Irina V. (2) (EIE) - Perception of time; premonitions and fantasies

I can feel time. I don’t like it when time moves slowly. I love it when it’s visible. At night time moves slowly because no one expects anything from you. You perceive everything around you differently, while during the day I’m comfortable living an active life.

It’s very important to me that no one rushes me. If someone does— that’s it. When I’m rushed too much, I start to panic.

With people I know, I can tell what they’ll do in the next moment: reach for the computer, pour themselves some tea, or something else. I see a little picture right before my eyes of what will happen in the next instant. Like right now: he’ll sit down on the couch — and he does, even though he seemed to be walking the other way. No! I saw he would sit on the couch — and he did!

I say to my friend: “Come stay over at my place. We’ll take sleeping bags, a bottle of wine, and sit by the Volga. We’ll watch the water, the shimmering lights, and in the sky the stars, the little breeze. Stars above — the natural ones, and below — the city ones… A starry sky. You want to lift your hand and let it float off like into the water.

It’s frightening: so much sky, and so little me — it’s unsettling. It might close in — and that’s it. Majesty, awe; when the sky is covered in clouds, I feel calmer under that armor. She didn’t come over, but she still remembers what it would have been like if we had sat together on that slope…

This is a real situation that felt completely real to me… or would have been…

I can actually live through an imagined situation, feeling it as if it were real: it will stay in my memory like a lived experience, even if it never happened.

Sometimes I dream about a wedding. I tell Sergey: “When we get married…,” and I see him wearing a tall top hat with a long, narrow crown, and long coat tails like a pianist’s. And I’ll be — I don’t even know what!

You need to imagine clearly what you want… What will my wedding be like? There’s a whole picture: how it will be, who will come, what we’ll eat… We’ll all go skydiving together… I live through it all so vividly… It’s more real there than here…

I imagine all of it, and my mood changes…

And when we’re old, we’ll go for walks, and I’ll have a tiny dog sitting in my arms, and I’ll be in jeans — a little wrinkled old lady, but wearing jeans…

I love dreaming, but harsh reality, facts — those are scary to me.