About the good. I really learned a lot. Of course, it was very expensive, but most of the things I can do cannot be learned from books or videos. I have come to terms with the situation that ballet school is a rare pleasure for me, and the path to art in my case will lie through my own inner work.

What I like. Of course, these are pirouettes and high jumps. This is amazing. I’m also starting to independently learn various combinations of movements, work with coordination and a sense of rhythm. By the way, these are necessary stages on the path to realizing even the simplest stage image.

During classes, I usually hid in the very corner of the hall, because I have an overdeveloped SPI (sense of personal insignificance), which I had to fight. I suppose it looked comical when a charming man, two meters tall, with good posture and long beautiful legs, constantly hides behind the backs of thin girls, trying not to catch the teacher's eye.

Taking ballet is pure narcissism, which is a direct conflict with my worldview.

Ballet is also physics and mathematics. When I started studying classical dance, I was surprised to discover that the human body can move in two modes. The first is the everyday mode, this is how most people move in life and this is how people move in common dances, and there is a second mode when a person moves using his body in a completely different way, this applies to ballet (classical dance). It is for this reason that ballet can be practiced at any age, you just need to use those capabilities of the human body that we have by nature, but are not used at all in everyday life.

May 1, 2020, Friday, in the evening I participated in my first Online class in ballet (classical dance) from 8:00 pm to 9:22 pm, in the middle of the lesson I paid 699 rubles [$10] for access to site materials for the period of May 2020, at the end of the lesson I took a screenshot, since the number of viewers was 666. In the next two months, I watched over 40 classes in a row and the number of viewers on this channel did not exceed 270.

Eduardo Battaner Lopez “Kepler. Movement of Planets. Dancing with the Stars”

“Galileo noted that ‘The universe is written in the language of mathematics’. Perhaps this idea was first written down in the Book of Wisdom of Solomon: ‘You have ordered everything by measure, number and weight’. Is also known the saying of Saint Isidore: ‘The highest of all things is number’. Kepler’s words will also take a worthy place in this series of quotes: ‘Geometry was before the world, and it was Divine. God gave the world geometric beauty, and it was His creation, and this beauty was in human hands’.

Kepler wrote in his book: ‘Most of the things that exist in the world were created due to God’s love for people’.

Although the book was very popular and thanks to it Kepler was able to devote his life to the search for the harmony of the world, it also caused criticism. The scientist personally made sure that the most outstanding minds of the time, and, in particular, Tycho Brahe, received a copy of his work. From the point of view of observers from the 21st century, it is very easy to find grounds for criticism of this treatise. There were not six planets, but six planets that were known to Kepler. And the scientist had to assume that in fact there could be more planets, but they are difficult to detect due to their small size, remoteness and imperfection of observation instruments.”

Gurdjieff and Ouspensky

Although I am not close to it, I still saved the text about these characters for further study. I am far from a mystical or religious view of the world. Yes, in my internal/external world matter/energy is felt in a very specific way, but these are only nuances of my subjective relationship with the world, while there is practically no mysticism/mystery in my existence. Everything in my life is measured, understandable, boring and predictable.

Judging by the literature, Gurdjieff used the method of “extreme influence” on a person. I practice the method of minimal changes; I don’t at all want to put pressure on my own or someone else’s psyche, or somehow adjust the world around me. I believe that in my case, a greater force of influence can play a negative role, and the weakest influence will be more beneficial for the process of my awareness.

Life-changing dance: how Gurdjieff’s sacred technique reveals human reserves (link in Russian)

https://dzen.ru/a/YeayNciXq3UZCN2a

“In his Eastern travels, Gurdjieff encountered many examples of the revelation of the extraordinary capabilities of the human body. The master found the shortest way to achieve such a state. It turned out to be a ritual dance of the Sufis.

A special way of spinning to hypnotic music acts on the human body as a catalyst. The body begins to react immediately, the adept gains, if not superpowers, then something very close to them.

These meditative dances, called ‘special ballet’ by Georgiy Ivanovich’s novices, began to play a major role among Gurdjieff’s methods aimed at achieving a state of ‘insight’.

For a beginner, Gurdjieff's dance is extremely difficult. The adept is required to perform very strange, unnatural movements for a person. They create such a load on the muscles, tendons and even the human psyche, which is simply impossible in everyday life.

But, in the end, ‘ballet’ turns out to be an extremely effective method of self-knowledge. Quite quickly, practicing it leads to the awakening of the higher mental centers of the human body, which leads to a state of ‘insight’.

‘My ballet is not a mystery,’ said Gurdjieff. ‘The task I set was to create an interesting and beautiful performance. Of course, there is a certain meaning hidden behind the external form; but I did not pursue the goal of showing and emphasizing precisely this.’

These dances were called unnatural, too controversial and sometimes even considered a manifestation of ‘Satanism’, since the detached faces of the students, immersed in deep dynamic meditation, gave the impression of being hypnotized or weak-minded.”

Gleb Davydov “Gurdjieff: the dancing provocateur” (link in Russian)

https://www.peremeny.ru/column/view/924/

“At the same time, Gurdjieff told Ouspensky something about the project of the ballet ‘Battle of the Magicians’:

‘Imagine that, while studying the movement of celestial bodies, say, the planets of the solar system, you built a special mechanism to convey a visual image of the laws of these movements and remind us of them. In such a mechanism, each planet, represented by a sphere of appropriate dimensions, is placed at a certain distance from the central sphere representing the Sun. The mechanism is set in motion, all spheres begin to rotate and move along given paths, reproducing in visual form the laws governing the movement of the planets. This mechanism reminds us of everything you know about the solar system. Something similar is contained in the rhythm of some dances. In strictly defined movements and combinations of dancers, certain laws are reproduced in visible form, understandable to those who know them. Such dances are called “sacred dances”. During my travels in the East, I witnessed many times how these dances were performed during sacred services in ancient temples.’

In particular, this can be interpreted as follows: by accurately reflecting the celestial dances at the microcosmic level, it will be possible to use these celestial dances for one’s own purposes, make changes to their macrocosmic scenario, and therefore influence the events taking place on Earth.

The fact that dance is one of the most effective forms of magical ritual, awakening and activating subtle energies, has been known since ancient times: a person who dances correctly acquires supernormal powers and can change the world around him. In ancient India, for example, dance was equated with the highest forms of yoga and was considered an act of creation, with the help of which a new space and a new situation can be formed. Lucian, in his treatise ‘The Dance’, reports that dance arose ‘with the origin of the first principles of the universe’.”

Music and mathematics

November 6, 2020, I bought a large Yamaha synthesizer for learning to play the piano. It was quite expensive, but in my opinion, this is exactly what I should do besides ballet.

November 8, 2020, Sunday, at 11:13 am, I was walking to my ballet class and noticed a car with a trailer parked outside our office, with a boat on the trailer with a Yamaha outboard motor. I took a photo for memory. This is a rare case, I do not remember the boats in the parking lot next to our office. When after 5 min. I got on the bus, this car had already left.

The synthesizer has been lying around unused for two years now, but I think I'll still find a use for it.

The question arises, why did I buy it? A few days before this event, I read an interview with a 12-year-old student at a choreographic school. It was written there that in addition to dancing, she plays the piano and likes it. I felt a sense of community and bought myself this toy.

I also learned that she enjoys studying mathematics. Therefore, I suppose higher mathematics is one of my future hobbies.

Computer games

This is a great way to socialize and kill time at the same time. Computer games are played en masse by stupid and narrow-minded lonely people who could not (or did not want) to realize themselves in the social world around them. That's just the way I am, what can I do.

Since the beginning of January 2020, I have been working several hours a day in the game “World of Warships” (WoWs), that is “a computer, client-side massively multiplayer online game in real time in the genre of an arcade simulator of naval battles of the First and Second World Wars.”

Several events in my life, paradoxically, are connected with this game. More on this later, in the corresponding chapter of the book.

The main purpose of computer games for me is to communicate with people. Massively multiplayer games, in my opinion, are ideal for this. And this “virtual communication”, as it turned out, is quite enough for me and there is absolutely no interest or need the real physical communication.

Real communication with people brings too much information, and it takes me a lot of time to fully understand this communication, or “grok”, as one fantasy character used to say:

“Stranger in a Strange Land (working title (in manuscript) ‘The Heretic’) – a fantastic philosophical novel by Robert Heinlein, received the Hugo Award in 1962. One of the few works of science fiction included by the Library of Congress in its list of books that shaped America.

The plot contains a lot of historical and philosophical allusions, being a biography of Valentine Michael Smith, a man raised by Martians, who returned to Earth and became the new messiah here. The publication of the novel caused a scandal associated with a too free, by the standards of censorship of that time, depiction of sexual life and religion.

Literary agent Lurton Blassingame immediately offered the novel to the publishing house Putnam's Sons, since, according to the terms of the contract, this publishing house was supposed to be the first to read Heinlein's next novel. Putnam agreed to publish the novel, but without the themes of sex and religion, which, according to Heinlein, was impossible. As a result, the publishing house still accepted the novel, but previously edited by Heinlein to 160 thousand words. It was published in 1961 with the final title ‘Stranger in a Strange Land’.” (Wiki)

Some people don't like sex and religion, so I try to distance myself from those things as much as possible. But, since I still have to quote the Bible sometimes, I once again apologize to the readers.