#ilyich

[postcard-from-the-past]

Russian actor Ivan Ilyich Mozzhukhin on a vintage postcard

[venicewalls]

[postcard-from-the-past]

Russian actor Ivan Ilyich Mozzhukhin on a vintage postcard

[n0cturnal-state]

[postcard-from-the-past]

Russian actor Ivan Ilyich Mozzhukhin on a vintage postcard

[postcard-from-the-past]

Ivan Ilyich Mozzhukhin on a vintage postcard

[seat-safety-switch]

Swan Quake

Ever since I’d moved to this neighbourhood, I found myself taking walks in the lakeside park nearby. About a block away from my place, the city’s hassles fell away to a soft drone, often overwhelmed in the summer by the sound of extremely horny cicadas. During my constitutional, I had developed a pattern of dropping in on the maintenance shed and seeing what Ilyich, the groundskeeper, had been working on.

A lot of people don’t realize just how many gas-powered engines are around them every day: every weed-whacker, lawn tractor, chainsaw and generator needed one, even in this day and age of rampant electrification driven by a Bond villain. Every single one of those teeny engines eventually needed repair, and that is how I came to meet Ilyich.

It should come as no surprise by now that I had a lot of affection for the small utility engine, probably in much the same way as other human beings felt respect towards a trusted pack animal or particularly strong child. Ilyich seemed to always be repairing one or another, and so I would sit for awhile as the sun set, and hang out next to him at the workbench during his toil.

One evening, the wheels of fate left what I now know to be a trap in my path. Next to Ilyich’s shed sat a shattered fibreglass swan, and I recognized it as one of the paddlewheel-driven boats that the park rented out to young lovers in order to combine the twin anti-pleasures of bicycling and smelling the wafting odour of fish shit. After asking my groundskeeper companion about it, it was revealed that the geartrain sheared clear out of the boat. Olympic athletes were visiting and got into a race, Ilyich explained, and it would be cheaper just to replace the boat than try to fix it.

Have you ever carried a giant fibreglass swan to your house? If you had, you would understand the confused looks I was now getting from my neighbours. Their primitive brains could not understand, I knew, and it would be fruitless to explain. Already, a great idea was forming in my mind, and I was giddy with anticipation. It would free up so much room in my shed, I told myself.

The next day, I returned to the lake. No longer could I carry the swan: it was more than a little bit heavier now. As I pushed it off the utility trailer into the boat launch, Ilyich came up to me, confused. After the marine Detroit primed and fired, screaming its bone-chilling supercharger curses through a jury-rigged stovepipe exhaust, he was no longer confused, but just held his ears and nodded.

It felt good to be useful.

[indiexpo]

Patchwork made by Ilyich It’s a big day for Daniel - he’s about to test a teleportation device he’s been building for the last few years. Will everything go as planned, resulting in a stunning breakthrough in modern science, or is he, as it so often happens in situations like this, going to end up in a parallel universe, where magic and fairies are pretty common, while cell phones and sneakers aren’t?