 Sunflower Seeds and Circuses! By Valentin BAHINSKIY |
Yeah! Respectable and splendid European capitals! You astonish our urban residents with many things; you provide so many wonders, beauties and civilized conveniences! "Comfort, cleanness and order" — this is "written" on your streets' "faces". It is not just one generation of my compatriots that dreams: "To see Paris and die!"
"Well, but you also have places to see..." — a tolerantly brought-up European would reply.
"Sure, sure!" — I would agree. We've got many cities and towns! There are cities with ancient history and also modern, industrial cities. And I can further add that in our cities there are some things, which those who inhabit London and Brussels can never dream about!
Just try to imagine this situation: in Elysian Fields or in front of a Dresden gallery entrance there's an old woman selling sunflower seeds, there are people standing in line - some buy one glass of sunflower seeds, some - two glasses. And then the people go forth, spitting husk to the left and the right. Can you imagine that? No?! That's it!
To watch such a scene - eating sunflower seeds in different parts of a city — you will have to cross a border and visit our country. Welcome!
I already see you packing trunks with clothes, so I'm in a hurry to give you some other orienting points and instructions about the subject of your interest.
So, sunflower seeds are husked, smacked and chomped in the most primitive of ways: kernels are between the teeth while
a specific sunflower seed is scrunched by a specific person. But, as in all developed activities there are some exceptions. One is to use fingers instead of teeth (you can find professionals of manual rubbing). A second exception, typically found where a child or old man is involved and they have neither teeth nor manual rubbing skills. There we can examine the "rule of mutual help" where volunteers will scrunch sunflower seeds for themselves and for others.
I should emphasize a principal specialty of eating seeds: it's usually done collectively; it is a very rare case where one sees one lonely individual husking seeds.
So, if you want to watch or to take part in the mostly mass activity of husking seeds you should visit any large event, such as a soccer game or an outdoor concert. I can't help recalling here gone the historical Roman expression "Bread and circuses!" and giving it a modern form: "Seeds and circuses!"
Please, visit our mass celebrations, mingle in the crowds and you'll feel the crackle of the husk under your feet - a crackle not comparable to anything one will have heard before.
I feel deeply sorry for you - you have no chance now to visit our old-type cinemas (we don't have them anymore) and sit in front of a big screen, enjoying the additional sound accompaniment — the sound of sunflower seeds being scrunched and husk falling on the floor!
But the tradition remains still! And you can enjoy seeing young people buying both a cigarette and a glass of sunflower seeds.
They walk, coo and their fingers are busy with familiar activity: a sunflower seed goes into the mouth, pop! and the husk falls slowly on the ground! Impressive!
Oh! I hear the voice of law-abiding European citizen: "You should forbid the sunflower seeds selling!", "Impose a fine for littering..." Oh, what are you talking about! In our country, laws of national importance remain on paper, so what can be said about sunflower seeds...
Maybe "some economic methods could help". Perhaps somebody will come up with a method of husk utilization... and people will bring the salvage to recycling points!
But maybe we'll leave everything unchanged and persuade ourselves that the level of civilization is not in our attitudes towards children, women and old people ... but, rather, in mass level and the quantity of eaten sunflower seeds. And with the motto "Seeds and circuses" we'll start our way to Europe, which remains behind in this endeavored.
P.S. (or some such)
The history of the last hundred years causes us to remember four main waves or periods of intensive sunflower seeds husking.
The first period is early twenties of the 20th century: the Civil War in Soviet Russia had already finished, the policy of Military Communism fizzled out and discredited itself, the New Economic Policy was introduced — limited but economic freedom. The second wave was in the middle of the 40s. The was a time before the "peaceful tightening of the screws on society"; the celebratory spirit of Victory in the Great Patriotic War was still "flying" in the atmosphere; people's feelings are hurt due to losses in the war but the light of hope has been lit up. The third wave is connected with " Khruschev's thaw": a "blow" to the foundation of the repressive state system had caused both the structural and spiritual processes of self-organization. And finally, the fourth, modern period: it is the period of systematic "posts" appearing... — the time of post-totalitarian, post-Soviet, post-ideological society, each saturated with a spirit of unbelievable possibilities, and at the same time full of hopeless uncertainty...
The wide context of such a primitive topic may confuse some. They, however, can be cheered up by the words of the genius writer, dramatist and columnist Mikhail Bulgakov. He witnessed the first wave of sunflower seeds husking and protested with all his ironic seriousness against "the national product". Here is the ending of his feuilleton ("The Golden Age") on this topic: They, the sunflower seeds, should be "ousted". They should be "ousted. Otherwise we'll create a fast-speed train and some silly things will spit the husk into the engine — and then all goes to pieces." I don't want to continue this topic and say that this husk can be spitted into a nuclear reactor...
We can, however, theorize about the topic further: follow a tendency in waves and periods and find out the reason for the phenomenon: upturns are related with a certain level of liberation, new small "pieces" of freedom, which can become voiced in such "ugly" forms as: "I litter husk anywhere I want. Nobody has the right to say anything against this". We may use psychoanalytic argumentation: in this kind of behavior a naive, childish, unrealized and late in time protest is hidden at the level physical reflex: this is spitting at inconvenient life conditions. But I don't like anyone mocking this problem. And the West is unable to help us with it.
We usually say "a piece of cake!" when considering very simple, primitive problems. I'd want to believe that the problem of mass spitting of husk on the streets would soon become a "piece of cake" problem!
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More in the section:
Crossing the Street in Kyiv , if you can
Read also previous issue' articles:
THE EAR: Time to Stop Traffic Terror
The USSR: What was it?
Socialist Realism From One Collector's Viewpoint
Weak Laws Make Ukraine Europe's Dumping Ground
Social Entrepreneurship Expands in Ukraine
Lenin and Ukraine
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