Questions without answers do not exist. These answers are known to God, but may be unknown to us. We seek these answers, feeling intuitively that they exist -- and we find them -- sooner or later. But often what we find does not satisfy us. We doubt and seek again, striving to approach the perfection of an all-knowing God.

Such is the nature of man. In our incessant arguments we often do not notice that, in essence, we have reached agreement and are merely calling the same things by different names. And on the contrary, it often happens that the most profound contradictions are concealed where we fail to see them, calling completely different things by one and the same name simply out of habit. Even now, scholars and philosophers are searching for answers to, it would seem, the simplest questions -- what is a point, a straight line, time, infinity, God. Yet we use these words everyday.

Furthermore, different people can perceive completely different things in the very same object or phenomenon, depending on what they want to see. And this engenders new disagreements and arguments, new questions.

Indeed, man wants to find out the answers to all these questions. He wants to use the full potential of his brain 100%, not thinking about what will come next. But the picture of the brain having exhausted its potential looks simply depressing! Having accommodated inside itself a mine of information, it is not capable of further generating even a single new thought. It is not surprising that we really would like for our abilities to be infinite.

A person assigns the characteristic of infinity to the things most dear to him: God, his own potential and feelings (the fact that "everlasting love" finds its end even if only with the death of the lovers doesn't matter so much). We want to believe that space and time are just as infinite. For if they are finite, the number of questions and answers are also finite, and sooner or later man will have nothing left to strive to know.

This precise unity of time was intuitively felt even by the ancients -- Indians, Evenks and others -- who imagined time as a person or animal, and each temporal interval as corresponding to some part of the body. The ancients understood that it is impossible to separate one day from the next, one year from the next. It is impossible to liberate the past from the future, and the future from the past, in the same way that it is impossible to liberate the right hand from the left and the left from the right. And herein lies the highest idea of the Lord. To divide time meant to destroy it, as Zeno of Elea demonstrated in the very same chase after answers for the unresolved questions.

However, Zeno of Elea was only one of many. In any human society there are always people inclined to undertake a similar vivisection of time. Thank God that they have never managed to do so successfully.

Some, having armed themselves with Homer's lotus-eaters, strive to "liberate" the future from the past. The "Dictionary of Winds" refers to them as "anemophiles." They firmly believe that time is infinite, and they are not interested in how much of it has already passed; after all, there is no limit to infinity and there is no limit to the changes of the world in it.

Others value time as higher than everything else, or they believe that it is a gift of God and to waste it thoughtlessly is the greatest sin. The "Dictionary of Winds" refers to them as "chronists." "Chronists" are not sure of the future, nor are they sure that time is infinite. However, they are sure of the past, and hence strive even more to "liberate" the past from the future which brings changes.

"Anemophiles" and "chronists" live together -- in the real world and in the world of the "Dictionary of Winds," in each of us. They love, suffer, pursue scholarly and other research, conduct incessant arguments among themselves, in some there are no vanquished or victors -- they all seek answers to the very same questions posed so very long ago, sensing intuitively that these answers exist. And they find them -- sooner or later. Often, what they find does not satisfy them. They doubt and search again.

ABSOLUTE TIME -- time existing irrespective of any kind of cycles, in which, on the contrary, all possible cycles, phenomena, events occurring in different parts of the infinite Universe could all be correlated. The concept of A.T., often used by both anemophiles and chronists, has been placed under the doubt of modern physics which has turned out to be powerless to determine a precise sequencing of events around the Universe. Seliger Bezymyansky comments on this position in the following way: "If the Universe is infinite, then the quantity of simultaneous events in it is infinite; hence the number of events in general is infinite. Since infinity is equal to infinity, the degree of certainty in the traditional definition of time, and all the more so of A.T., is gradually diminishing."

From the point of view of the chronists, A.T. should be characteristic Timekeeper, who is capable of taking in the entire Universe with his glance. The classic contra-argument of the anemophiles is based upon the famous quote from the 5th book of Gregorius Ventus: "If the Timekeeper really is perfect, then He is capable of seeing all of eternity at once, and everything that has occurred, is occurring and will occur in it. The Timekeeper has no need for time, it is only needed by imperfect beings, such as people. Man, as is well known, is capable of perceiving simultaneously only a very small number of things." (cf. Seven ) It is possible that the following phrase attributed to Einstein is based on this quote: "For us, believing physicists, the difference between the past, present and future is merely an illusion, although it is very difficult to refute it."

AEOLIAN CAVES (caves of winds) -- caves in which natural ventilation exists, and all the conditions are created for the wind to resonate.

Many scientists have studied the acoustic effect in A.C. The most famous works are those of Haddock . The acoustic effect of the A.C. are also of interest to architects of concert halls.

"Each person forms his own impression upon visiting A.C.," wrote Haddock in "Diary of A Chronist." "I, for example, from the very first moment, could not shake the feeling that I had already been in such caves, that everything that was happening to me and would happen had already happened. Strange, such nonsense did not fill my head in other caves. But in A.C. I, moving further and further away from the exit under the howling of the wind, begin to think that I have already been here innumerable times. True, if the world really is infinite, then in it there is an infinite number of such caves, winds, and Michael Lewis Haddocks, speleologists from the state of Kentucky. What mockery of human individuality! This world should collapse into some Aeolian Cave, if not be damned, if it is infinite! The only thing I cannot understand, is why I am so persistently drawn to A.C. that I have even begun to study them seriously."

ALL SAINTS WIND (German Allerheilgenwind) -- warm wind in the Alps.

In 139 he was invited to conduct an inventory at the Tower of the Winds. After his brilliant appraisal of the materials collected by the priests (manuscripts, weathervanes, stones from the Aeolian Caves, etc.), he was taken on permanently to work as Senior Assistant to the Keeper of the Collection. Although the priests understood beautifully that before them was a pure-blooded chronist, they did not express any apprehensions about having an enemy in their country: the latter was so proud of what was accomplished, that anything concerning the future could hardly interest him. Moreover, he couldn't evaluate what had not yet been created.

A.T. demonstrated exceptional capabilities in evaluating ruins caused by strong and crazy winds, for which he got his nickname (Greek "anemos" = "wind," metreo = "I measure"). On the basis of his evaluations, the priests of the Tower of the Winds established a dependence between the strength of a wind and the average size of the destruction and loss, and then they began to make prognoses which A.T. himself never trusted. But in the city, people began to find out about the number of shipwrecks already immediately after a storm, even before A.T. was able to conduct the actual evaluation. But since the results sent from the Tower of the Winds satisfied everyone, A.T. had to return again to the Collection and take up the evaluation of new arrivals. However, in connection with another insurrection, the flow of receipts soon diminished abruptly and even ran dry. Because of the lack of unevaluated inanimate objects, A.T. began to practice on cats, goats, slaves, and soon moved on to an evaluation of colleagues and his bosses. After a conversation with one of the priests, the content of which remained undisclosed, A.T. was in very low spirits, and for the first time set out to wander around the vicinity of the Tower. They found his corpse lying near the well. Apparently, A.T. saw his own reflection in the water and could not evaluate it. In memory of the entire sad event the name of A.T. was immortalized in the name for the instrument for measuring wind.

ANEMONE -- a flower, the name of which is connected for virtually all peoples with the wind. It seems the wind forces the flowers of this plant to open and this evokes the same associations in all peoples. It is interesting that the priests of the Tower of Winds in correspondence with anemophiles of various lands and windcities (the correspondence began over the question of whether or not the A. was included in the everyday rations of the lotus eaters) , in many places differed in their opinions concerning the qualities of this plant, in the heat of their fervor calling each other "wind ash" and "one-legged she-bears." But the very name A. never provoked in anyone even the slightest objection.

ANEMOPHILES (Greek anemos = "wind," phileo = "I love") -- originally wind worshippers in Ancient Greece. In a broader sense, it is all those liberating the past from the future. A. always prefer wind to its absence, even if it is the very strongest storm. A. always welcome all changes, even if they are not changes for the better. Such optimism is based on a very high degree of certainty in the fact that time is infinite, and the Timekeeper is omnipotent. Gregorius Ventus, a pillar of the anemophiles, wrote: "Since time is infinite, and human life occupies a part of it, it is also infinite (a part of infinity is equal to infinity itself, an axiom which Anemophob the Great came to in his youth). In precisely the same way, if the Timekeeper is omnipotent, and man and all that is inherent in him is a part of Him, then man is also omnipotent and should at the very least reveal these capabilities in himself."

A. comprise an integral part of any civilization, but the concentration of them in various parts of Being are different. A. are divided into passive and aggressive. It is precisely from amongst the anemophiles that seers always come. It has been noticed that during insurrections the number of A. rises sharply, which is apparently connected with a shift of a portion of the chronists to the camp of A. During peace time the opposite process occurs. This is why, for example, all the fundamental works, encyclopedias, and dictionaries are created during times of social stability. It is not known whether this assertion applies to the Dictionary of Winds.

The story of humanity contains many examples of clashes between the A. and the chronsits. The situation, however, is complicated by the fact that these clashes are fixed and studied by the chronists, who clearly exaggerate their victories and "have forgotten" about their defeats. A. are more interested in the future, and consequently they always turn out to be better prepared in their battles of sword and pen with the chronists.

It is not known whether the name of A.G. is connected with the word "anemophobia."

ANEMOPHOBIA -- fear of wind.

The paradox rests in the fact that even though the chronists, as a rule, do not love wind, especially strong or crazy wind, and suffer from A., anemophiles do not experience a similar distaste for Cronus, since the majority of them simply are not interested in the history and mythology of the ancients.

BACHELOR WIND -- a wind on Lake Seliger that does not calm down at night.

BEGINNING OF TIME -- according to many peoples, the moment when humans begin to perceive time, or else when they had only just appeared on earth, or when they were expelled from the Garden and were thus deprived of the ability to perceive the entire world instantaneously like the Timekeeper. In the majority of mythological systems, B.T. precedes empirical historical time and begins with the act of creation of the world by the Timekeeper. According to the opinion of many chronists, the description of the act of creation in time is intuitively reproduced by man in describing the world in general.

According to the beliefs of different peoples, B.T. is variably distanced into the past. Hence, the difference in the age of the world for Orthodox believers and for Catholics is 8 years. In any case, not one chronist will attempt to describe B.T. with a sufficiently high degree of certainty and determine when in fact the B.T. actually occurred. The diversity of views of humanity is manifested, hence, in the various perceptions of the age of the world. When the various notions about the age of the world are combined, as well as the various calendars , cultures and traditions, then the entire common human condition is elevated.

In different mythologies, B.T. is described, as a rule, as complete chaos, in the sequencing of events often just the opposite to the End of Time.

BULL WHIP -- a kind of wind, well known since ancient times (it is proposed that the first evidence of it came from Garamantes). It received its name because it forces cattle moving head-on into it to move backward, turning them by the horns.

CALENDAR -- a system of counting time, different for different peoples. Usually, C. is based on one or a few celestial cycles. The two main types of calendars are solar and lunar.

CRAZY WIND -- wind that affects people negatively, often causing mental disorder and a feeling of fear. It is known in all parts of the world by different names (for example, in Ceylon it is Batticaloa Kashan, in Rio de Janeiro it is Vente Rocho).

The nature of this phenomena is not clear, but it has been established that at the time that a C.W. or simply a strong wind blows, the incidence of crime and suicide increases.

CHRONISTS (Cronus -- one of the divinities of the Greek pantheon, later on as a result of being mixed with the Greek "chronos" -- "time") -- originally these were Cronus worshipers, members of the society Cronus. In the broadest sense of the word, it refers to everyone who is liberating the past from the future. C. prefer the absence of changes over changes ("The absence of news is good news."), they prefer calm to wind. A true C. will sit with a closed window even in the stuffiest room and will never turn on a ventilator.

C. are divided into passive and militant. C. are hostile to all changes, even to changes for the better since they inevitably bring with them something unknown. In order to avoid this unknown of the future, C. passionately study the past. The attitude of C. to history expresses the famous phrase of the Quintillion: "History is created to be written, not lived."

Higher than anything else, C. value time, which they have proclaimed the greatest gift of the Timekeeper. It is insane to waste it, they believe that to be a sin. "To ignore time, to ignore history means to ignore Him and to sin," wrote Fata Morgana, whose ideas became the essential precepts of C. "We do not know anything about the future -- to prolong our life or cut it short -- everything is in the power of the Timekeeper." As obvious from the example of this quote, all chronists consciously or subconsciously believe in the fact that time is finite. On the basis of this, anemophiles have accused them of heresy many times ("if time is finite, then the Timekeeper is not omnipotent”).

Cronus worshipers, as indicated by the very word, have just as long a history as Cronus himself, a divinity that is capricious and perfidious. It is not known exactly why, but his name at one point merged in pronunciation with the word "chronos" (time), and bestowed upon Cronus were granted the functions of the divinity of time, and Cronus worshippers began calling him Cronus. In the future, C. stepped outside of the frame of a merely religious society and took up various types of activities, encountering more and more like-minded thinkers. The Code of the society pronounced mandatory devotion of C. to the ideas of tranquillity, immutability and a sacred interest in history, as well as a renunciation of constructing plans for the future. Many scholars, politicians and simple residents subsequently encountering this document, noted with satisfaction that they were 100 percent C., all the more to their joy, nowhere was a rite of initiation mentioned, and given the meticulousness of the C., this must mean only one thing -- that it did not exist.

CRONUS -- in Greek mythology one of the titans. Seers told C. that he would die at the hands of his own son. C. tried to resist the Program and devoured his own children, but Zeus who had been hidden from him in infancy, having become a man, killed his father.

Folk etymology has drawn together the name of C. and the word "chronos," (Greek for time). This error, which the Greeks did not want to correct (it can be sensed that the chronists had something to do with this), illustrated the famous saying "Time devours its own children," and the no less well known saying "to kill time."

To Cronus (Roman Saturn) were dedicated the chroni in Greece, in Rome it was the saturnalia (cf. Memorable Dates), during the course of which the masters and servants switched their obligations; that is, what occurred were voluntary stagings of insurrections.

DARK WIND -- wind summoned by a solar eclipse. Like Crazy Wind, according to the notions of many peoples of the world, it will accompany the End of Time.

DEGREE OF CERTAINTY -- a comparative value characterizing the certainty of an individual in the veracity of a given assertion. D.C. can be calculated according to the following formula: D.C. = (m-n)/(m+n), where m is the number of positive bases for the reasoning (argumenta "pro") and n is the number of negative bases for the reasoning (argumenta "contra"). D.C. acquires significance in the interval between +1 and -1. Given D.C. = +1, then there are no doubts in the veracity of a judgment; given D.C.= -1 there are no doubts in the falsity of the judgment.

Judgments which have a D.C. equal to +1 or -1 belong to eternal truths. Minkovsky's Verb should be used in formulating them.

D.C. in all other judgments change with time, for we are certain that the river will not start to flow in the other direction until the wind starts blowing against the current. However, the chronists often forget about this.

There exists an opinion that completely refutes the possibility of measuring D.C. After all, to assess a basis as either positive or negative, if it is not an absolute truth, then it is necessary to calculate D.C. in these bases et ad infinitum, ad absurdum. It is possible that the anemophiles and chronists do not usually calculate D.C. so as not to get tangled up in this argument, even though both groups love to use this concept. Apparently, only the Timekeeper can objectively evaluate our D.C. in anything.

DESCRIPTION -- the apportionment and translation into verbal form of the qualities of a concrete object or phenomenon.

D. strives to full correspondence to reality (objectivity), but this ideal is unattainable, since any object could be described at length infinitely. For this reason, as well as because of the infinity of undescribed things, all the strivings of the chronists represent, in the best of cases, drops in the sea.

In D. points of reference , various types of both concrete and abstract notions, are used actively. On the pages of the Dictionary of Winds it seems it would be superfluous to comment in connection with the D. of medieval arguments about universals. It is understandable that the majority of chronsits took the side of the nominalists, perceiving realism as a mockery of human individuality: they preferred to call themselves first by their proper names, and then later, by the universal "person." The chronists were pushed to such a position by the study of ancient languages. It is well known that words signifying abstract concepts appeared much later than concrete words: the words "father" and "mother" are more ancient than the more abstract "parents."

From this point of view, language develops from extreme detailization to extreme generalization, and the extreme of generalization in language, as recorded in the Dictionary of Winds, is the word "Timekeeper."

Understandably, similar changes in a language carry with them corresponding changes in D. as well. The anemophiles try to compose any D. as outside of time (for this goal it would be convenient to use Minkovsky's Verb), but they are not always able to do this.

The chronists arrived at the conclusion that in the majority of D., man, by force of his psychological characteristics, is inclined to reduce the essence of a thing to its origin (in logic this is called "genetic description"). In other words, when a D. is composed for "table," they say that this "is an object made of wood" ("cut down wood") "consisting of a top and legs" ("a table top and legs are made from wood and then they are assembled together").

A D. of the world, from this point of view, is something different than a summary of the sequencing of its original creation, since creation and origin are always thought of as being in time. In fact it is worth merely recalling the first lines of the Gospel according to John, in which the Greek "logos" was translated not accidentally by St. Heron using the Latin "verbum," a word signifying simultaneously the "word" and "verb" (cf. also the etymology of the word "verb" in Russian). After all, a verb is what reflects time in language. For knowers of Latin, it invisibly existed in any word, consequently, in any D. Hence, the chronists draw the conclusion that any D. really is incomprehensible outside of time.

DIAL (clock face) -- part of the mechanism of a clock. Temporal intervals (hours, minutes, etc.) are arranged on the D., which the arrow passes, tracing a circle with its motion.

Such a movement by an arrow around the D. from the point of view of some chronists, is a marvelous illustration of the development of humanity, for they believe that everything repeats, appealing also to celestial bodies and the various calendars connected to them.

DICTIONARY OF WINDS -- 1. Dictionary containing definitions, descriptions, commentaries, quotations and personages that are in one way or another connected with the wind. The veracity of all that is contained in the D.W. (as in any book) depends on the degree of certainty that the reader has in it.

There exist a few versions related to the origin of D.W. Not one of them is generally accepted. It is not clear where, when and in what language time this book (or even some of its entries) appeared for the first time (it is possible that the entries were written at various times). It is not known whether the composition of the entries is constant (although, undoubtedly, the number of entries is somewhere between zero and infinity). The fact that some of the entries in D.W. belong to the end of the 20th century does not really tell us anything: they could have been written by those who were lucky seers. It is not clear if the D.W. was composed by one author or by a group of individuals, whether the author belonged to the anemophiles or chronists.

Neither the anemophiles nor the chronists recognize this book as "their own," claiming just the opposite, that the D.W. contains "audacious calumny" and does not contain valuable information. Nevertheless, the D.W. can be found in the libraries of chronists as well as anemophiles, and its lists appear and disappear not in an entirely clear way. It has been told that the D.W. was seen printed in a Gothic script, that this book was used by F.M., and perhaps, it is namely the D.W. that is mentioned in the inventory of the Collection of the Tower of Winds comprised by Anemometor of Thebes, as "an ancient and decrepit manuscript abounding in names of the winds." It has not been possible to subject to any analysis even one of the texts of the D.W., appearing at different times in public and private libraries, in the memories of computers and memories of people, authors of the D.W. As a rule, the text disappeared at the last moment under mysterious circumstances, leaving behind a trace merely in the heads of those people who had read or written it. Someone from the anemophiles even mocked: "The D.W. is unknowable, like the Program."

DOCTOR – the wind that exerts an extremely positive affect on the mental state and health of people. It functions to relax and calm. It is known in all parts of the globe.

END OF TIME -- in the imaginations of many peoples, the moment when humans will stop perceiving time, or they will have stopped perceiving the world in general, having become equal to the Timekeeper. In the perception of people after the E.T., as well as in the Timekeeper's perception, all events become simultaneous.

No one can say with a sufficient degree of certainty when E.T. will occur. According to some peoples, the E.T. will not come all at once, but rather in stages -- insurrections will precede it, there will be a so-called eschatological acceleration of time, a disruption in the ordinary cycles of celestial bodies and a renunciation of the calendar.

Any insurrection can be considered to be a unique kind of minor E.T.

FATA MORGANA -- 1. Italian fairy, the mistress of mirages (cf. FM 2).

F.M. died in 1423 in that same All Saints Monastery and was buried there.

Scholars of the last two centuries have often been astounded how such a mystification sewn with white threads could remain for so long unnoticed. The works of F.M. were copied many times over, and from the 16th century on they were reprinted, but no one raised a question about their authenticity; apparently, the degree of certainty in their genuineness was very high. However, such a state of affairs could only surprise researchers who are neither chronists nor anemophiles in the full sense of the word.

GARAMANTES -- a land located approximately in the south-west of modern Libya, in other words, on the periphery of ancient civilization.

Only fragmentary information about G. has remained. So, Herodotus and after him other authors convey that bulls in this country moved backward. The reason for such strange behavior by the animals is not elucidated. It is not likely that it was because of the excessively heavy horns of the bulls, as Herodotus himself wrote. Most likely, the wind forced the animals to turn around (see Bull Whip).

In the 20th century the interest of scholars in G. rose sharply. It was determined that G. represented a land with a rather high level of development. However, the ultimate reasons for the emergence and fall of this "African Atlantis" are not clear. Both the chronists and anemophiles alike have studied G. (although such kind of research is in general alien to the latter). Hence, Haddock, Wawydwerled, and Seliger Bezymyansky all came at various times to archeological digs in Libya. The latter two never met, but their famous correspondence began over questions connected with G.

Haddock wrote the following in his "Diary A Chronist": "To say that I was interested in this history merely because of the cliffs, famous for among other things the drawings of the Garamantes, would not be true. As a true chronist, this country could not help but attract me, this fata morgana of time (there are plenty of mirages here!), which was considered for a long time to be an invention of Herodotus, then recognized as an historical reality, and now, once again people will refuse to believe in it or will proclaim Garamantes to be aliens from outer space. In any case, in order to believe in G., you need to come here, to the sand, where it seems nothing has changed in 2000 years (although the goal of our expedition is precisely to prove that the climate during the time of the Garamantes was more favorable and a highly developed civilization could have emerged here). And yet you are closer to the past here than anywhere else."

"There exist two reasons why I, being a true-believing anemophile, went to excavations in G."-- clarifies Seliger Bezymyansky in one of his letters to Wawydwereld. "In the first place, it is because I miss my former studies of antiquity that I am not able to break away from. In the second place (the reason is genuinely anemophilistic), nowhere as in the sands do you feel closer to time, closer to the future. It is not known where more changes will occur during one and the same interval of time, in Europe, in my homeland, or here. But in the first case something unexpected will happen -- insurrections and the such; in the second what was to be expected occurs: after each sand storm, each (each!) grain of sand lays in a new spot. Yesterday, by the way, there was one such storm. We were warned and waited for it in tolerable conditions. The conversation began about storms, the "demons of the desert," their voices and habits, and I asked which ones of them were the most dangerous. It turns out, there is nothing more horrible than an invisible tornado. Usually the wind picks up a heap of sand, smoke, ash and steam along the road, forming at the top of the tornado a crown of clouds. And then the "demon" becomes visible, it easier to guard against it. But invisible tornadoes are "clear," sudden and therefore dangerous. Then the conversation turned to some other kind of wind, "cat tails," it seems. But I didn't listen anymore. I was thinking about how faithfully the priests of the Tower of Wind thought that time was like the wind: when all kinds of junk perceived by us as events are crammed into it, insurrections and memorable dates, we then distinguish it clearly and write history. But when we cannot see anything from modernity, then we cannot say whether the period under examination (the history of G., for example) was a calm or a storm."

Somewhere beyond G., according to Herodotus again, were located the lands of the lotus-eaters.

GARDEN -- (church Slavonic) -- paradise, land of the blessed, a marvelous place in the imaginations of various peoples.

Notions of a better life have been reflected in the descriptions of G. No one knows for certain where G. is located. The existence of G. is attributed to the Beginning of Time, to the End of Time or in general is removed beyond the bounds of this world; then G. is populated with gods, spirits of the dead and other supernatural beings.

People try to enter G., a place where there is no time (cf. below), where everyone is happy and where one and the same wind always blows (in Homer it was Zephyrus).

As a rule, time as such is absent in G.: there is either no "yesterday" or "tomorrow" at all, no past or future, there is a never-setting sun, or else the change in the time of day and seasons is extremely prolonged. Therefore, when ordinary people wind up in G., this frequently ends for them lamentably (just like a trip into space for astronauts in science fiction stories): when they return home, if they return at all, then it turns out that one day in G. is equal to a month, year or century in the ordinary world.

Still one more variant exists: people who have reached G. forget about everything that happened to them before. For this reason, some researchers believe that Garamantes is one of the G. of ancient civilization.

It is worth recognizing Carroll's "Beyond the Looking Glass" as so different, where events take place backward: people remember the future and don't know the past, and the White Queen first had a cut on her finger and then pricked it.

GRAMMATICAL TIME -- a characteristic of a verb. Not characteristic of the Minkovsky Verb.

Comparisons of systems of G.T. in various languages shows the path of the development of these languages from the complex to the simple. Moreover, the same thing occurs with other structures of the language as well (cf. the linguistic proof of the existence of the Timekeeper by Fata Morgana).

The only exception in this series of simplifications is the phenomenon of the future tense, which did not exist in ancient languages. The future tense of a verb developed from the conjunctive, which can clearly be seen in the example of Latin, or from the forms of obligation or jussive, which is visible in examples of the Germanic languages. The chronists even proposed a common rule: the more these language structures branch out, the more ancient is the language. According to Morgana's reasoning, the language of the Timekeeper contains an infinite number of forms of the conjunctive, assuming an infinite number of variants of the development of the world.

The absence of the forms of the future tense as such in ancient languages indicated how uncertain ancient man was about his future, and just own strong an influence the anemophiles exerted on the development of languages (and the favorite of the chronists, the pluperfect gradually dies out).

GREGORIUS VENTUS -- b. 1347, Aachen, Germany, d. 1423?) -- a wandering philosopher, an apostle of the anemophiles. A Franscisian monk often accused of Pavlian, Aryan, and in fact anemophilic and other such heresies. The ideas of G.V. enjoyed popularity judging by the quantity of lists of his works that have survived until today (out of the 16 such lists found during the past 50 years, 9 have been deemed genuine). It is not out of the question that G.V. patronized a number of highly placed people, but unambiguous references to this, just like about G.V. himself, cannot be found at all in a single surviving document of that epoch, except for the works of the philosopher himself, the authenticity of which and dating of which to the turn of the 14-15 centuries do not cause any doubt. These works consist of 9 books with extensive titles, and it is not necessary to list them all in the Dictionary of Winds. The 1st part of the 5th book and the 1st part of the 8th book have not yet been discovered. In addition to these 9 books, the works of Fata Morgana must also be attributed to him as a brilliant literary mystification created by G.V. and discovered only in the 19th century.

HALL OF WINDS (Hawa Mahal) -- a palace in Jaipur (the capital of the state of Rajasthan, north-west India), built in 1751-1768. It has been preserved to the present day. It is an excellent landmark.

The palace has often attracted the attention of the chronists as a unique architectural structure, and the attention of the anemophiles as a H.W. "Glory to the Timekeeper," wrote Haddock, while passing through Jaipur, "that the Hawa Mahal (Hall of Winds) was built during the times when Europeans had already appeared here; at least we know something about the history of this magnificent building with hundreds of windows and turrets! Given the disgraceful attitude of the Indians to their own past (everything we know about their history was recorded for them by outsiders!), they would not have failed to proclaim the Hall a creation not of man, but of the winds themselves, or they would have announced it to be the residence of some sort of Rudra!"

In 1994, while in Switzerland, he obtained access to the archive of the women's monastery of All Saints on Seven Mountains. There exists a version that he hoped to find the necessary material to prove that Fata Morgana was a real historical personality, and that Gregorius Ventus, on the contrary, was a skillful mystification created by her. The results of his investigations are not known, since H. met an untimely death, fatally wounded by a heavy folio that fell on his head from a high shelf.

INFINITY -- a category which is used early on by both the chronists and the anemophiles, although no one among them was able to provide a satisfactory definition and description. I. is characterized by the following correlation: each of its infinite number of parts is also infinite, that is, is equal to I. itself. Anemophob the Great came to this conclusion, having been the first to pose the question: what is longer, a straight line or a ray? It is worth noting that a similar equality of a part and its whole is also inherent in zero.

I. is a characteristic of all the qualities of the Timekeeper. In His omnipotence is embedded the potential for any of His parts (His creation), including people, to become equal to Him.

The category of I. is also attributed to space and time, but far from all chronists agree with this. "What kind of nonsense is it," wrote Michael Haddock in his "Diary of A Chronist," "to suppose that time does not have an end. In some strange dictionary (I don't remember now the title of it, or how I came across it), I read that part of I. is equal to I. itself. But the fact that human life is finite does not evoke any doubts whatsoever. No matter what kind of grandiose plans we make for the future, and no matter what hopes we place on it, death may overcome us at the most unpredictable moment. But the life of each person, of course, occupies a specific slice of time. Consequently, time is finite."

INSURRECTIONS -- a period when everything occurs contrary to the normal course of life.

"It is characteristic of man to hope that there will not be any I.," wrote Gregorius Ventus. "Anemophiles, with a high degree of certainty, are merely a drop amidst all the other people who are accustomed to perceiving time as measured, like the step of a camel: they arrange meetings, select dress for celebrating memorable dates, and save money "for the future." And this is the case even given the fact that time shows each person how it can flow, pass, run or fly -- a minute stretches on for eternity, and a year flies by unnoticed. And it is not at all obligatory to know Latin and read about "human time" by Tertullian. Although reading the holy fathers is, of course, desirable."

People call times of I. and collapse "lost" or "hard times." With the loss of familiar points of reference (and in the traditions of different peoples, all the great I. are accompanied by confusion in the chorus of celestial bodies -- cf. the End of Time, considered to be the greatest I. by many peoples of the world) people's degree of certainty in the future falls sharply. Man thinks only about the present. "The present assuming the forefront during times of I.," wrote Haddock,, "is not perceived by people as time per se, which usually characterizes the relationship of the part to the finite whole (after all, a part of infinity is equal to infinity itself). Consequently, time is finite."

LANDMARKS (see POINTS OF REFERENCE)

LOTUS EATERS -- (Greek "lotus eaters") -- a peaceful tribe whose lands were located somewhere beyond Garamantes.

L. ate "sweet-honey lotus" (Homer), which gave them and all those whom they treated to it, being a hospitable people, oblivion (including the fellow travelers of Odysseus).

L. were always an object of admiration by the anemophiles as a people who had become totally liberated from the past. A series of attempts were undertaken by the anemophiles to find a corresponding type of lotus, however, these quests were not crowned with success, and in the course of the experiments some anemophiles were poisoned and died, being freed in this way from the future. It is worth noting also that some types of anemones are also poisonous. Later substances were invented that exerted a similar affect on the human memory as the food of the L., but strangely enough, the enthusiasm of the anemophiles immediately subsided.

As far as the lotus is concerned, the chronists proposed a few versions regarding the use of this flower in food. Its ability to erase the memory was attributed by the Greeks to this plant in consonance with its name, in association with the word "lat," that is, "oblivion." The chronists assert that a people who has entirely forgotten its past never existed, and all those who use the edible parts of the lotus (seeds and roots) in food can be called "L." in the literal sense of this word.

MARRIED WIND – the wind on Lake Seliger that calms down at night.

MEASUREMENT -- an operation, through the means of which can be determined the relationship of one value to a similar value accepted as a unit. Everything can be measured, except for infinity.

Given the required observation of the conditions of similarity, you can measure anything at all by anything at all -- weight in hippopotami, kilograms, or ounces, time in centuries, generations and the rotations of the Moon.

M. is well known since ancient times. M. is the most favorite operation of the chronists, who frequently repeat the phrase by D.M. Mendeleev about the fact that "science begins from the moment measurement begins."

Different instruments have been invented for the M. of various values (for example, clocks for the M. of time), standards (for example, a bronze cubit for the M. of length inserted into the wall at market squares of some European cities) and scales (for example, the Beaufort wind scale for measuring the power of the wind).

All kind of M. is connected to inaccuracy. The smaller the unit of M. and the more precise the measuring instrument, the closer the result of the M. will be to the real value of the measured value, known precisely only to the Timekeeper. Moreover, the Timekeeper doesn't need M., and the units of M. can be reduced to infinity. The same can be said as well about infinitely large units of M. used by modern science.

"Thinking about the steps made by science during the recent past in the study and M. of the micro- and macroworld," wrote Seliger Bezymyansky to Wawydwereld, "I have always imagined an hyperbole, where x and y assume all values from zero to infinity, moreover the microworld is measured along the axis of the ordinate, and the macro world is measured along the axis of the abscissa, or just the opposite.

In school the hyperbola was my most hated graph. Being always in a great hurry, I often would sketch the hyperbola inaccurately in such a way that one, or sometimes both, of its "tails" intersected with its "own" axis. As a result, I would wind up with a thick "pair." Now, when I imagine this "measuring" hyperbola, people appear on it with all their investigations like nothing other than dots, rushing about the "tails," and I understood how cruel it was on my part to place a limit on this rushing movement of these two-dimensional people.

Let's assume that the little person has measured everything, has come to know everything -- what next? He has used all the potential of his brain 100% -- and he cannot produce even one more new thought. In truth, this is a horrible picture! That's why we want to attribute the category of infinity to the things that are most dear to us -- our capabilities, potentials, feelings, time and space. That's why we so much want for the "tails" of the "measuring" hyperbole that reach into the micro- and macro-worlds, into the past and future, also to be infinite. We shall hope that the Timekeeper thinks in approximately this way, and sketches his own hyperbolas just as accurately."

MINKOVSKY'S VERB -- a verb that does not have grammatical time, characterizing eternal, immutable truths, such as 2X2=4. The use in this sentence of the form of the infinitive "multiply" and the third person singular of the present "is equal to" replace in essence M.V.

From the languages known today, the form used in practice that is closest to M.V. existed in the ancient Egyptian language. In this language, there was no time as such. This is precisely what explains the common complaints of the chronists about the difficulty of working with ancient Egyptian texts.

The use of M.V. would allow for the second part of the ancient formula to be put into practice, the author of which, unfortunately is unknown: "We describe the world in time, but they -- are out of it." Various versions have been inserted into this formula in place of "we" and "they", including "mortals -- gods," "chronists -- anemophiles." However, in the latter case the judgment is hardly true, since the chronists use a multitude of temporal forms for describing the past, and the anemophiles also use them for characterizing events in the future, clearly misusing the Futurum Secundum.

NEW TIME -- 1. Time, the calculation of which is conducted according to the new calendar (new style), introduced after insurrections by the anemophiles with the goal of at least in this way liberating the future from the past.

2. The period in history, beginning with the first bourgeois insurrections. It was demarcated by the chronists with the goal of emphasizing the unity of the last segment of the past with the present (by the way, the very last segment of the past was called the "newest time" by the chronists for the very same purpose), ignoring the universal unity of time.

PENDULUM -- a hard body oscillating under the impulse of applied force (winding of the clock spring, the force of weights, etc.) near a stationary body.

The oscillation of P. is completed at equal intervals of time and this quality is used in clocks.

According to the opinion of many chronists, the movement of P. (including when it is diminishing), represents a marvelous illustration of the development of humanity -- from insurrections to insurrections from the Beginning of Time to the End of Time and back again.

It is required that a P.R. be constant and noticeable. However, as Heraclitus says "everything flows, everything changes," that which is noticeable to one may not be to someone else. "One of my friends, an African professor," recalled Haddock, "tried to prove to me with great passion that a zebra's stripes are black on white, and not white on black, even though I held the opposite opinion."

PREDESTINATION -- the impossibility of changing the Program.

The question of P. remains one of the main questions not resolved by humanity. Both the chronists and anemophiles wrote about P.

"The idea of P.," pondered Gregorius Ventus, "involuntarily prompts us to the idea about the inclination of people to blame their own grief and misfortunes on anyone else, in the final analysis, on the Timekeeper. In actuality, it could be said that impotence over time was man was predetermined in man -- if only because we cannot change the past. But after all, at some point what we call the past today, was once the future, and from the infinity of the number of variants envisaged by the Timekeeper (cf. Grammatical Time in Dictionary of Winds), man himself chooses one. The irony of such a proposition, however, rests in the fact that among the innumerable variants is the one that dooms us to the role of marionettes in His hands. And so, our reasoning has not moved us forward even one step in the resolution of the question about P."

PROGRAM -- a hypothetical script that contains everything that was, is, and will be in the world. In essence, it is the ideal content of the Universe. The existence of P. is not proven, but the degree of certainty in its existence is very high for some people. The creation of the P. is attributed to the Timekeeper. The general idea of the P. as it is represented in many religions of the world, was formulated by Omar Khayyam in two lines about the Timekeeper:

He whiles away eternity with our drama:

He himself composes it, stages it and watches it.

The question about whether man can introduce fundamental changes into the P. or at least to play a commedia dell'arte is the very issue of predestination.

Attempts to study P. have been undertaken by both the chronists and the anemophiles alike; moreover, both of them based themselves on material gathered by the chronists. However, they took different paths in their work with this material: the chronists took the path of analysis, the anemophiles of synthesis. The chronists, moreover, refuse to recognize the infinity of the Universe. For if the Universe is infinite, they assert, then no matter how much information is gathered by them, it will never reflect even the smallest portion of the diversity of the world. At the same time, the anemophiles noted that if the Universe is finite, then sooner or later the chronist will simply not have anything to do.

Following the path of such reasoning, both the chronists and anemophiles arrived at the idea of the Timekeeper, knowing everything, incorporating everything, and therefore being an extreme generalization of everything.

However, researchers of P. subsequently created two absolutely completely different theories, moreover the split ran not along the line of the chronists-anemophiles. According to the first theory, P., if it exists at all, does not necessarily contain a mandatory cause-and-effect connection, and various kinds of phenomena can occur not propter hoc, but simply post hoc. In this way, the possibility of knowing the world by any means except for immediate perception or revelation by the Timekeeper is completely eliminated. The work of chronists in clarifying the cause-and-effect connection is in vain, since no laws exist that the P. would follow. As far as the second theory is concerned, it is well known as the Theory of Common Laws.

SEERS -- people, most often anemophiles , who forsee time by their own initiative or at the request of others, ignoring points of reference and not basing their projections on a sufficient quantity of preliminary information (gathered, as a rule, by chronists).

S. are known in all civilizations by various names. For example, some of the priests of the Tower of the Winds were S. Different areas of specialization of S. were popular during different times. So, synoptics today are believed with approximately the same degree of certainty as astrologers were in the Middle Ages.

Over the course of thousands of years, S. tried to comprehend the Program and find the interconnection between its components. Over that time they amassed their conceptual apparatus (a multitude of reference books and dictionaries, including the Dictionary of Winds was contained in their requisition). However, although all S. have operated with the concepts of "time" and "infinity," not one of them has given these concepts a satisfactory definition, apparently, because the degree of certainty that the S. themselves have in the truthfulness of these definitions, as in many other things, was quite low. Nevertheless, the S. have been able to compel those who had an even lower degree of certainty in the corresponding questions to believe in a lot of things. Although S. can foresee time in its entirety, but most often they are asked only about the future. However, descriptions of the past, present and future provided by the S. cannot be verified by their correspondence to the actual state of things (by the way, the same is true of the investigations of the chronists , about which can be heard that they are not based on a sufficient quantity of information). In the first place, they can be interpreted any way you like. In the second place, not one description is capable of reflecting a thousandth part of an infinitely complex reality.

SEVEN -- a sacred number for many peoples of the world. The sacredness of S. is explained, apparently, by the fact that this number defines, on the average, the limit of human perception in time : we cannot simultaneously perceive more than seven objects without confusing them. In other words, if you show a person seven books for an instant in such a way that he doesn't have time to count them, after the entire experiment he will still be able to answer how many there were. If you show him more than seven objects, then, most likely, he will not be able to answer accurately.

The Dictionary of Winds insists that S. is the answer to the famous paradox of Zeno of Elea about a pile ("Where is the line between a pile and not a pile? Why are 2 kernels not a pile, and 10 already are?").

A cassette with a recording of the sounds emitted by the S.B. are kept in the sound library of Seliger Bezymyansky along with recordings from the Aeolian Caves and the voices of various cult structures of the Old and New World that were made to give off sound from the wind according to the plans of the architects and sculptors.

THEORY OF COMMON LAWS -- a theory elaborated by a group of anemophiles in the 19th century. According to this very austere theory, one and the same laws established by nature (that is, the Timekeeper,) operate the same way without fail for everything -- chemical processes, winds, the development of organisms, thought and humanity in general. This assertion, the degree of certainty of which for some anemophiles was equal to 1, plunged the seers into despair. For if as a result of corresponding scientific investigations the Common Laws became known to everyone (and this is precisely what the authors of the T.C.L. called for), then the entire Program , and in particular, the future, would become known as well. In any case, people would be able to "foresee" the future just as successfully or unsuccessfully as they were able to "foresee" the past. The difference between the past, the future and the present would disappear, and the seers would be left with nothing to do.

However, the seers were pacified. In the first place, the authority of the authors of T.C.L. declined sharply with time in connection with the fact that a number of militant anemophiles tried to accelerate the work of the Common Laws (which was not anticipated by the T.C.L. itself) in the world in general and in Eastern Europe in particular, which led to numerous insurrections. In the second place, at that moment when the possibility of knowing the Common Laws became more tangible, it turned out that man in reality does not want to find our either about his own future or about the Program in general. Knowledge of the future would deprive him of independent choice, or at least the hope that he was independent. Furthermore, as Seliger Bezymyansky believes, "man is capable of hoping for the best to infinity. No matter what golden mountains the seers promise us, we still always hope that those mountains will not be gold, but rather platinum. And if they promise us platinum, then we will hope for diamond ones, et ad infinitum, ad absurdum. Man simply does not know that this world with all that is in it, is and will be the best of all possibilities. For it cannot help but correspond to the conception of the Timekeeper: otherwise, the Timekeeper would not be omnipotent. And the Timekeeper's conception, like everything that is characteristic of Him, is perfect."

It is also interesting to cite here Haddock's opinion: In the T.C.L. there is no place for human happiness and there is no recipe for how to become happy. It wants to make everything known and force the world to develop along that known script. Independent quests for the meaning of life by an individual are thus excluded. Man in his essence hates Common Laws and the Program in such an interpretation, for in that case the Program could manage just fine without him as an individual. Fortunately, we can still search for the meaning of life for as long as we see fit -- the Program is not revealed and the Common Laws are not elaborated to the point of even being able to realize the seemingly simplest of things -- to foretell the trajectory of the flight of a maple leaf on the wind."

TIME -- a concept, a satisfactory definition and description of which was provided neither by the anemophiles nor the chronists., which is reflected in the content of the entries for "T" in all dictionaries, including the Dictionary of Winds. In encyclopedias and similar dictionaries, entries are filled for the most part with information about the means for measuring T and criticism of those who have nonetheless attempted to give T. a definition.

A number of apparati for measuring T. have been invented, in particular, the ordinary clock. But neither chronists nor anemophiles study its measurement and description seriously, since the first are interested only in the past, and the latter are interested only in the future. The Dictionary of Winds presents, however, as closest to the truth, the definition of T. given by Gregorius Ventus: "T. is the best illustration of the Christian Trinity, for it is the consubstantial trinity of the past, present and future. But in truth, I believe that the Timekeeper could have an infinite number of faces and names, as was shown by Fata Morgana in her proof of His being. She wrote that an infinite number of grammatical forms of time exist in the language of the Timekeeper. But language merely reflects reality. Consequently, nothing can interfere with T. having an infinite number of faces, and not only faces of the past, present and future -- for all of these faces are consubstantial."

An illustration of the idea of the unity of T. can be found in the mythology of many peoples, for example, Indians or Evenks, imagining T. as a person or animal and various periods as parts of his body. The body cannot live a full-valued life if it does not have one of its members.

The attitude of the Timekeeper himself toward T. has provoked many arguments among the anemophiles as well as among the chronists. Hence, Fata Morgana asserted that the omnipotent Timekeeper does not need time. But the anemophiles objected that if the Timekeeper does not distinguish time, then he is not omnipotent, and they accused Morgana of heresy.

The name "T.W." dates to the modern era -- obviously, it comes from the design. The height of the tower is 12.8 meters, the diameter is 7.9 meters. On each side of the T.W., which has an octagonal cross-section, the figure of the divinity of the wind of the given direction is depicted (N -- Boreas, NE -- Calyce, E -- Aphaela, SE -- Euros, S -- Notus, SW -- Lepus, W -- Zephyrus, NW -- Scyrius). Under the figures of the winds are the markings of a solar dial, since the T.W. first and foremost measured time (this main function of the T.W. was also indicated by the Greek name of the building -- Horologium, i.e. "(sun) watch"). At the time when the sun was not shining, water clocks were used (Greek "klepsidra"), and hence the measurement of time was uninterrupted. At the top of the T.W. was erected a weathervane in the figure of Triton, whose spear indicated the current direction of the wind.

There was a staff of priests, the size and composition of which differed at various times.

A precise copy of the T.W. (built in 1844) is located in Sevastopol at the Maritime Library (near the Sinopsky Stairway). It was precisely a visit to this copy that inspired Seliger Bezymyansky to undertake the study of antiquity.

"Memories of my first visit to the Sevastopol T.W.," wrote Seliger,

--Why did the Greeks take up the study of the winds and the measurement of time in the same place?

The question was obvious for the tourist who posed it to the tour guide, who could then not provide a coherent answer to it, but not for me who had studied antiquity for so many years. I admit, I never even thought about this. And so, why?

Was this the first attempt at a scientific synthesis or simply a natural perception of things? Chronists had become accustomed to splintering the consubstantial world into a number of parts that strive toward infinity, giving them newer and newer names (cf. the linguistic proof of being by the Timekeeper Fata Morgana). They divide matter into molecules, time into the past, present and future. But yet there is only unity. Ancient Evenks believed time to be a person, the unity of the parts of which stipulate the conditions for life itself and health. But what prevented the ancient Greeks from considering time and wind just as indivisible as the left and right hands, as yesterday and tomorrow? And even if the Greeks believed time to be wind, and wind to be time, they were not any more or less correct than those who would unite in their investigations the ventilator, the Timekeeper and the piece of paper on which these lines are written. After all, Minkovsky and Einstein did arrive at the idea of a uniform four-dimensional space-time."

Nevertheless, this constellation has provoked different associations in different peoples: a bear for the Greeks, a chariot hitched to seven bullocks for the Romans, a One-Legged Divinity called "Hurricane" for the Keche Indians (Hurricane in the language of the Keche means "one-legged").

VENTIFACTS (traces, figures of wind erosion) -- figures of relief, formed as a result of wind erosion; they have a whimsical form. They are widespread virtually everywhere, from Holland to Armenia.

C. visually demonstrate the work of wind and time and the alterability even of such seemingly stable landmarks such as mountains. Anemophiles often use C. to illustrate their ideas.

On one C. in the Valley of Lavender Creek (USA), the following lines by Omar Khayyam have been carved by some anemophile:

If constancy were a quality of the world,

Would it be your time to be born?

VENTILATOR -- an apparatus which transforms electrical energy into wind. It is not out of the question that the very energy itself was obtained via a windmill.

WEATHERVANE -- an instrument for determining the direction of the wind. It is necessary only in countries where the wind changes direction (it would be superfluous in the Garden).

In its motion under the influence of wind, a W. sooner or later traces a circumference (otherwise, a Wind Rose would not have enough petals). In the perception of the Timekeeper, a W. simultaneously occupies all possible positions.

WIND -- "movement of air, as a rule, horizontally" according to the definition of the chronists, and "the absence of calm" according to the definition of the anemophiles. W. is distinguished according to whether its origins are natural or artificial (for example, if it is created with the help of a ventilator).

The Balaklava catastrophe pushed European science to the study, description and measurement of W., as well as attempts to predict it. In 1865 in the Balaklava Bay (on the shores of the Crimea), a storm that whipped up suddenly destroyed virtually the entire Anglo-French navy anchored near the shore. The Balaklava catastrophe did not save Russia in the Crimean War, but it made a strong impression on Europe. For understandable reasons, it is cited by Russian chronists much more rarely than by Western ones.

"Often it is said that man, as opposed to the Timekeeper, cannot control many things, time, for example," -- wrote Seliger Bezymyansky to Wawydwereld. "But W. was also at one time considered to be uncontrollable and unpredictable -- until the Balaklava catastrophe shook up Europe. Precisely then, in 1865, scientists put their minds to it and accomplished a great deal. In any case, W. today is not so free as it was during the time of Anemometer of Thebes or Fata Morgana.

Concerning the diversity of W., two contradictory points of view have formed: many anemophiles believe that there exists merely one single movement of the air, a single W. The chronists for the most part believe that W. is never the same; even trade winds carry in them new air each time (this is the "air interpretation" of the famous phrase of Heracleitus about how "you can never step into the same river twice").

WIND ROSE -- a diagram depicting the frequency and intensity of wind from different directions for a given place. Indicators showing the repeated wind patterns are arranged in 8 (or 16) compass points in the shape of vectors. The ends of the vectors are connected with dotted lines. According to the W.R. constructed by the chronists  on the basis of material collected over a rather long period of time, anemophiles make prognoses of the wind in the future.

WIND OF THE SEVEN MOUNTAINS (German --Siebengebirgerwind) -- one of the winds in the Alps.

WINDMILL -- common term for an apparatus transforming wind into other forms of energy, including electric. Energy obtained in this way in the future might be used for the creation of artificial wind with the aid of a ventilator.

Seliger Bezymyansky comments on this question in one of his letters to Wawydwereld: "Just think about how easy the question of power over time is resolved with the help of the hands of a C. In school, I remember, we as a class would often moved the arrows ahead by 15 minutes to convince our French teacher that it was her watch that was running slow, so we could go home early. But no, man is tormented by the fact that he is not powerful over time, perceiving this as yet another proof of his own imperfection. Moreover, the argument that perhaps we simply do not know about our ability to control time does not save us. For if we don't know something, then we are already imperfect. What remains is only to console ourselves with the fact that such is the conception of the Timekeeper, who, it seems, is the only one who combines in himself perfection and imperfection, all knowledge and ignorance, the ability to perceive the world in time and to perceive it simultaneously, to rule over time and not to rule over it."

Translated from the Russian by Cynthia L. Martin