I’m doing Alex Dobrenko`s writing workshop (done over Zoom, with a small group). One exercise this Saturday was to spend 5 minutes writing about something boring or obvious.

I spent the first two in a bit of a thought paralysis. Nothing I could think of felt either boring or not boring. I felt that maybe everything is boring AND obvious, or maybe nothing is.

Then I wrote this:

I went to the swimming pool earlier today.

Sometimes swimming is the most boring thing in the world. The whole premise is you’re moving through a medium that's slightly more dense than normal — it's the same as moving through air, more or less, just a little bit harder, more tedious.

But other times it's a perfect harmonious flow of movement and breath and thoughts that come and go a little like waves or currents of water. Is this state the opposite of boredom?

I never know when or why it’ll feel more like the former or more like the latter.

I suppose the same is true about life in general. Sometimes I wake up, and it’s another fucking day to deal with. Other times, I wake up into an open-ended playground of a world, and the day, and existence itself, feel like inspiring creative opportunities.

In both cases (swimming and being alive) I don't have much of an understanding of this dynamic. It just feels one way until it flips into the other.

I once lived in an Armenian village for a summer, renting a guest house from a family that’s been there for more than a century, the Babayans. The older generation, Ruben and Ruzanna, are talented artists. One day, I passed Ruben on my way to the clotheslines…

Actually, I wrote this over the course of two 5-min exercises.

I’m not 100% sure what the instructions for the second one were, but I think it was something like “write until you notice a tilt in your story, when something unexpected happens and shifts the perspective”.

I think “I once lived in an Armenian village” was the moment when my rambling about nothing tilted toward a story, but that’s when the time for the exercise ran out.

So let me tell you the rest of it now.

I was taking my freshly washed clothes to the terrace on the third floor of the Babayans’ house, which is where the clotheslines for drying laundry were. And I passed Ruben on my way there: he was standing silently on the second floor terrace, looking thoughtful, staring at three or four little stones of different shapes stacked on top of each other on the railing ledge.

On my way back, after I hung the clothes to dry, I passed him again. He still stood there looking at the stones.

He said to me thoughtfully, in a tone like he was sharing a puzzle he was having a hard time figuring out:

“I stack them one way — beautiful. I stack them another way — also beautiful.”

In old Buddhist stories, moments like this often lead to sudden enlightenment.

You can see the terrace and some of the Babayans’ art, and the Babayans themseves, even, on their Airbnb page here: airbnb.ru/rooms/2857832… I highly recommend spending a summer in one of their guest houses.