element than the Wind, and with them I would hardly have passed the test and won, as the Old Man won in E. Hemingway's story “The Old Man and the Sea”. But here I still have a chance. But it's only at first glance...
I am lying on the beach under the hot southern sun (even though the calendar says January). This circumstance already presupposes comfort and pleasure for the body and modest joy for the Soul. If there was no strong Wind, more precisely, Vetrugana. And this strong windmill, as they say, spoils all the raspberries. And the first confidence in an easy victory over the elements soon quickly disappears somewhere. In combination with a cold wind (and where did it absorb so much cold from, because it blows from Africa, almost from the equator? ), the Sun turns into a bright fake disk above your head, at its zenith, which, like the night Moon, shines, but not warm. Yes, I note, the Sun has already given up its main positions in front of the powerful element of the Wind. On the one hand, this inspires some fear of the power of the Wind element, on the other hand, the desire for rivalry and struggle, to win! This is the sweet word "Victory". Tell me, what man does not dream of Victory?
Yes, the whole essence of it is laid down by Mother Nature herself in this word. Without her, he is nothing! And, fueled by the desire to enter my natural state of a wrestler and win, I already internally set myself up for a long and difficult struggle. After all, such a unique case was given to me by Fate! ..
I'm lying on the edge. In front of me is the sea, so black that it seems that more than one hundred tankers of oil were poured into it and washed away so as not to bear any responsibility for it. And only frequent white crests of waves are visible on its surface - this is in order to show an even greater blackness of the sea against this contrast of white and black. And I suddenly thought: “After all, my distant ancestors called the Black Sea black in vain: they probably did not see the Red Sea under the pressure of a strong Vetrugan, as I see it like that. They would definitely change their minds in favor of the Red Sea, calling it the "Black" ...
And then I caught myself on one of my unethical behavior in relation to the Wind: I address him in the third person: “he”, “him”, etc. Who will like it? And I decided to correct myself...And enter into a dialogue with him...I do not want such a strong natural element as the Wind to be my Enemy. I'm not going to declare war on the Wind - a man is too weak for this, although for the most part he magnifies himself exorbitantly, take, for example, his self-styled "Crown of Nature". Ugh, on him! What kind of crown are you if you are the executioner of Nature! And in general, I am surprised how long you, a person, still exist in this Nature, and indeed in this World, when you are a foreign body in them! Only, perhaps, because all your Evil that you do in this world is compensated by a small number of righteous people in your midst who do great Good...
And now I want to stand before the elements of the Wind on the shores of the Red Sea, not as an enemy to the Wind, but as a friend to it.
Moreover, try, if possible, to become a part of this element. I know that in our material world it is impossible, in contrast to the world of animate phenomena of Nature. And therefore, in order to show my predisposition to the Wind, I begin a monologue, hoping for a dialogue with him.
Monologue with the Wind.
"Wind. Mighty wind!
I came to visit you on the seaside to admire you in all your strength and your greatness! For this I respect you, I bow before you.
Wind, I'm trying to breathe you. I catch your breath and fill my chest with it in all its breadth and depth. To the very bottom. Each alveoli of my lungs enriches my blood with you and it carries you throughout my body, to every cell of my body. You, the Wind, are all in me, and therefore I am with you as one whole ...
You, the Wind, are the great element of Nature, and in vain you are underestimated by your brothers and sisters - other elements and phenomena - the inhabitants of Nature, including humans.
And that is why you are sometimes angry and in your rage you do exorbitant Evil. I'm not trying to be your friend: I'm too small, weak and miserable in my essence to become friends with you on an equal footing. And I will not refuse your patronage, if it is your will.
For myself, I want to find out: where does Evil come from in Nature, in its essence, woven from absolute Good. Including yours, Wind. Maybe you are so angry and angry because you are not understood? I would also be angry for this with the whole World, if not more ...But maybe you show your strength, beauty and power in order to attract attention to yourself and establish yourself in Nature at a worthy level. If this were not the case, who would pay attention to you, would know that you exist at all? Is it just me, who knew you still on the Black Sea, gentle and quiet, carrying on its light wings the aroma of mountain herbs and the smells of the Sea ...And how much then did I devote my poems and aphorisms to you? ..
It is always better to be a friend than an enemy.
I know and am friendly with your, Wind, real friends: with the Sky, under which you live and walk freely - the way you want. And it forgives all your pranks. The role of Heaven in your life, according to the concepts of our human life, is “protection”. A true friend to you is the Earth and its entire surface, with lakes, seas and oceans. After all, they, together with the Sun, give birth to you the way you are: overheating in one place and undercooling in another create favorable conditions for your birth - the pressure difference. And then you appear with your good mission - you eliminate the imbalance in this world. And that on the way you created something, so these are trifles, in comparison with the great work that you do in Nature. This explanation is based on physics, that is, a very primitive interpretation, so that a person understands the essence.
The real magic of your birth is incomprehensible to a person, due to the inferiority of his mind and the underdevelopment of his feelings of the Soul, oppressed by the power of the mind. If the strength of the Soul's feelings prevailed over the strength of the mind, a person would explain all the phenomena in the World and in Nature in a completely different way. And I hope that you, the Wind, as my mentor and teacher, will help me to do this. I know that you, the Wind, will demand from me devotion and fidelity to you, and also establish a taboo on the subtleties of our relationship. And all because our common mother with you - Nature has established between itself, its constituent parts - the phenomena to which you, the Wind, and man belong - an insurmountable border so that this upstart is a man (the hand does not rise to write it with a capital letter ) did not blow up and did not drag himself along with all of Nature, and even our entire World, - to the Underworld !! ! »
I sent my verbal, or rather, mental message to the Wind and waited for an answer.
And this time the sea began to ebb. And the sea, leaving the land with the wind as a gift of a hundred meters of rocky area with shallow water, went beyond the sheer cliff of corals, into its bottomless depth - to where, immediately behind the coral reef, there is a cliff tens of meters deep. And from there he makes his claims to the wind. The characteristic voice of the oncoming wave is no longer heard, but continuous noise is heard. And this noise seems to me like a many-voiced choir of many thousands of particles of the sea. What are they singing about, or maybe arguing, not listening to each other, but only to themselves? Hard to say.
Resolving a dispute with the elements
And the Wind, having tamed the sea, returned to the shore. He saw me, his old acquaintance, with whom he did not finish the argument: who wins? The element of man or man the element? And he began to circle around me, wanting to continue the interrupted debate. The friendship that I proposed in a mental message, in all likelihood, he rejected ...or left for later.
I, like a baby, quietly snoring in my towel-cocoon, soon blissfully and even smiling, fell asleep to the monotonous sound of the sea and the howling of the Wind, no longer terrible for me.
I don’t remember what I dreamed about, but I assume that the Victory over Vetrugan. It couldn't be otherwise. And he woke up late, when there was no one on the beach, and the Arab beach worker Mohammed clicked folding wooden deck chairs, prepared them for the night and in the morning, so that the morning beachgoers could use them comfortably. And the Wind continued to walk along the deserted beach, but having already significantly extinguished its impudence and desire to be a dictator in this life ...He did not touch me: he knew that in our dispute "Who is whom" I won.
Women
Metamorphoses of a man at a resort
Here, at the resort, in the conditions of a small Paradise, people are an order of magnitude kinder. Because many problems that usually cause negativity disappear.
At the same time, they rejoice at their exclusivity and that they can afford such southern exoticism in the middle of winter. Although, to be honest, there are practically no single women at the winter resort. If such appear, then, most often, with girlfriends. All other women are with husbands, lovers or friends. And all because it is much more difficult for a woman to raise money for a tourist trip than for a man. This is our "gender" policy...
Here in the resort of Sharm El Sheikh, I identified several (which I managed in such a short period of time) types of women. Here they are:
mother woman
What mother would not want to take her child to the sea? And they do, if the opportunity arises. I watched with tenderness how a mother spoon-feeds a one-year-old child in a hotel restaurant. And he uncontrollably shouts at the whole restaurant, demanding this or that edible dish. And until you give it to him, he will not calm down.
Having fed her young child to the full, until belching and reaching a relaxed half-asleep state (the process of digestion also requires the mobilization of considerable internal forces), only then the mother herself begins to eat ...No less touching picture of a mother with a child playing in the sand on the shore by the sea . But that's not what this is about.
It is much more interesting to watch a woman-mother taking care of her husband like a child (? ! ) You rarely see this in everyday life and in a full-length version, but here at the resort it is quite a common occurrence. Here is an example of a real case:
In our company there was also a woman from Dnepropetrovsk, who took care of her husband for all seven days of her vacation, like a child. She already has two adult sons who live their own lives and do not need maternal care.
But the desire to be a mother in terms of upbringing and direct supervision of every step of her ward has remained, like a not passing atavism. What’s more, my husband loved it. Moreover, over time it became his vital need. Especially during periods of frequent drinking. And at the resort in the "All inclusive" system, everything contributes to this: spirits - at least five types, as well as wine and beer. The latter, however, in limited quantities, and then in small plastic cups - a lot to be completely drunk, you can’t drink! But with the help of vodka, gin or any similar drink, it is easy to achieve, provided, of course, that the bartender does not dilute them.
So, our friend got used to the bar with a frequency greater than he breathed, and with the same need.
And the Arab bartender Mahmud with a company of his fellow tribesmen gladly poured him every time, as soon as our Sasha (that was his name) expressed a desire to drink, moreover, without drinking, and without eating anything but a cigarette. And so on up to several dozen times. They poured him alcohol and had fun, watching how this process goes: from sober to drunk. In addition, the exorbitant norms of one-time consumption of alcohol were supported by a pack of cigarettes as a gift to the bartender Mahmud. When this process brought Sasha to condition, his wife Olga stepped into her role as a caring mother ...We don’t discuss the details, and they are so obvious. But the equanimity and confidence of Sasha in his rightness, delighted me. And so it was every day. If the guardianship of the wife was weakened, thanks to the magic word from Sasha's lips: “I'm dying! ”, everything was restored with renewed vigor and zeal.
But, according to our mutual friend Yura, who, by the way, played an important role here, Sasha’s trick was more like blackmail ...
To our advice from the outside: “Drop it! ”, was accompanied by the answer: “Yes, it’s a pity, a person will die. ” Having learned later, during the period of revelations, the true cause of Sasha's binges, I, as if anticipating, expressed my opinion to Olga that she was to blame for this ...The question: "Where is the way out? " - remained open ...
Femme fatale
Here in Sharm el-Sheikh I happened to meet another type of woman - Larisa from Odessa - a femme fatale.
Widow for six years, followed by three repetitions. And each time he receives a large inheritance. But why she, with such legacies, is now resting in such a mediocre hotel as the Poinciana Sharm Resort, remains a mystery to me. It is possible that the Odessa woman in our friendly company has exhausted all means and is now in search of a fourth contender for her hand and heart.
About the latter, including her desire, Larisa spoke openly to her friends. And the fact that the applicant is also on the tragic conclusion of the pathologist, Larisa for some reason is silent.
The women of our company at the same age as Larisa were surprised by her beauty and youth in appearance. To their direct question about this, the standard answer followed: “I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I lead a healthy lifestyle. ” But to look like that, it was clearly not enough! And at the same moment, like a flash, the thought arose in me: “But isn’t our Odessa witch Larisa? » After all, there are Kyiv witches, there are also Zhytomyr ones, and why shouldn’t there be Odessa witches? And the vacant place for Larisa is quite suitable for all her indicators. Only one thing is embarrassing: Larisa laid eyes on Yura from our own company, to which Olya reacted violently. Something unkind feels her mother's heart. Or for some other reason...
Olya from Odessa
Late evening. The bar is already closed.
And therefore, in order to soften the upcoming meeting with a frosty and slushy winter in our homeland in a few hours, we gave ourselves over to the power of humor. Moreover, the inhabitants of Odessa are easy-going in this matter. And the beautiful Larisa set the tone for this, to whom I presented a volume of my resort sayings the day before. They most of all concerned the woman at the resort. Olga read them together with Larisa and both burst into laughter, which could not attract the attention of Olga's husband Alexander. By the way, in my aphorisms on the resort theme, husbands do not always look in the ideal perspective (they may someday beat me for this). In my opinion, a husband, especially at a resort, should carefully follow every movement of his wife, and even the movement of her Soul. Indeed, in the resort, unlike ordinary life, there are so many temptations!
Despite the non-working bar (according to the schedule, for some reason it worked until 21-30, and not until 23-00, as everywhere else), we sat at the bar for several hours, not noticing the time. My (according to my new acquaintances) funny aphorisms were perceived at the rally and caused a strong reaction. And my comments, regarding the specific conditions in which they were created, enhanced the effect ...
And then I noticed that Olya, the wife of Alexander, whom I am almost twice as old as, began to look at me very mysteriously, putting her beautiful curly head on the bar and smiling mysteriously. She was serious. At the same time, when her husband was tearing his stomach from another aphorism that Larisa was reading ...
And I remembered the essay “The Aesop Effect” I recently wrote here in Sharm El Sheikh and the recommendation that my husband was immediately written down to be attentive to any movement of his wife at the resort and, above all, the movement of her soul ...
But in general, a wife without attention is someone else's wife.
But the Odessans still flew away ...
CREATIVITY IN THE RESORT
Moment of creativity
I am the last days on the Red Sea. Two or three more days of heavenly life - and I will again plunge into the European winter of the "fierce" month. In Africa there are no such names even during the winter months. In particular, February in Egypt is called "Sabbath" and is not at all the same interpretation as in Ukraine. The last days of my winter summer ...Some kind of pun turned out. And I, as if for the last time before a long time period, try to breathe in, absorb all the charm of this unusual summer in the middle of winter with every cell of my physical body, every convolution of the fibers of my soul. And I write. I write non-stop and without any restrictions - everything that will gush over me in addition to my consciousness and will. I hasten to write what appeared for a moment and will never visit me again. And I will lose him forever. When else will this happen again?
This picture was prepared for me even before my birth and it is called “Destiny”. The task of my life is to lay out puzzles according to a pre-prepared picture. And as soon as I put the last puzzle into the matrix, my life will end ...
Service at the resort
"Hour of the Wolf" in Egypt
11 o'clock cheers. As it was in the Soviet Union and went from Moscow, the hour of the Wolf. I want to remind those who did not live in Moscow at that time, and indeed under the Soviet Union, alcohol was sold in those days starting at 11 am. And why is this the hour of the Wolf - this is because on the clock of the puppet theater building of S. Obraztsov in Moscow, next to the number "11" on the clock face, a figure of the Wolf was depicted. And people who drink and suffer often differ in originality of thinking and therefore very successfully connected these two events ...So it was customary to call this hour, a fixed hour for all drinkers in the USSR, the name of the beast - the Wolf.
This is partly because it was cheap and there was such a disgusting smell after it ...Now beer has remained like beer, with the same taste, color and smell, but with preservatives that guarantee its suitability for six months (previously it was 2-3 days - and already was considered stale, it was possible to pour it out), much more expensive and, thanks to advertising, prestigious, especially among young people. Beer production has become very profitable. Business is business.
Beer here in Egypt, other than water, is more or less a real drink with minimal chemicals. And, most importantly, they are opened in glass bottles and in front of you. In my opinion, strong alcoholic drinks in Egypt are made on the basis of alcohol from oil (fortunately, there is no shortage of oil here and nearby in the countries of the Middle East). Then they are flavored and painted over in the desired color, in accordance with the name on the bottle label (also plastic).
Vodka in Russia is not much better, as it is made from the material abundant in this country - “driven from sawdust”. (Remember, Vysotsky: “If vodka was not driven from sawdust, what would we have from five bottles? ”). Ukraine has a problem with oil and forests. Russia raises prices for oil, despite the fall in the world barrel, and the forests in the Carpathians - the cat cried: almost everything was cut down by enterprising businessmen when protecting corrupt officials and embezzlers in local and higher echelons of power). But on the other hand, there is a lot of wheat, and therefore alcohol is made from grain - that is why Ukrainian vodka is famous all over the world! Even here, in Egypt, at every step you hear: "Chenzh ... , I will buy Ukrainian vodka. " I confess, I myself am a sinner; during a previous trip to Sharm el-Sheikh, instead of having a drink with friends, he exchanged one of the two bottles of vodka put at customs for a bucket of strawberries at the local market.
An interesting detail: at the end of this barter, which is quite common for Egypt, the Egyptian immediately, in front of me, opened the bottle and checked its content for taste: is it water? And what does the ban on the Koran have to do with it, when business demands to be careful and prudent in such transactions...Another time I changed a bottle of vodka with a small surcharge for a kilo of hibiscus tea...
"All inclusive" in the restaurant "Poinciana Sharm Resort"
Due to the reduction in the flow of tourists from Russia, Great Britain, Germany and other countries of Western Europe, the service climate in hotel restaurants, including the Poinciana Sharm Resort, has also changed. And I especially clearly felt this, who, two or three months before the start of the crisis, was in two hotels in Sharm El Sheikh and Hurghada of the 3 * and 4 * categories, and therefore there is something to compare with.
The range of dishes has been reduced compared to last year.
And so that their number remains the same, the cheapest product, for example, cabbage, is laid out in five different forms: cut into strips, cubes, rings, lengthwise and across. Sometimes you wonder at the skill of the cook: how skillful his hands are! I can imagine how much of this cabbage is thrown away after some of these salads are served the next day under the guise of "fried vegetables"! But it’s not a pity to throw it away - after all, a cheap product, it’s not cheaper. But from the assortment of dishes on the display flickers in the eyes.
But the problem is with meat. This is one of the most expensive products in Egypt (but not chicken, which is grown, as elsewhere, on biostimulants). But even here the hotel administration found a way out: they put 2-3 small pieces per plate on the only meat dish of the cook with a limited distribution. Begging for another piece is a whole problem, and it’s a shame: you sink to the level of a begging beggar in an underpass.
Like any of our men, I like to have a good snack after 3-5 glasses of strong at 35-40? , mind you, not divorced "Sambuca" (or "Yozo") - the restaurant is not a bar, they do not breed here! And I think meat is the best snack. Who will argue with me? Moreover, I am a descendant of the Zaporizhzhya Cossacks, who loved to eat so heartily that after dinner they fell dead into the penates of the god of sleep, Morphius, and gave all of themselves to his power. Among the Arabs, the god Morphine appears in a completely different role ...
But, apparently, it is a novelty for the Arabs to drink so much (they, Muslims, have a ban on alcohol) and eat so much. I'm afraid they will soon, to our great chagrin, abandon the "All inclusive" system and switch, as in the Emirates, to one breakfast.
But back to our "rams".
I finally realized that this Arab was trained with one Russian phrase so that he would run around the restaurant and, poking his finger into the plate, would say to everyone who took the second portion: “Not in the bag! »
After I realized this, what could I do? Crack this insolent fellow on his protruding ears? So I wasn't drunk enough. Start proving that I don't even have a bag? I considered below my dignity. And I decided to do the opposite: to the surprise of the bartender, I ordered three more glasses of Ouzo, and, despite the persecution of the importunate Arab, and not paying attention to his chirping, I ate this drink with three more servings of meat. And, leaving the restaurant, he turned his pockets inside out ...What was thought, at the same time, the Arab and whether he was ashamed, I was no longer interested. I began to understand how different people we are all ...And I ceased to be more surprised ...
Criticism of negative hotel reviews
And where did your conscience go to scold the hotel like that? Why should the hotel suffer from your negative criticism on the Internet, just because you have become poorer and cannot afford a more expensive hotel?
In connection with the foregoing, I suddenly “ripened” an aphorism: Hotels (as well as alcohol intake) should be taken according to the increasing category of stars. Then there will be no misunderstanding. After all, everyone knows that everything is known in comparison. For me, for example, the conditions of the Poinciana Sharm Resort hotel seemed very chic, compared to the living conditions in a bungalow (like a hermit's cell in the caves of the Kyiv Lavra - even the windows are like that! ) of the Al Samaka Beach hotel in Hurghada ...I'm not going to create a negative opinion about any hotel, because for someone who has previously been in a 2* or "starless" hotel, "Al Samaka Beach" will seem like Paradise ...So, in general: Blame not life is not cool, but myself unlucky.
All of the above are the blessings of the mortal body.
Only an animal can evaluate its external conditions of life in this way and choose the most acceptable for it. But a person often forgets that, unlike an animal, he also has a Soul. And this Soul requires appropriate living conditions for itself. And these conditions are not given as a gift from the outside, but a person often creates them himself. With regard to the conditions of recreation in the resorts of Egypt. Nature has given the initial conditions for the good of the soul: the warm Red Sea at any time of the year, corals and the underwater world diverse in terms of inhabitants ...and then, you yourself take it all and develop it, perceive it to the fullest extent, how deeply you are able to do it, and enjoy this. I do not suggest that everyone reach the highest limit of spiritual bliss, for example, by creating spiritual values on their own - this is the lot of those chosen by Fate.
It is enough to enjoy the already created Nature and do not forget to share it with others, on the same Internet.
At the same time, on the Internet, as a reflection of our everyday life, one “everyday life”, and so stated, as if everyone is trying to contrive in front of each other, to find and express as much negativity in the topic under discussion as possible. After reading these reviews, I don't want to go anywhere. Nevertheless, you go by choosing the hotel where there are the least negative reviews. Although there are spots on the Sun. And no hotel is without flaws. And negative reviews are a purely subjective opinion, and I was convinced of this in practice by choosing one of the hotels, about which there are dozens, if not hundreds of negative reviews on the Internet. The hotel turned out to be quite decent for such a price - $ 25 per day with a flight! Where else can you find such a "freebie"?
I thought about this phenomenon and asked myself the question: Maybe human nature is woven from a continuous negative and a person is looking for in any phenomenon what is dearest to him: negativity! "Birds of a feather flock together". I once expressed the following thought on this subject: “If you want to know a person: is he good or bad, ask him himself: What is his environment like? . . "But this is not worthy of a Man with a capital letter, in which the positive should prevail over the negative. And in the world around him, he must see what is closer and dearer to him - only the positive aspects of this or that phenomenon, admire, enjoy them, share these impressions with others, trying through his perception to transfer this joy of the Soul to everyone else. For example, here, on the Red Sea, what do those minor flaws in hotel rooms mean compared to the miracle that Nature gives us?
And also what the owners of this land - the Arabs - arranged in the form of beautifully designed pools, original design developments and landscape projects on the territory of the hotel? Yes, these “crumbs” of shortcomings are mouse fuss! And these dozens of authors of negative reviews are perceived by me as small people impoverished in Soul, who do not disdain to delve into dirty linen. Apparently, by their nature, they are not able to describe with the same inspiration how they savor minor flaws, the delights of the underwater world and living corals, the beauty of landscape design, the fact that here, in this area, in winter it is two to three degrees warmer than in other places. and the winds are much weaker ...Yes, a lot more positive and amazing can be found in simple things that bring joy to a holiday in this hotel! And then minor material and everyday shortcomings, in comparison with the truly great Spiritual, will turn into nothing, into dust.
And now I have already passed half the term of this good. If you have a link to life, as to the time of day, then the current time can be called noon. And it will stretch for another nine (! ) days - until my departure to Winter with a twenty-degree frost, snow drifts, and, which is not excluded, with a cold apartment, galloping inflation and rising prices for everything. And worst of all, war. And, the worst thing is that this “worst of all” has become familiar and ordinary for us. And you are resting here, on the Red Sea, together with your fellow countrymen and trying not to think about all this.
Nine days have passed on the Red Sea. How long and short at the same time. Long from the mass of new and unusual experiences that Nature itself has given you and developed by their Arab owners here, on a small plot of land between the mountains and the Red Sea.
It was impossible to walk through the restaurant...And that's why I was left hungry today...
R e l and g and i. Faith
Mirage of the Holy Places of Israel
Now I had the opportunity to relax in Sharm El Sheikh for almost three weeks and at a ridiculously low price - only $500! . After the passage of half of this period, when I knew almost everything in this place and enjoyed everything that these places give, the question arose of expanding my horizons. And, above all, a unique opportunity to visit Israel, the holy places associated with the earthly path of Jesus Christ. When else will there be such an opportunity? During my last stay in Sharm El Sheikh, I learned that people, in order to save money on a trip to Israel to holy places, specially take tourist tours to Sharm El Sheikh, from where you can organize a daily trip to Israel for just $60-$100.
And many people go, not only tourists, to see everything with their own eyes, but also those who suffer, with their own problems of the mortal body: incurable and incurable diseases, in the hope of recovery, but also in order to heal the Soul.
Applied to yourself. As such, threatening my life, the disease, thank God, I do not have. But my Soul, in the current period of my life, when I devote most of myself to creativity - this sublime action, approaching the Almighty, requires the right direction in its impulses. I thought about this last summer. And even, as it seemed to me, he was ripe for this: there was an irresistible desire to go to the Holy Places. But, alas, external forces did not let me join the shrine. And I flew away, instead of Sharm El Sheikh, for fourteen days to Hurghada, from where it is no longer possible to go to Israel, but to fly is problematic. And here I am again in Egypt and in the places of the most auspicious trip to Israel.
It seems that fate itself gives me such an opportunity - to visit the shrines. All conditions have been created for this… All that remains is to cultivate in oneself an irresistible desire to visit those places. My goal also contributes to this: to dedicate the rest of my life, as long as the Almighty gives me, to creativity, the discovery of new channels for comprehending the Truth, which is impossible without divine power. And I believe that through these holy places, as through a kind of channel, such a path can open for me. With my inner vision I am trying to penetrate this idea and check whether this is really so ...And I see that this is true: in my work I need the blessing of Jesus Christ himself, so that he will allow me to create what, perhaps, He did not have time to finish to people, when in his life on Earth he was a God-man and could communicate directly with people and convey the Truth to them through the Word of Truth.
It is precisely the Word of Truth that I lack in my work. The devil's lies are leaking out more and more. And, perhaps, that this is because of the vices that overcome me ...
I imagine that in the Holy Places of Israel there is a bright Light of Truth. And he began to open up to me by the fact that I clearly imagine him, closing my eyes. And all the places where the foot of Jesus Christ stepped are shrouded in a fertile yellow light, which gives inexhaustible blessing to the Soul to all those who have opened their Soul for this and have a great desire to absorb it into themselves ...I see this with my inner vision and I will be ready for all this, if all the long and dangerous journey to Israel I set myself up for a meeting with Jesus Christ… And if in the process of this I have tears of the sensitivity of the Soul, then I am on the right path…
My thoughts were interrupted by a mullah calling Muslims to lunchtime prayer...
I listened to the mullah.
Evening. I'm in a hotel near the pool, at the bar. Hell, I drink beer.
The sun sets behind the mountains. Daylight fades.
And then, from the city array, the voice of the mullah begins to sound, calling on Muslims to perform the evening prayer.
I, an outside observer, an adherent of Christianity - a completely different religion. But did he pluck up the courage to understand what the mullah is talking about, which is not really clear even to the Muslims themselves? But what makes me feel like this! I do not know Arabic, but listening to the voice of the mullah, it is not necessary to know Arabic, just as listening to music, it is not necessary to know the native language of the composer who composed this music, or musical notation. How do I perceive the voice of the mullah? - This is a call not only to prayer - the prayer of Muslims for the glory of Allah, but more deeply - a call to the world to follow the laws from Allah set forth in the Koran. The mullah's voice is a reminder to all Muslims how they should live in righteousness, which will make them eternal.
Why the East, if the main part of Egypt is located in the northeast of Africa? And only a small part of it - the Sinai Peninsula and in its southern part - Sharm El Sheikh - on the border between Asia and Africa.
“The East is a delicate matter” - for the first time, loudly, for the whole world and for the widest possible audience, the protagonist of the film “White Sun of the Desert” made the definition of this part of the world. I knew about the greatness of the East not from school history books, but even earlier. And I still have a reverent attitude towards the East, especially towards its ancient culture.
The East is difficult for us, Europeans, to know. This is a completely different world, different from ours, different customs, different religion, different mentality. Although our religions have a single basis. Thanks to this basis, true religions exist for thousands of years, despite severe persecution in certain periods of time.
Religion is the same theory of consciousness.
I’m not talking about a sharp drop in the saturation of hotels with vacationers even in such pearls of resort Egypt as Sharm El Sheikh or Hurghada, Ukrainians are increasingly beginning to master them due to cheaper tours and closing the border to Crimea. In addition, surprisingly, as my marketing research showed, holidays, even with air travel, in Egypt are much cheaper than holidays of this class in the Crimea or the Carpathians ...Whoever does not believe can compare prices for an hour by going to the Internet. Moreover, where else can you find such a “cheap freebie” in the form of “All inclusive” with such an unlimited abundance of spirits and snacks, as in Egypt with swimming in the warm exotic Red Sea in winter? And we must hurry, because, in my opinion, such a “freebie” may soon end: this system is painfully unprofitable for Egyptian restaurateurs due to a sharp decrease in the number of vacationers.
After all, such a system is beneficial only with a large number of vacationers in the tens and hundreds of thousands of people a year. So hurry up, my countrymen and potential holiday-goers from other countries, before such an opportunity becomes a long-forgotten rarity.
But now it's not about that at all. And about the fact that a rare Russian can now fly to Egypt, just like Gogol: “a rare bird can fly to the middle of the Dnieper”! Although Gogol's is a clever technique of hyperbole in literature, and an unprecedented incident with a Russian in Egypt is in kind! And I personally had a chance to see this unique case today, on the first day of the New Year in the old style in Sharm El Sheikh, at the Poinciana Sharm Resort, a rather cozy hotel.
Imagine, we are sitting with our friendly small company in the "Active Pool Bar" and drinking: who is tea, who is coffee, and who is whiskey or rum - each according to his personal preference and desire. We all came from Ukraine: from Kyiv, Kremenchug and other cities.
Therefore, we talked about politics ...Although, this morning I made a word to myself about politics at the resort not a word. I came to this decision because we now have this “policy” in Ukraine, in connection with the war in Donbass with tens of thousands of victims, millions of refugees, and in addition to this, terrible corruption and embezzlement at all levels of government, bringing the people of Ukraine to poverty. And because of this, the whole soul is overwhelmed with such negativity that the white whale wants to howl in despair. And breaking out of this cesspool into a corner of the earthly Paradise - to the Red Sea, it would be a real blasphemy here, at the resort, to add the same negative to yourself. And this despite the fact that there is an opportunity for a week or two to forget about all this and absorb that inexhaustible grace of the Soul, which is provided by the resort Sharm El Sheikh.
But, alas, we did not manage to exclude this topic of politics at all.
The whole situation and the low occupancy of our and other hotels in Egypt by vacationers did not allow us to completely exclude this topic from our communication. And when, by the way, about the Russians, one lady from our company said that she was Russian, at first no one paid attention to such a message: you never know people of various nationalities live in Ukraine, not only Russians, but also Germans, Uzbeks, Tatars, Jews … And they are all citizens of Ukraine. But when the lady began to pull out a passport with a double-headed eagle from her red purse, everyone except her husband, who was already accustomed to this, fell silent for a moment and froze with their mouths open ...But if you saw what a transformation happened to our bartender, who in that moment came by chance to our table. Where did his sour sadness of facial expression go: he broke into a wide smile, so wide that everything else was not visible behind this smile. After all, such a miracle happens!
And for me it was no longer a miracle to contemplate the red double-headed document of a Russian woman, the transformed bartender with his widest smile on his face made a much greater impression. I imagined what was going on in his head behind this smile: those very pleasant moments in his life that warmed his soul and filled his pockets with dollars until recently and seemed that they would be eternal ...And for a long time after that, that smile and tender expression did not leave from his face and he was completely, as if enchanted, under the impression of those recent memories. And his work: he took orders, poured, served - he did it mechanically ...And only after some time, the realities of real life brought him back to reality. And again that sad smile that had hitherto taken possession of his face.
And we have a new topic: we began to make plans for how much the bartender will pour us more and without any restrictions on beer and spirits, because in our company there is such a “masterpiece” that amazed the bartender and caused him such admiration and a favorable expression on his face and smile.
But, at the same time, someone from our company turned this medal to the other, negative side and reminded us how five days ago two failed ISIS fighters broke into one of the hotels in Hurghada in search of Russians in order to get even for Russian attacks in Syria and staged massacre. Innocent holiday-goers from European countries suffered. There were no Russians there...Now, in our situation, it may turn out to be similar.
And now the hour of separation has come - to cut off on the living that which has become a single whole. And we became a single whole thanks to the fact that we have a lot in common. Common to all, first of all, is a single place of stay - the resort of Sharm El Sheikh, which, with its uniqueness, like strong cement, can unite people of different characters, tastes and preferences. And he brought us together.
And therefore, thanks to the conditions of the small earthly Paradise that Sharm El Sheikh provided us, and to the positive changes that have taken place here with us and between us, we became friends so easily and naturally. Moreover, a person is a social being and cannot live outside of society, not be friends with anyone and not communicate, if he is not a hermit, for example, during creative inspiration, as sometimes happens with the author of these lines.
And so, yesterday was our last, farewell evening.
And in every possible way, first of all, due to sleep and the upcoming hard and vain day of the flight, we tried to extend the hours and minutes of our friendship and live direct communication. And on this evening, turning into deep night, and then, almost into the morning, each of us learned much more about the other than during the entire previous stay here at the resort. And this trust brought us even closer.
But, the uncontrollable laws of Time, despite our protests (and what are we, miserable people, on some small planet Earth, compared to the Universal Space and Time? ), brought the moment of separation closer. And it inevitably arrived...
And in the morning I was alone. But the loneliness of the body was not so terrible as the oppressive loneliness of the Soul. From such a terrible state, I wanted to howl at the whole world.
Such a sharp drop between the cheerful life of the body with no less stormy joy of the Soul and the oppressive loneliness of the body and Soul after the departure of friends can be compared with the moment of transition to another world ...
I had to live here at the resort for another eleven days. Involuntarily, this moment after parting with friends, with a terrible state of emptiness and loneliness, was prolonged for these eleven upcoming days. And longing knew no bounds...
But not much time has passed. I almost overslept breakfast (and before that I got up very early to add my impressions of the previous day in my Diary, often even met the dawn), I noticed that in the morning a lot of vacationers drove into the hotel - fresh and joyful from the upcoming vacation with swimming in the warm Red Sea.
And, perhaps, joyful from the fact that at least for a while they escaped from the clutches of the war in Ukraine, the oppressive problems with the increase in all sorts of tariffs and prices, severe frosts of twenty-five degrees at the risk of being left without heating in apartments and houses from February? And so the thought flashed through my mind: "A holy place is never empty. " And newcomers also tend to create small friendly companies ...Perhaps I will be lucky to be in one of them. And this will not be my betrayal of my previous company, friends who flew away this morning. After all, no one made any promises to anyone, Even if some of us had very close relationships ...A resort is a resort!
A small remnant of happiness
There are five days left of my holiday in the winter Sharm El Sheikh. I started counting the rest of the days.
When there were a lot of them, you don’t appreciate and don’t count, you think that there are an infinite number of them, and in recent days you grab hold of every minute, and then a moment, to prolong it ...But, alas, in our world everything ever comes to an end . It's good when the bad ends. But the same fate awaits all good things. And the last one is so offensive that it happens. But, on the other hand, it’s fair: there should be enough good for everyone. Not only some. And therefore, every day from the rooms of our hotel, from five in the morning already rested, they leave for the airport, breaking the silence of the predawn morning with the sound of the wheels of suitcases at the junction of paving slabs. And new ones come in their place, eager to relax under the southern sun and swim in the warm Red Sea in winter. There is a kind of circulation of human flows between continents, like flows of water in a heated vat ...
January 30.2016. Saturday
The last two of twenty (! ) days of my vacation on the Red Sea.
Tomorrow afternoon - departure, and in the evening - departure. The end of heavenly life on the Red Sea. And again - winter. And that's why such a resentment instills in me for the fact that fate gives so little good in our life. I internally resent and protest, but what can I do? - Absolutely nothing! That's how bad it is sometimes in life. And all because in seventeen days I got used to a carefree life in the comfortable conditions of a resort summer, when it is winter in my homeland, and I began to think that this would always be the way for me. Bad habit!
The only consolation is that I will live for a long time, even there, in Ukraine, in the harsh conditions of the Ukrainian winter, with memories of the times spent on the Red Sea that delight the Soul. And if, by and large, then at any moment I can jump out of our, not always responsive and kind world, into another world, full of joy and happiness, and enjoy life there.
It is a pity only for its spiritual essence.
January 31.2016. Sunday
On the eve of the "deportation" from Paradise
Three hours left before leaving the hotel. I obey the laws of external circumstances and become attached to the bus that will come for me, the only passenger from the Poinciana Sharm Resort, at 17-00. Next - at 19-25 binding to the plane, which will lift me into the air and in less than four hours take me to Kyiv, where I will again be free. I do not want to fly away from Sharm El Sheikh - this warm region, where it is so good, cozy and comfortable. And therefore I estimate this time of 17-00 as the beginning of my forced, in addition to my desire, deportation from Egypt. But these are just my feelings, which do not always appear in unison with the desires of the body. And therefore, my sound mind, as a referee, puts things in order, putting everyone in their places: I signed a contract, paid money only for that period of Paradise, which ends today at 17-00 - please fulfill your contractual obligations!
And you begin to enter into the realities of the life that was before flying to Sharm El Sheikh, and in the contrast of these two lives you understand: what a terrible and cruel our real world is!
But there is nothing to do, because I am an integral part of this real world and these nineteen days on the Red Sea are just its outlet of my real world ...
And therefore I give myself up to complete dependence on external circumstances. And in all this, there is only one thing that worries me: these three and a half hours, from the moment the wheels of the aircraft landing gear come off the concrete slabs of Sharm El-Sheikh Airport and until the moment they touch the concrete slabs of the Borispol airport in Kyiv. From concrete to concrete! And I have to go through these three and a half hours with anxiety for my life ...Three and a half hours, like my whole life ...
How long time is running out today. Even sleep cannot cut it.
As before, boats from walks to the island of Tiran are drawn to their bay in a string.
Only a little, and for a short time, some shadow of doubt and fear appears only during takeoff and landing, as well as during turbulence. But not enough to wake up the poet's sleeping Soul. Having made such a conclusion, I was horrified: is it really necessary to drive a creative person to the brink of life and death to create a real work?
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• 4
• traveled 9 years ago
the hotel was chosen on the recommendation of representatives of the tour operator AneksTour. They painted that the hotel is super, a little worse than 5 *....PEOPLE THERE ARE NOT THAT FIVE, HE IS BACK TO 3 * WITH DIFFICULT. 1. Cleanliness - horror! dirt, fungus, dust. 2. The exterior of the hotel is OLD, very, not well maintained.
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the hotel was chosen on the recommendation of representatives of the tour operator AneksTour. They painted that the hotel is super, a little worse than 5 *....PEOPLE THERE ARE NOT THAT FIVE, HE IS BACK TO 3 * WITH DIFFICULT.
1. Cleanliness - horror! dirt, fungus, dust.
2. The exterior of the hotel is OLD, very, not well maintained.
3. The staff is dirty - they don’t do anything until you give money, extortionists. Administrator Natalia, who is responsible for the comfort of tourists, DO NOT care. does nothing, just smiles and throws up his hands.
4. Food - 3 points out of 12 points.
In general, do not go there... especially those who are abroad for the first time. They scam both money and things. no comfort.
1. Cleanliness - horror! dirt, fungus, dust.
2. The exterior of the hotel is OLD, very, not well maintained.
3. The staff is dirty - they don’t do anything until you give money, extortionists. Administrator Natalia, who is responsible for the comfort of tourists, DO NOT care. does nothing, just smiles and throws up his hands.
4. Food - 3 points out of 12 points.
In general, do not go there... especially those who are abroad for the first time. They scam both money and things. no comfort.
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Terrible hotel, they ask for money for check-in and a bunch of other minuses Animator Tarzan is an idiot complete All that I liked was the food and the sea!
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Terrible hotel, they ask for money for check-in and a bunch of other minuses Animator Tarzan is an idiot complete All that I liked was the food and the sea!
Review from — vOtpusk.ru
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there was no worse rest - from the first day I wanted to go home, although in Egypt for the third time and always for 14 days on the very first evening in the room a leg fell in the bathroom, it flowed from the ceiling, they had a fight - they moved to the same wretched room - this is not the main thing the
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there was no worse rest - from the first day I wanted to go home, although in Egypt for the third time and always for 14 days on the very first evening in the room a leg fell in the bathroom, it flowed from the ceiling, they had a fight - they moved to the same wretched room - this is not the main thing the hotel itself is intended for relaxation 90 percent of the Arabs rested - for them everything was in the restaurant for us to issue, at least yes, and this eatery cannot be called a restaurant on the floor there are holes and when I carried 2 hibiscus my leg got there I fell on my knees tea thank you cold on my feet all the staff smiled at me pointed to the pit, they began to resent, then they surrounded this pit and looked stupidly - no one apologized to the beach 3 km pontoon broken since March before leaving, they made a new bus twice, they just didn’t come for us, but steal so everyone walks around the territory with bags even the guards at the reception they stole the flippers from a friend thanks friends saw them - they returned it because she didn’t get on the bus to the airport they pour everything into plastic glasses the husband was indignant when he took beer - half the foam of coffee if you want to put it in bowls, you say with milk - he takes out a liter package of milk and refills it - in short, spoiled vacation before that was at 4 nesco joys and next to weiss 5 in sharm and hurghada 5 riviera festival - only positive reviews and this one is hardly pulling on 3 must be believed reviews were good for those who sat for days at the bar and drank and for the first time in Egypt there were problems with the stomach, not only my mother and child left with dehydration, but many complained, I don’t want to anymore and remember in one word, horror
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The hotel just from the very doorstep of the reception spoils the whole impression of Egypt. Dirt, wretchedness, rudeness, extortion of money for settling, etc. The hotel is focused on slaves, Russians are treated terribly. A million Arabs, with children. They are everywhere, in the pool they bathe dressed, in the dining room they grab food like frightened people, on the beach - they occupy all the sunbeds.
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The hotel just from the very doorstep of the reception spoils the whole impression of Egypt. Dirt, wretchedness, rudeness, extortion of money for settling, etc. The hotel is focused on slaves, Russians are treated terribly. A million Arabs, with children. They are everywhere, in the pool they bathe dressed, in the dining room they grab food like frightened people, on the beach - they occupy all the sunbeds. Rooms - with cockroaches, current air conditioners, pre-revolutionary furniture. Everything is old and dirty. Cleaning in the room - only on demand and for a dollar. The beach is disgusting. ! 0 times in Egypt - this has not yet seen. The hotel is really 2 stars. Don't ruin your vacation like we ruined it. Just waited for the departure.
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Just awful!! ! When you check in, you need to give money in order not to go to "hell", about $ 20. Then maybe you'll get lucky with the number. Of the advantages of the hotel, only the sea, which still needs to be reached. And finally, the horrors of nutrition; not the first time in Egypt, I took care of myself as best I could.
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Just awful!! ! When you check in, you need to give money in order not to go to "hell", about $ 20. Then maybe you'll get lucky with the number. Of the advantages of the hotel, only the sea, which still needs to be reached. And finally, the horrors of nutrition; not the first time in Egypt, I took care of myself as best I could. I didn’t drink swill from the bar at all, I tried to choose food and you have a present on you... a intestinal infection. I and everyone with whom they wrote off after returning. Looking for a decent hotel!
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Do not believe the photos of tour operators. Very, very disappointed. I looked at 5 rooms and everywhere the same thing - lack of cleaning, torn curtains, plastic cups in the canteen (although it is difficult to call this place a restaurant) and instant coffee in a bowl. In general, I visited such an institution for the first time (I hope it will be the last), it seems that a roadside motel looks better.
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Do not believe the photos of tour operators.
Very, very disappointed. I looked at 5 rooms and everywhere the same thing - lack of cleaning, torn curtains, plastic cups in the canteen (although it is difficult to call this place a restaurant) and instant coffee in a bowl.
In general, I visited such an institution for the first time (I hope it will be the last), it seems that a roadside motel looks better.
In general, in Egypt, I concluded - if one of your friends says that yes, this hotel is suitable for relaxation, only then go.
I would never recommend a place like Poinciana to anyone.
Very, very disappointed. I looked at 5 rooms and everywhere the same thing - lack of cleaning, torn curtains, plastic cups in the canteen (although it is difficult to call this place a restaurant) and instant coffee in a bowl.
In general, I visited such an institution for the first time (I hope it will be the last), it seems that a roadside motel looks better.
In general, in Egypt, I concluded - if one of your friends says that yes, this hotel is suitable for relaxation, only then go.
I would never recommend a place like Poinciana to anyone.
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the hotel has deteriorated, not without the participation of themselves (Russians, Ukrainians) you have to go to the sea by bus, because the new owner of the hotel did not pro-pay the standing hotel on the first coastline. And the beach itself is terrible, except for the sprite (all inclusive) there is no other water, there is beer for $ 4-5 (0.
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the hotel has deteriorated, not without the participation of themselves (Russians, Ukrainians) you have to go to the sea by bus, because the new owner of the hotel did not pro-pay the standing hotel on the first coastline. And the beach itself is terrible, except for the sprite (all inclusive) there is no other water, there is beer for $ 4-5 (0.3). All staff are taught to swear (if proof is needed, I have a video). Animation: rudely, vulgarly swearing girl Olya from Dnepropetrovsk, swindling everyone for $20-40; for some trips to discos, it’s just awful, and there was another girl, but both didn’t know how to work, so don’t ask the same answer: “what do you want, we’ve only been working for two months, we don’t know anything here” (and this is considering the fact that when WE arrive, we will find out everything on the third day). Poor Rico (local animator) then fires the girls, then regrets, but for the girls this is not work, but rest, and we are tourists, we only interfere with their rest (again, from their words, and not my exaggeration). Show once a week, well + karaoke and the microphone is barely breathing. I have a lot of experience traveling to Sharm in the last 20 years (not only two years when there were revolutions). During these 16 days (until March 11) I have seen enough of it that I will never again go to a hotel where there are Russians. (blood, fights, shouting "tagil-rulit" until 3 am, police). Very meager food, (that year was the first time in a 3 * hotel, so THERE at least they fed, and this is considering the fact that I don’t eat anything except cauliflower and fish). Haven't met a single person who hasn't complained about anything. Thefts in rooms. I personally caught my janitor when he was rummaging through my things that were in the closet on the shelf. The rooms themselves are normal, it’s hard to find fault with something, everything is like in other hotels (but for me, the main thing is where to put your head, and not what color the walls are painted and why the closet is shabby. . ) There is a hotel administrator Katya (who helps everyone in resolving various issues), so God grant her health, and most importantly - patience!
Review from — vOtpusk.ru
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