Mart Gorski

Sch’dy (Sk’dee)

2001

To

Contents

NOTEBOOK I

NOTEBOOK II

The Author’s Explication

NOTEBOOK I

Possession and Nothingness

11/11/95

Of furniture, I have a blue metal chair, a desk-light and a pull-out couch bought from the previous landlady during the move, a large spoon and a small one, a glass, a cup and a coffee-pot, a wall phone laid on the floor, a knife (a sting of a disputable bee from the hive of sense), a black-and-white TV set procured in T. in 1978 (brought out, it catches only one channel - PBS; taken in, it keeps silent between the immobile goods of cotton), a transistor radio acquired in T. in 1973 and tuned to 90.3 MHz (at other settings it gives static and at the one at which it works, turned off for days, it transmits irrevocability), a tray (a gift from R.,B.,S. and M.), a typewriter Smith Corona XL1900 which, when I type, I mechanically pay court to, a dish, a jar, a two-legged (meaning collegial) relationship with all that, but also some boxes (empty), a number of books, a view through the window and (unpardonable inaudible) thoughts. (In time, even that which is not furniture begins resembling it: it presents itself in the same, obstinate way).

Through the radiator slowly goes the water, flowing in a circle - only that is heard. There is no other force to interfere in this current of things. As if it, the circumference of objects, at last has won: its triumph in its roundness is swaying.

(Since to those three protagonists of a nominal anecdote about chiefs, therefore here its hearty supporters, the past weekend was the first encounter with the emptiness of the province of this land - Dayton, OH - then, to shorten the day for himself (to thoroughly reason through it), the deal maker, the primary banker, S.M., during the second move went to J.C.Penney (a department store chain) and purchased a pair of good (solid!) shoes; a talentless aspiring author (a book-keeper) of certain (even declarative!) stupidities, A.I., wearing a trench coat with a lifted collar, appeared at the local game of American football and, pompously gaping at a foreign sport and an uninteresting landscape, he spent a miserable afternoon, while another book-keeper, of some other (even trackless!) senselessnesses, F.T., carved his doubtlessly gander-like trail into the last third of the day, full of nothing but mostly shameful obedience of all three pupils. Because the day was so trifling, amidst Capitalism, even these "reformers" of Communism were speechless, and their skilled brows of dryness were raised a bit higher).

The delirious world is crumbling into a different perspective, this arrangement belongs only to me, neither possession nor liking threaten to demolish it. Who knows how long this situation will continue? In fact, it is known, it can be seen from every corner of this sterile room: this will all proceed with unbearable elasticity until, with its (red?) sign, it summons and, like a wedge in a wheel, jumps into this world order and crushes it a New Revolution - the lyrical double-verse of reductionist assault from the prose-like drifts of holism.

The thing about that is, assuming the above even happens, our quest for purpose only then begins. Yet the entire meaning will never come to hand. Alone, a man will finish his time or it will finish him. For now, a winner has not been declared although it is very well known.

* * *

11/12-15/95

The Elements: In the room, there is a smaller rather than larger coiled iron radiator, painted white, unambigously powerful. Its heating is controlled by a valve. At night I turn it off, and during the day I adjust it. Since warm water is circling through it, its flow is heard, leaking and dripping. It means that even though I am not finding my bearings in it in the best possible way yet, the three elements have already been brought into a connection: (through iron) earth, water and (through its heat) fire. With the fourth element, according to Heraclitus (540-475 B.C.), the air, the room is filled up by definition so that, living in it (the room) with all four elements in concert, that is compliably coated with them, within myself there is only the tumbling of the fifth one - the soul. (From the ancient Greece to the present, it is only the manner of residential heating which has changed). Since, however, the soul is neither a classified element nor does it fit with those four, there is nothing for it but to wrap itself around this radiator (from which it all started), to warm (fire), to steel (earth), to enter its blood stream (water), to move into the air (air). As, on the other side, this observation originated from, no matter which, the warmth of the room, it fails the exam of those who are freezing or have already frozen and, thus, themselves became the elements reaching their, ultimate degree of resolution. For them, the earth, water, fire and air are a former pastime of their icy soul. I stand up, turn off the heat by means of the valve, the cooled iron returns to the earth through ore, motionless like indispensable air in the not filled lungs of a lone man the water sensitive to cold stops without the fire in itself, the time is for a solitary dream.

* * *

Apparition and Essence: If all of this is tasked for thinking - the thoughts, accumulated, decant beyond the world and age: neither one will ponder over its self. Nonetheless, if all of this is thought of to deceive - even there a larger benefit will not arise: then, it has also fooled that which has conceived all of this.

For when I arrived here on that last day of April, Springtime had since then advanced daily and overheated all of a sudden (overnight) into Summertime which afterwards melted for a long time so that it would also suddenly soften into Fall. Autumn is now (a mid-November of leafless and darkened trees whipped with a cold rain and persistent wind), giving in to the wet snow, the short and dull day, the apogean-perigean (supremely rounded off) night through which the desolate Moon (in battle with themselves deserted and yet correct clouds of shade of silk, alleviation of nickel) shines equally coldly, completing the desciption of such prescribed occurences and landscapes.

Thus much persistent changes of seasons are thought of to trick, to have my thoughts about them divert the attention from the more significant and more unsolvable constancy of my presence here, to make me not think about it (my attendance here). Cautiously, consequently crouched, through the so-called changes of the seasons I fall carefully like along a time axis of the eternally lessened bee, having recognized its powdered hatch there before it knew my honied habitation here, however much in the appropriate manner it disguised itself into my essence and I into its apparition.

* * *

11/16-17/95

A new morning, but the sounds [someone is starting a car, a far away bird is cawing (it must be a raven or a crow - November is their season), even further away a plane is in transition from an audible to an inaudible state (as is the water, from the provisional state of the boiler to the inexorableness of the radiator), a peripheral light of a progressively paler lamp that is rustling more and more as it is slowly vanishing, the ticking of a wristwatch taken off the wrist as if it is still on it (time is drizzling from it continuously and in any circumstance)] are stripping the same substance from it as that of the previous morning, and of the one before it.

To look through the window or to not?

In either case the steady scene of the world, the operation sustaining it to present itself levitating in front of us, the spirits of the dead and the unborn and the souls of the live, the rock at sea as a silicon protrusion of inveteracy, the roar of animals through the promising glow on the Southern Continents and the pragmatism of ice on the Northern ones, the emissivity of all (of odds and ends) but, at the most, of the stupidity over the newspapers, television, movies and radio, the despair and hope, the delusion and actuality, the object and dust, the talk and silence, the movement and stillness, the departure and return, the cosmic abyss in which, in the end, all this together, along with the morning, is accomodated, through this window they see me on the inside before I see them on the outside.

* * *

Loneliness strengthens the attitude about civil and political nonsense - by the silence of residing as by the residential confirmation of exertion breaking down the head, gathering in it the smallest sign and movement of disorder and grinding it into the basic/initial dust, it keeps intact: the spine of the universe it, in fact, is.

Thus, in the very backbone of the world, there is loneliness, without doubt.

No jerk or jump of ours, shout or fracture in the soul, the ages of the neatly stacked quietness will be able to leave.

Carefully wrapping around anything which believes into deranging it, the loneliness, as the only cosmic fate, in the end turns out as the ultimate bill.

This loneliness of mine, blending into the generalized one of the universe, by no means is separated from it, its only contrast is that it does not have measure.

For the cosmic loneliness is disturbed by a lizard, bird, grass and history, and mine, between these walls, not even by that.

With Regards to Emil Cioran

11/18-19/95

On Wednesday February 22, 1995, sometime around 9:30 am, having first gone by as an otter (by what he was recognizable), then having returned suddenly (likely having seen me inside), swiftly went into my office cubicle (made of a couple of planks) the department lead F.D. (Desjardins). Approximately, he said (I noticed: agitated), "At two o’clock in the afternoon we should meet". I said O.K. foreboding that, in fact something was wrong but, on the other hand, wanting to believe, and as the hours went by, believing all the more that, nevertheless, it is a question of some new project. (The previous one I’ve just finished and it recently went into production. Therewith I achived a significant cost reduction).

Those few hours from morning until afternoon I spent, therefore, in that sort of contemplation, doing some work along the way.

At 2:00 pm he showed up and said, "Let’s go".

We went into a room, a rather small one, where he took me a couple of years earlier to inform me about laying off one of the engineers from my group, actually the best one in the group, and having recalled that, each next second I was rapidly putting myself in that past moment, feeling the same is prepared for me.

In the room there already was sitting the manager of the Human Resources, W.R. (Roy). As I stepped in and looked where to sit down, I passed by him and some papers on the desk in front of him, and in an instant on one of them I saw a date in February or March, something like that and, as it seemed to me, my name. At that moment it became clear to me that they will let me go. [During the 25 years up to then, I was unemployed a couple of other times and changed jobs on my own several times (due to distance, returning to school, or because of my professional interest) so that I had worked for a number of places].

And that was what happened. W.R. started, with the trained sepulchral voice, to prattle, while F.D., truth to say in proportion with the nature of the event, got fidgety kiddy-like although more in a sense when one is in want. I was looking at them, first at one then at the other, straight in the eyes, not believing to myself that these were those who were announcing this to me - so much their previous and present imbecility was just triumphing.

All in all, they laid me off, instructing me to pick up my belongings and leave the office by Friday, February 24, 4:00 pm. In 50 hours. [Their official explanation was that, on longer terms (until then I worked there for 3 years), my ambitions, strivings and qualifications did not match the needs of the company].

To shorten the story, I had many books and other things which I had to move out, it was a drizlly day, I went to see the foreman down in the manufacturing and borrowed a cart from him (like a sled, but on wheels), it took me many times to carry the belongings over to my car and, in as many times, to take them home.

The moving took from the morning untill the evening of the next day. (My wife was busy, my children were in school).

Having finished moving out my things and before my final departure, I sat down and to all employees (couple of hundreds of people, the first name/address: AGOETZ, the last one: TSCOTT) I sent through e-mail (02/24/95, 10:21 am) a spirit of Emil Cioran which, once earlier, I had let loose from the bottle, typing on the same keyboard "The Letter With Regards to Gorki" which, breaking in the network, they found together with the material which was calling, in general terms, for uprising against the system. I wrote and sent, therefore, the following:

"I, N., took a liberty, ladies and gentlemen, to choose from "The New Gods/Strangled Thoughts", by Emil M. Cioran, The New York Times Book Co., 1974, for this occasion, in descending order:

From page 120: "We are all deep in a hell, each moment of which is a miracle".

From page 107: "Alone, even doing nothing, you do not waste your time. You do, almost always, in company. No encounter with youself can altogether be sterile: something necessarily emerges, even if only the hope of some day meeting yourself again".

From page 92: "Confronted with this bug the size of a comma running across my desk, my first reaction was charitable: to squash it. Then, I decided to abandon the creature to its panic: what was the use of liberating it? Only, I should so much have liked to know where it was going!"

At the end I wrote, this time in Serbian and without the translation provided here, from "The Letter to the Colonel" (the subsequent part of the manuscript "Waterloo Manifestoo"), with the preparatory introduction:

"And…for those of you who understand at least one more language, and in the same order:

"Mi se ogledamo u onom sto nam se cini (We mirror ourselves in what appears to us)", pp.96.

"Nacionalizam je ocajanje obezglavljenog proletarijata (Nationalism is a despair of a headless proletariat)", pp.71.

"Kosmos, sve sto je vise lud, sve je manje (The Universe, the more insane it is, the less it is)", pp.53.

Having started to leave for home, after that one and a few more things done, I met a group of people in which there was a secretary, several engineers and some other personnel.

The secretary said: "I did not understand a bit of that, who was that Cioran, what did you want to say?".

The others kept silent and quickly dispersed.

* * *

(Diagnosis). Sunday morning. Prosit!

There is nothing to come nor has anything been finished. (Oeil de boeuf - a bull’s-eye).

(Outside, a bird is croaking as if it is being skinned. It must be one of those miniscule ones, black as this fall, nasty birds perpetually discontent. As if it does not know: di buona volontà sta pieno l’inferno).

I’ve been asking myself for a long time what other room does this one resemble?

I remembered that, most probably, it looked like a hospital room. Hôtel Dieu, due to several reasons.

First of all, it was very white, so much so that it bordered upon sterility: not only its walls, ceiling and window frames were white - the blinds were white as well (as the Eskimo dogs, Siberian dogs, the canine running to Zeitgeist - the spirit of the age, barking of concealment).

Thereupon - in it there reigned the hush and muteness, characteristic of hopeless circumstances in some hospital room.

(Iüdicium of a form, its inevitability).

Lastly - maybe with my convictions, questions and discords, due to which, after all, I’ve got into this situation, in fact I am sick and, because of that, I was sent here on some holiday, that is a cheap day as this one is, which I dreamt in chromatic white and then threw it away on account of fatigue from the glitter of that composite colour. In bianco. Ut supra. Ut infra.

* * *

11/20-21/95

Before, it was more difficult for me on weekends. It went by like that, several months until two weekends ago when I took a pen and paper and described those two days. (Describing the days, we are not failing the nights: what dazzles - blackens, what whitens - at once crumbles). I hope that this job will sustain me. (Feverish skip of doubtfulness - evangelical remark of anachronistic commissary of meaning).

When, on working days, I return to the room (now, in the late autumn, it’s already dark), I sit down on that (blue) chair, read something, or simply stare at a(n) (un)certain (salutary?) spot - leaving the writing for the next morning. I wake up early anyway (I do not sleep well), then I sit down and write, as I’m doing now. Usually, I don’t know what I’m going to write down, not even at the moment when I am starting to note it down. I put down the date and look at it with disbelief (not trusting it either!). (Of course, I'm reasoning, putting myself into the combat). While doing that, I see how the nothingness is retreating. It is going out through the window but entering back in through the door. (It’s giggling, asking to stay). I stand up and close the door: through the window I see it how, escaping, it thrusts out its tongue a little longer while it expires underneath the pen on the way to a paper full of skilled words of some deserted ancestor or, in general, of an elderly man who had gone through all of this so long ago, judging by the story which is only his, the one out of an abundance of variants, of which this one is mine, which significantly differs from the consents to a convention or disguised reconcilableness.

* * *

In a day, or two, there will be a holiday here - so-called Thanksgiving. The people have become hasty, especially about getting the traditional meal for that festive day, the turkey, and other necessities. [This past weekend (due to business, I found myself at the local airport), I hardly got a parking space. The rush of the passengers before the coming holiday was noticable: some were leaving, the others were coming in, as it happens for holidays].

Tomorrow, I will also be on the road, driving to R., S., and M. I will see if I can leave the office earlier in the afternoon because the trip is long (about 700 km), and night descends fast, so that I can drive at least for a while in daylight. B. will also arrive, for the first time this semester. We’re all rejoicing.

In the situation we’re in, the coming holiday has a larger significance than in more ordinary circumstances, concentrated on preparing a turkey dinner. (I even doubt that R., S. and M. will get it. It doesn’t mean that much to us). Maybe we’ll go to Laurel Creek park (it is not far) - there, we frequently walked for hours before. (We have the opportunity again). Since life (for the third time in the last five years) has stretched us in different directions (while fighting to keep our lives from falling into firm doubt), we will try, during this holiday, to put it together on that (like a grain of sand in the pupil of an eye) porous path through the (quasistructural) forest, as through the spasmodic reminescence full of indescribable intent for a final union according to a deep plan of rough moss between the holiday loneliness and children’s laughter underneath the streaks of a halved countryside.

* * *

11/30-12/95

It’s been ten days that I haven’t had a chance to write anything: I went from one trip to another - I should be going tomorrow too; this morning I’m grabbing the opportunity to write.

Comparing the constancy of the room with the changes of the voyage, what is realized is the fickleness of leaving after sureness of coming back.

(Ought one stay? Where and why?).

For the change of paysage, suddenly visible location of, until then unknown, landscape, dissimilar conceptions and apprehensions of local population (the soft abandonment to the stableness of fixed residence), the surrounding, nicely conceived hills and uncompromised condition of granite, the geological constants of immovable years through which (as through the pearls of a primordial state) cuts through a highway (to Northfield, VT) by a noble incision, the chilled drop of main street on which there wanders (it itself dripping) a small number of vehicles and even fewer people (Saratoga Sp., NY), several wet, left back birds which in these, last days of the actual year try to determine where is the one, once united but for a long time traitorous flock, all that, therefore, made up wrinkle of, in fact, the same scene confirms that all of this is about a Mask: a White Face of Inevitable Essence peeks underneath it (underneath the facade) at each of these accidentally seen places (it grimaces from the unseen ones) while with the White Walls of Infallible Room it victoriously puts the make up on, prepared to remove it before it falls asleep and peacefully dreams of its small and ominous wisdom that there is nothing of a voyage until it comes to be known.

* * *

Upon the (Innumerable) Return: Having returned last night (having arrived here again), and thus this morning crumbled into the mechanism of objects established earlier, there is nothing for me but the consent, however banal - like cat’s dovetailing.

(I pictured that this was, quite surely, a case more general than mine).

If we knew what was, on this day, so quietly awaiting us, we would neither travel nor return. Only one of the two would be sufficient (irreversibility as the choice before recollection).

But, in uncertainty of a result, in illusion of a correction, and mostly, in compulsion by the subsistence (a cellular politeness with the volume of a greyhound) there lies the movement: an agreement to be saved. As much as it is inevitable, it equally puts us in the same, initial situation.

There is no bigger movement, nor a stronger cage. (As though they feed off one another).

That is why, something finally must be done and won, the weapons must be delivered into the hands of unbribable rebels as soon as all of this becomes falsely lighter.

* * *

12/05-06/95

Actuality and Foreboding: The objective reality (actuality) is that in the measure in which it presents itself.

By the density (concentration) of the presentation it is the first one, and actually the only one that is seen.

Everything else can only be foreboded. (Under the crust - the core).

Since, however, the foreboding is most often hazy, disjointed, of a short breath or even instantaneous, its influence and importance are justifiably neglected in comparison with daily pressure of objective reality nearby (a tree, a stone, water, a mountain, a beast, an angel) and far away (smoke, a ship, rememberance, heavenly bodies, sunk hope).

So that to foreboding (the presentiment, exclusion from the world) there is nothing left except the second class role up until the tree rustles, the stone keeps quiet, the water overflows, the mountain obstructs, the beast keeps vigil, the angel sleeps, the smoke covers, the ship distances, the rememberance is more and more indistinct - and heavenly bodies hopelessly hover.

* * *

Finding ourseleves in concrete times and situation, whatever they might be, and facing them more or less, we behave, in fact, in a localized manner, rarely (if that) thinking that all of this, or worse, happened to others, to individuals and groups, in previous times - the History. (Maybe something better was happening as well but, as a rule, not to the majority).

Our momentary condition and that which is at this instant torturing us, seem to have a decisive influence on us.

In that regard we’re instantaneous beings: we permanently ignore the entire, bigger flow of time. As if, as the saying goes, everything begins and ends with us. The feeling of belonging to a longer current (a longer lasting organism?) practically does not exist. [Only historians are somewhat more aware of it but, probably, only because of the professional occupaton with it (the chronology), not in the essence].

Thus, our instantaneity, even if lasting the whole of a human age (which indeed is the case), reduces us to daily figures. One figure this, another that: each one its own. Their sum, the addition of their undergoings and actings will make today’s day. (As if yesterday’s did not exist).

As if in the ephemeral bustle, in the daily confusion, the entire time finds its approval to (still longer) keep quiet.

Not carring about belonging to something more general (and longer), our moment has, somehow barrenly, in a flash, separated from the calcium silence of a tooth of time, without a bigger excuse.

* * *

12/07-09/95

In Between: We are in the perfect middle of the world - distanced equally from both the micro and macro space. Neither closer to one, nor further away from the other. As much as the one is little, the other is big. Staring at one or the other, seeing neither to the end, our position is securing in the middle. Dwelling there, we think not anymore about the extremes of the world. We occupy ourselves with middle things. In no way do we break in somewhere. As if something put us in this box of medium size and let us stroll (only) in it. While it, during that time, stretches itself on one side and contracts on the other.

* * *

First, we wait for them to come, then to go away, that is our relation with the days. (Unfaithfulness is our contract with eternity). Caught in them by the first glimpses of dawn, we’re getting rid of them more cautiously - at midnight. Perhaps tomorrow will change something, we think. But, nothing of it - the time of ascertainment lasts carefully, it does not tolerate different days. (Not being careful - it would gamble away even its hands). It stacks them, one on top of another, the same ones. And, in expectation of the next day, when something different would need to happen, this one is passing by. We fight aginst it or get out of its way - in both cases, with its indifferent flow, it looks like it remembers something else and more important, it touches us only lightly. Upon the setting of the day, yesterday is already forgotten, and tomorrow a miracle is expected. Since it will not happen (and what if it happens?), people turn their lamps off and lay down at the end of yet another day (which betrayed them as the previous one did), everyone into their charming defeat. (For our family this day is more significant: M. is twelve today, although our understanding of time cannot be considered impartial. It would be more proper to say that she passed twelve times through her December of Sun, whitening all freckles of that star, running after an experienced dog).

* * *

(Range of Deliverance). It is Saturday. The fourth since the one, full of Possesion, hungry of Nothingness. (While one thing sharpens, the other blunts). It snowed a lot, and is still snowing. (Like an enchanted guest, just arrived from the province. He would not stop praising the trick, making stocks of it). Through the window, the landscape presents itself as nicer, whiter than it is. (Nothing is at it seems). Falling, the snow covers ugliness, silences sounds, the black, grimly and gray wondrously transit to white. (It means the wonders are possible). In that manner, the snow improves the appearance and acoustics of, an otherwise, depressed surrounding. It changes its colour to whiter, leaves it increasingly breathless. (Is it not strangling it perhaps?). Finally, completely silent, some other universe (arrived to the utmost whiteness) looms in front of the window. (Is that one caught with such a simple beast as well?). Not even a trace of filth, creaking, murky grayness of winter days. (Where were the false parts of a polar fox hidden?). Increasingly thicker, whiter, quieter, at this moment the snow has won. For a while, until it melts. And surely it is in that, in an instant of nicer (ugliness lasts, prettiness flashes), wisely calculated the range of deliverance. If it lasted longer, it would not have been saved on time itself.

A Man With a Harmonica

12/09/95-II

Without having a presentiment that I would be moving here even though I’ve already resided, although for only a few months, in almost the same area, sometime in August returning from work I saw a man who was descending (in fact running)) down the street which I was climbing in my car.

It was a warm, maybe hot day, I remember now recalling that he was wearing pants but not a shirt. He looked like a German, or Norweigan, that type - his hair was blond and wiry. He could have been between 25 and 35 years of age.

As we were passing by each other, he running down the street, I driving up it, he started waving and gesturing, and since the car window was down, I heard him, he shouted that the headlights were on (it was far from dark, that long summer day). At the same time, he was shaking his hands, in a way behaving aguishly, so I imagined that, maybe, he was a lunatic.

(The headlights turn on as soon as the car is started, regardless of time of the day, but he, of course, did not know this. Nor did I, because of that, react on his, in any case well intended admonition).

In the meantime, I forgot him.

A couple of months later, I coincidentally moved right into the area where, it turned out, he lived.

The area consists of residential buildings/pavilions (more or less, a neatness of inhabitant’s scholarliness, permanent larva of unfinished pomposity).

Since then, I was seeing him here and there.

He had a red sporty car (Dodge, Daytona), with a black leather-like mask covering its front, but he did not drive it often, only sometime. (I knew this because we shared the parking lot, that is, I saw him a few times driving his car in or out of the lot).

Also, several times I saw him walking, better said running, likely down to the store, then returning from it at the same fast pace, with a plastic bag filled with groceries in his hand.

Therefore, while walking, he is actually running, skipping, something like that, exactly as I saw him the first time, back in August.

He thrashes his hands while hurrying, throws back his head, wanders.

Meanwhile, again, it seemed he recalled me, too (it meant he wasn’t as foolish as he looked): when he would spot me he would wave to me, the last time I waved back, I felt sorry for him.

All in all, I thought that he was, nevertheless, mad. (Why would anyone sane, on this side of the world, wave to someone, or caution him, or have any exchange with an unknown person?).

But, a few days ago, in the morning, leaving for work I went down to the parking lot, and scraping the first layer of ice and last layer of frost from the windshield, I saw and heard him beside his car.

He had taken his harmonica and was playing it, standing by his car which, having been started earlier, I suppose was warming.

The morning, as usually, was frozen - the day’s horizon was not pointing at anything warmer either. (It’s hardly dawning but is already catching itself in final error).

And he was playing a piece, hopping and hitting, although softly (regardfulness of alleged briskness), with his heel into the asphalt.

I figured that he was not crazy after all, but the rest of the world was, including me, succumbed, at least at some moments, to prejudices and fobias of that world, so deservingly smashed with an ordinary magnificent harmonica, in a prodigally empty saddle of a monotone, practically still morning.

Symbolism and Meaning

12/10-11/95

Today is Sunday and, at the same time, it is twenty two years since I have arrived here, to this continent from, at the time, the SFRY.

Contemplating it (sifting through the elapsed time), one outcome seems more probable to me than the others: neither that undertaking is in any way unique nor the uniqueness is to be attributed to other events which, since then, took place. (The things are constant, at least on a human scale - the same portion of repetition clenches our hand and in the head, groundless, covetous felicitation peers).

On the morning of December 10, 1973, accompanied to the Belgrade airport by my mother, girlfriend, sister, friends and relatives, I left them (and the country). Around eight o’clock in the evening, I arrived in T. (The second part of the night had already come to B.: it was springing up from the first one as a neck from flamingo for full two hours). The cab driver took me to the "Warwick" (probably his favoured hotel, later demolished because of the prostitution and murders which took place in it), at the corner of Dundas E. and Jarvis St. I unpacked one of the two suitcases which were, together with $600, all I brought with me (I didn’t have a secured job, nor did I know anyone), I took the soap and toothpaste and washed my hands and face, brushed my teeth and went outside to look around. At that time of year, in that city, the air is sharply cold (considerably sharper than in B.) but clean (coldness as a first approximation to cleanliness), and having noticed this first difference, I noticed the first similarity: the street car which passed by was alike those in B., called "Belgians" at the time. (Everything else was different - this only similarity was so significant to me that I, therefore, remembered it).

Of course, for further chronology of that time, in this writing there is neither room nor interest (nor justification).

But, if one would have to derive the crown and essence of staying here, including the discovery of an explanation for what happened elsewhere during this period of time (bindingness of notions and objects: feverishness of pearls around the neck of a dangerous beauty), the supreme meanings could be deduced to: regaining consciousness, increasing it and loosing it.

Regaining consciousness in the sense that these people here and those people there are two antipodes of the same, universal ephemerality (until something nicer happens to pain in the soul).

Increasing consciousness in the sense that the ruling class in this place, that is its true beneficiaries, will not stick at nothing to destroy the world, even though with it, and without wanting that, destroying themselves, in case they are brought in danger of being unmasked and finished before the time it would take them to react in their habitual, more crafty (that is their peculiarity) way. (For that destruction they already possess and still acquire means with the parameters and characteristics which the laymen, besides some popular generalities, know almost nothing about).

Loosing consciousness in the sense that the majority of the people from the land I once left, as well as from many other lands, did not, even partially, became aware of all of this but instead, in these times, immature they actualize themselves through various religions, through false, that is not authentic with respect to their interests, political parties (associated with and ranging from the nepotic casteism to direct treason), passively absorbing the twaddlings and theories (here produced by the gruffly austere and overthere by the parrot-like docile quasi-intellectuals and pseudo-elite) which are not describing the true state of the affairs.

So much and too much about the meaning of today’s date while deducing its sum.

With regards to its symbolism, however: from today, this Sunday, there are 109 days until my 50-th birthday which, by itself, would have no symbolic significance if my father, A. L., many years ago, while I still was in the original country, did not die exactly on that Sunday, 109 days before his 50-th birthday. (The excess of an edge at a point).

So that, since each next day (if this continues in the same way) I will be older than his established shadow in a significant walk, my regaining, increasing and, finally, loosing the consciousness will be presented to him there (where he’s so promptly walking, even though it is unknown through what) as all the more experienced and fit lone man’s activity in which he himself suddenly and inexplicably had been gone down while trying to imagine me how I recall him peristently on this day.

* * *

Brook-like, one more weekend expired (it’s Monday morning: already merging while the spring has hardly started) - I talked to myself again.

It is true that this writing is salvaging me, but the question is how long, even that, is going to last.

The most obvious thing that occurs to us is cosmic impartiality, even equanimity.

As if the universe is bothered by bigger worries or as if we are not in it, as far as it is concerned.

And it is likely that we are not, because of the error we’re making all the time: we expect to explain it (and that, in return, it gives a sign back to us) looking at it (during each one of the long-night flashes) - we’re looking to the skies instead to ourselves where the explanation and its (the universe’s) eventually goodwill lie the entire time.

It is no wonder that it (the universe) is not willing to have anything with such unlearned on-lookers.

If they knew what they were doing, they would have recalled that they were conducting the conversation with it thinking that they were speaking to themselves over a desolated weekend in a cosmic room.

* * *

12/12-15/95

(Collaborators). I’ve noticed that they’re missing, but somehow vaguely, keeping the information in subconsciousness. And then, a few days ago, I was unsure why I thought of them right at that moment (probably while looking at the walls upon which they were spinning their web), I had realized that they indeed were not there - those spiders. There were two of them, rather small ones, one was climbing up one wall, the other was coming down another, for me the remaining two walls were sufficient (I didn’t know what to do even with those): I was not chasing them. What they wanted, where they traveled up and down, each one on its wall, whether they were amassing something stacking it inaudibly, I did not know. I thought that they’d come in sight for the first time two months ago, sometime around the season when my residence started to be heated so that, I guess, it was the radiator warmth which attracted them. (Until then they lived, probably, from their memories). Of greenish, two-segmented bodies (like in humans), with their legs like those of flies, only more silky, sometimes of nimble movements but mainly of still ones (as if slow, and because of that, the thorough thought they spin), often motionless - their task significantly differed from mine. I was going out quite often, I went to work, to a grocery store, to a gas station to fill up the gasoline tank, I was battling with the idea, listening to the passing train, walking across the floor (gaping at the planks - instead of relieving them, by the creaking the time was, I could see, pressing them), I shined my shoes, leaned above the abyss when all of a sudden they (there, it meant, in the ritual hole they’d disappeared), who weren’t doing any of that, sparkled their tiny but convincing eyes, leaving me to stand my ground balancing on their web: they were not chasing me.

* * *

(The Exuberance). To someone who only chirps and sings (but is neither child nor bird) these writings must be on the other side of sanity. I do not exactly know how large it is, but a sizeable part of this population behaves similarly to that (chirping, carrying a tune, bursting into laughter, lightheartedly conversing mainly about nothing), without an adequate cause. (There exists such a kind of people elsewhere but it seems that there are more of them here). Of course, all of them need not despair and cry, especially if they do not have a reason for it, that is if their lives unfold more or less flawlessly. However, their over-facilitated and carefree understanding and apprehension of the world is far from its substance and historic experience. Hovering and giggling in all this (while the false peace crumbles like a tower of playing cards and rebels are shot at by depleted U-238), having not sunk into someone’s torment except rarely, superficially and in fact in an advertising manner, without a higher regard for something more general than personal interests and pettiness, all such beings run around on errands like fictitious bells ("surface dwellers", B.L.). In such their behaviour, the religion and its institutions have much influence: the majority of them goes to churches, the easiness of rite bestows them with self-reliance - so disburdened they want to start singing even more. Looking at them and hearing them through all these years (in the beginning, surprised by such a bearing, I thought to myself that it was a new, innocent world), my feelings were tumbling from one end of the spectrum to the other: from the pity for such a sheep-like representation of the world to the indignation. But more and more, both the perception by which a kind of

a pardon was granted to them (God help them, they don’t know what they’re doing), and the indignation are being replaced by a judgement about the incorrigible immaturity of a provincial rapture with itself and its velvety salvation.

* * *

(The Stayed Up Nights). "In decisive moments, a cigarette can help us more than gospel...In a sleepless night, man learns more than in years of sleep", E.C., "History and Utopia". Whether due to myself, or because of all this around, most of the time I do not sleep well, sometimes not sleeping at all. I wake up around midnight, one or two o’ clock, after that I often cannot fall asleep. In the dark, I measure up the thought. (It measures me up). I picture how the universe does not flinch from this night either, on the contrary, devouring each other, they feed themselves mutually. (They’re ascertaining the meal, cosmos to night, night to cosmos). Yet it is only the cover which holds back the thought from getting rid of me. (Wherever it’s gone, it returns bristled, to warm underneath it). It goes, thus, to surreal and real (to alive and dead, captured and freed, whole and halved), it goes to all visible and invisible - but it returns in an instant, reports on the finding, delivers speech. (It keeps turning from side to side, tries to settle, booms as if it falls down the street). I do not wake up (because I haven’t fallen asleep) - but already it’s the morning twilight. Each building is still in its place, the occupants leaving them, encouraged by habit. While I have, last night, made the decision, which they, who slept through, do not have presentiment about. To fall asleep at a wrong time and wake up at a time full of the melted away but also stirred up belief in a miracle.

* * *

On evenings, around six, from the floor below mine (these two are the only ones in the building) a conversation can be heard. (At that time I’m sitting on the chair in the kitchen, thinking about the salutary solution). Downstairs, in two adjacent apartments, two elderly women live: I suppose one of them visits the other for a conversation. In the beginning, this was diverting my train of thought (disturbing the silence). Later on I got used to it. During the conversation, which is not loud, the clinking of a spoon against a cup can be heard - surely, I think, they drink tea while talking. Their words, during this process, cannot be recognized, what they are talking about cannot be understood, their conversation changes into a uniform series of acoustic impulses which evenly, in continuity, increasingly paler, are reaching my kitchen in which, not having progressed away from the beginning, I, myself, am turning pale. After half an hour to an hour, the conversation disappears. (It is likely that the one who was visiting has returned to her apartment).

All of the uninteligible words which constituted the conversation (indifferently, even then, absorbed in the walls), turned back to back at parting (the accent of protoplasm and uncertainty of meaning), left to themselves thay make the return of the kitchen’s silence official - their sense dispersed and, if it ever existed, now it does not.

And in the once agin set silence, the vigilance does not let me doze off again.

The Supermarket

12/16/95

In the area where I live, in order to get the groceries people go to the "Price Chopper" supermarket, located within a small plaza called "Sheridan Mall", at the corner of Rosa and Gerling streets.

I go there too, approximately once a week - very little is needed for one man.

The supermarket, like the most of them here, is one of many of the same ones in a chain. Yet, the supermarkets belonging to the same chain differ between themselves regarding their tidiness, quality of goods and cleanliness of their parking lot. Since this neighborhood is, in social sense, at a borderline between a ruined class (people on welfare) and the lower level of the, so-called, middle class [made up of virtually illiterate but industrious workers (now mainly retired), who succeeded in acquiring and keeping house and estate no matter which], both the interior and exterior of the supermarket in question, besides that they with their gloominess, kitsch, uncleanliness and shabbiness make in one only a desire to, if at all possible, escape from here at once, with their crashing result they also embalm and tame: I have rarely seen so many people anywhere else reconciled with their fate of such a poor appearance (both physical and mental), dull to some bigger stimuli except to satisfying the basic ones.

There are many black people in the supermarket, but there are even more whites. Here and there, a sample of a mid-middle or, even, upper-middle class (obviously strayed, or in passing by) visits the supermarket; they normally do their shopping in cleaner, better supplied and more pompous places.

As the appearance of one determines the measure of another, the sales personnel in the supermarket are messy, blunt-headed and ill-mannered - they procrastinate work as it befits the image and circumstance of the location. (The symptom more general than in this story).

With its, therefore, impassableness towards a goal, this supermarket does not differ from the neighborhood. (Who took on itself to resemble the other is not important).

By its very nature, all this is a habit of a landscape and its doom of course - with these, and much worse scenes, filled is the road upon which all of us, more or less accustomed to, full of experience, wander. ("Travellers destroy what they seek", from B.’s postcard).

The dismay, in this case, is that the existence of both one and another (this area and its supermarket) unwinds completely independently and indifferently with respect to my or anyone else’s presence to, or absence from, here. As if there exists some larger mechanism of things, in which all objects are so firmly built in their places so that they would with it, the irrefutable immutableness, protect the vestibule of the privileged ones, notwithstanding how much even that is illusionary. Because once, when all this snaps, the illusion will disintegrate the most, while the supermarket will only subside.

Dream - 1

12/16/95-II

As if having stepped out from the stage-coach that clearly was sent for, I found myself in a rather larger premises onto whose two edgings [like in a suspicious mirror reflected Greek letter gamma ( )] naturally (unmistakably) there extended another accomodation of about the same size, however raised for a couple of steps over which one was to walk to get into the second area from the first one. Between the rooms there was no wall - there was only a little, no more than a meter tall through overdue handful engraved hope, a wooden fence. (The secret parts of the same ambient, doubtful duality of fibrous singular). In the lower part, where I found myself, there quietly dined some men and women - as if it was to do with a better restaurant. I got a seat at one of the dining tables: without astonishment because I didn’t know any of the people at the table, geometrically proper, dovetailed I was sitting next to them. But on top of the other, lifted part of the common expanse, there were an additional hundred or so men, women and children. The men were dressed in formals (with bow ties), the women were in long, solemn dresses (in front of a white summer-residence a tipsy porch was found, in it a black rose of late soberness), the children were in the same, only smaller, robes, they also washed and clean. The upper group was not dining, it was singing. Truthfully, it was not singing for the people who were dining on the lower level (these two groups of people existed independently from one another - each one was minding its own business), it was rather a singing which was unrolling by itself on the upper premises - on the lower one it was only me who heard it, the others were murmuring uninterested; they were having their supper not caring for this, on the surface courteous but, in fact, ominous concert.

All the people, both upstairs and downstairs, were from this, Anglo-Saxon, side of the world: the singing up there, and the quiet conversation downstairs were in English. However, having paid bigger attention to the melody and words of the song, I realized, upon my surprise (with a fatherland’s shiver), that these, at the first sight ordinary, although aggressively dressed men, women and children, were singing (and indeed nicely, powerfully, with high spirits, as a supreme choir), the traditional (yet urban) song from the other side of the world, "Why My Thoughts Are Struggling". Since the melody and words of the song were a reliable sign of a judicious finale (hardly a cell of sense and yet a full blow of brass cymbals), the expectancy of the catharsis before flash was increasing more as rustle than as lawful, molecular hit of a target. It was especially dear to me that the cited song was already sung by those, from the upper room, in my, Serbian, language, naturally and without additional effort. (Double wording of painless passage of things, sympathy with silence, a quick and consequently feeble death).

But, instead of the crescendo (a cathartic pulverization underneath the powder of the song), at some hour (the song was still going on up there, the people at my table, left to their absentmindedness in a form of temperate chatting, were still dining downstairs), until then hidden, appeared the choir conductor, approaching me and saying, "You, who like this song and are the only one who can hear it, come with me".

Having sensed that the matters were not clear, unwillingly I stood up from the table by which until then I was silently sitting, sagaciously listening to that light-minded song, and went following this man towards an, until then unoccupied, table at which, on his sign, we sat. But while I was reluctantly moving on his order, I noticed how he’d given a sign to those people on the upper level so that they, still singing the nicely conceived song, suddenly started dancing a dance of an increasingly faster rhytm, thrashing with their hands and jumping on their feet: to some men among them the unbuttoned shirts were showing the excessive hair on their perspiring chests, the women were shrieking, the children were giggling - the whole cluster of men, women and children in the upper room suddenly, therefore, started to accelerate, jumping and beating through the air in spite of the calmness of the song which they, in truth, were not singing anymore, they were rather gnashing it. The duality of waves/particles is spreading out in front of me, I later recalled that I had thought of. (L.V.R. Princ de Broglie (1892-?), I saw, was roguishly giggling under the electrons: the elegiac narrowmindedness of poured off signal did not look like a deadly infection to him).

The one who took me away and sat down with me at the other table, presented himself as the Princ’s Orchestrator of Attractiveness (of Trap, in other words): he said that the choir was a snare and that I would have to dream about their singing until it finished me of. Anguished, in a panic, aware of dreaming this (didn’t he, the Orchestrator, even announce the same?), I started opening my mouth in order to vociferate and attract the attention of those at the adjacent tables (they were still dining quietly, as if they themselves were not a part of the same scene although, neither speaking the language nor recognizing the melody of the said song, they did not fall, as I did, into the Trap) or, at least, to wake up. However, my voice in no way could come out of my mouth. At last, I screeched in a two-syllable manner, "Ma-ma" (she, indeed, passed away a long time ago but this, at the time, I didn’t recall, that is, at the time it was not important) - nobody answered. In desperation, I tried to remember the mechanism of waking up. It didn’t help, I forgot how to wake up, I realized and, during that, I felt how the more and more uncovered disguise of those in the upper premises and all the more complete disinterest of those in the lower room were crumbling me into an increasingly filled up spoon of, by now bared, Trap.

I couldn’t even wake up, I determined in the panic. If I could only recall how the waking up was done, what’s happened to me, I knew that, even before I used to dream about all sorts of things but, at the time, I also knew how to wake up. And presently, I couldn’t remember it.

In that dream, this was the most difficult for me - the lack of knowledge of how to wake up. For, the danger was approaching fast (the ladle of the Trap was increasingly unmelodiously snapping), and I forgot what I was supposed to do to wake up.

Even now, I am not sure if I recalled that for the simple reason that the Orchestrator, for both of us and clearly in front of my eyes, had sent for a stage-coach for a concert.

St. Ellis Hospital

12/17/95

In an otherwise unexciting look through the window by my left side, what’s more a long ago prepared and irrevocably framed as the definitive appeasement and surrender of the world (nothing can be seen there except a desolated intersection some hundred yards away, the apartment buildings on the right side of the street and trees dazed by the winter on the left side), the only more noticable object, rising up at about a mile from here, is the chimney and, behind it, the entire construction of the St. Ellis Hospital, made of dark red bricks. (Plentitude of exertion, its true height). With regards to the height, the chimney is like a factory’s: it goes a full thirty yards into the sky (how little is needed to that height); one can presume that it is the one which is in connection with the hospital’s heating system, laundry and kitchen (hospital food preparation). The hospital itself consists of a central pile of several concentrated buildings built of (the mentioned) dark bricks (white hospitals are rare, perhaps that is why the personnel in hospitals wear white, to improve the impression), but in the rear of the pile it can be anticipated (more than seen) a gray-olive (like a deserted pigeon) added unit. (As much as it is tradition it is even more fashionable, in all hospitals, to say that that is a wing, maybe because of the pigeon).

Since I rarely look through the window (through which all that is seen), I seldom think about it. Neither would I now be trying to describe so elementary this hospital if I was not motivated to attribute, no matter how much, firmness to it (the hospital) and carelessness and unwariness to me.

First of all, and according to tarnish of its older and more primary part, it can be seen that this insitution was built much earlier than I knew about this place. [The phenomenon of the existence of something without our information of it, and at once (sudden) presence to it, is bewildering by itself and speaks sufficiently about our incapacity to pretend, regarding anything which we haven't seen (not to mention: experienced), on knowing it].

Furthermore, and even though during the last hundred years, which is approximately the age of this hospital, there was written in it (in a way in which it was pliably undergone and right after that sternly put to death) thousands of novels about the absurdity and sense, it may be that it (the hospital) secretly counts on adding this epilogue to its story.

Finally, and what a coincidence, I was here (in this place), although for different reasons, some fifteen years ago, then staying in a hotel which was, it turned out now, near the St. Ellis Hospital and suddenly extracted picture of that sojourn is unscrupulously reminding me that, at the time, passing by it in a car, I saw it every day, but later I forgot it.

Things over which we crossed so proudly at some time, return to us when we think that we easily got rid of them or had written them off, warning us of our shabbiness and incautiousness.

Tales From the Playground

12/18-19/95

Having reminded myself of the playground (a field) between the streets A. and K. in the early fifties, I also recalled the stories which we were, laying on it after important plays and nibbling each his own blade of grass, communicating to each other convincingly and conspiringly in the middle of a July night, alongside the oath to a secret.

According to those stories, one was a dragon, the other one was sharpening the swords, that one clambered up the sky but got rough by the first star, the other one, again, hanged on a summer streetcar, this one received from his father from South America a letter with the green and yellow stamps and the seal still wet because of the Amazon rain, that one caught in a village the alligator holding it by the throat (truth to say, the best was relaxing), one swam over the Danube contributory called Dunavac, one played the match of his life even though he was still in the junior team, one (turned on his side) kicked out the vampires and now was resting, another said that the ghosts were in action in their place, too, but that his uncle had said that one should still be waiting, the fat one ceremoniously and without a blink of an eye declared how this morning, while the others were still sleeping, he himself dealt with the Almighty whom, he thought, called in his grandma while swearing using his name, one over there said that his father, an army officer, let him fire from a howitzer (and really, there, on the hill Z., there were barracks, and in front of them there were clumsy anti-aircraft guns, although it presently is not known what their use was after what happened but at the time that was being solved differently - an empty shot, like this one, was an exemption), this one returned from his aunt in Sevastopol where the thing could be seen in the deepest way from the submarine base, that one prepared to visit his cousins in New York City even though they wrote to him saying that they worked a lot and possessed a lot not possessing anything else, one said that in the newspaper he read about the Circus, one said that at the entrance to his apartment building a poster was placed informing that, who didn’t want to didn’t have to die since a treatment was discovered - a bunch of Zodiac under the Sun’s Spot, one said how it was possible to fly dashing against the last time, this one creeped through the fire without emotional consequences, one went in where the lion was and the animal did nothing, the grandfather of one had a secret weapon if a force attacked us, some time ago on this same field that one saw two people how they were burying something (a despair or a hope), this one hit a suspicious thought using the air gun (with a bigger calibre he could have demolished a pure idea), one said that he secretly drove his uncle’s heavy truck for half a year already, one had a real soccer ball but he wouldn't take it out before Sunday, one said that the ground beetles liked bitumen because it was full of adhesiveness of the soil’s melancholy, one said he remembered before he was born, a sister of that one drank sodium but was saved in the hospital, one knew how much room was left in the universe, one spent a whole day at the municipal pool without paying for it because he jumped over the fence, one, in his attic, had everything ready in case of the need to be still.

Each one made up his story and everyone knew that but nobody went far from the truth. Every tale was truthful because both the one who made it up and those who listened to believed in it and also because that was normal and possible then.

The difference between then and now is that, the adults, we neither believe in the one who talks, nor does he believe in what he talks about, nor anything that was possible then is possible now.

* * *

It’s dawning but with difficulty: the night is battling the day until one overcomes the other.

Wrapped in fog and darkness (serving itself with a skilled daybreak), the pale face of the universe is winning, even today.

Every morning twilight, it (the cosmos) assumes a new countenance but at noon, already, its old one can be seen.

It (the universe) would like to cheat from the start, but halfway through, already, it starts deceiving itself.

It pretends to separate one day from another, as if they didn’t agree to be the same.

Or the days are, nevertheless, different.

As much as it is necessary for patience (for endurance), for tuft (for armful), for war (for impact), for strength - for weakness even over this day to get to the next one.

Although to some today is a saint day and to others a preparation for a duel, this day took the both from yesterday to deliver into the hands of tomorrow.

Whether they (the days) would still differ amongst themselves, it will be seen when, until they themselves melt away, the remaining footpaths get hoed up.

If a conciliatory attitude grows up from them - it will mean that to the same forces they surrendered, but if on their rim a rose reddens - it will mean that in some of them the rebellion still lasts.

* * *

01/02/96

It is its second morning only, but this year is fortifying itself already.

(So much self-confidence retaliated to many but it obviously does not care).

It holds out, attests since the dawn.

[Building its days into the pyramid of the passed ones, in its basis it (the year) already falls into the tetragonal habit of a Pharaoh].

Returning yesterday (on the first day of the year), driving for hours through fog and misty weather (bifurcation of multiplied drops: the inner discord of watery singular), I was in fact driving, now it is seen clearly, towards this, its second day.

At the time one could only conjecture it, but as a supreme judgment of unavoidableness it came for its, in front of a jury of sense, neatly listed articles.

(Inevitability of next as decree of the same).

No way away from it (the rite of destination). Expanded as air (in all lungs inhaled), it visits every thought.

Even if I drove in another direction, I would not have been able to escape this day. (Short legs are in a lie).

If a day can be judged by its morning, today will again bring us only to tomorrow, and that only if we do not commit a stupid act.

Nothing more provocative than a sane morning, for an hour already, maybe an hour and a half, this day is offering.

Although, from here, it will be advancing for a moment to this, and for another to that side.

To some it will be better, to others worse. It will be the first one for some, for others it will be the last.

It will engrave itself into someone’s memory, others will forget it.

But everyone who will have, insolently, survived it will only be closer to tomorrow and farther from yesterday.

That is all what will happen to him (full of reasoning of pulse, sinchronization of excuse), regardless of the illusions of those who would have thought that in it they achieved a decisive victory, experienced an inexcusable defeat, or made a significant decision.

The Dwarf

01/03/96

At about one hundred and fifty, two hundred yards away from these buildings, in the area in which there are family homes (mainly modest or very modest), there is a house, a little separated from others by an empty and fairly unkept yard, in front of whose main door, facing the street, there sits a dwarf.

He watches the passers-by (meaning, of course, those in the cars because it is the only way of passing by around here), right into their eyes, most of the time pensively although, at a day’s eve, as a dodger.

In fact, it is a small plastic statue, representing the dwarf.

It is painted with pale (probably fluorescent some time ago), in any case elementary colours, it looks pathetic and pitiful so that it does not get through to one’s head that someone, besides a child maybe, would keep something like that in front of the house.

But the astonishment and displeasure of a random walker (brisk fracture of the previous truth, quick occurrence of the next error) are less caused by the obvious, almost infinite kitsch, the lack of a minimum of some harmony and aesthetics, and more by sightlessness of the whole situation which the dwarf, by its placing in front of that, no more harmonious house, emphasized only a bit more.

(This lack of prospect, the worthlessness of the house with the dwarf and the dwarf with house, does not let itself to be erased: it is instituted by their simultaneity and reciprocality and is particularly expressed when the day, having lost yet another battle with the frozen rain, peevishly surrenders to the icy drops by which (allied with them as a loyal dog) the wind finishes off yesterday’s newspapers, throwing them throttled about the street, in front of the scene with the dwarf).

However, before Christmas, the dwarf got company. (Thus, even it for a moment hoped that the delicacy of its situation, if it wouldn’t improve, would distribute itself on more heads, so that it would not be hollowing out only its).

The owner of the house added to the dwarf (on the stage before the main door) the collection which recreates, that is, it displays a Biblical scene.

(This is here, or for that matter everywhere in the West, of course far from a proposed sacredness of a Holy Communion, more or less the custom: such a collection, called a nativity set, can be purchased in a supermarket or department store).

Now, the dwarf finds itself next to a majestic carriage driven by the shiny angels and saints - in any case it is in the domain of impeccable, although somewhat seductive look of the Holy Mother.

The only thing which stands out is its lack of height and paled colors.

Everything else fitted besides that and its irony, the still exhibited silent scepticism.

01/07-10/96

Until now they were here but now they’re gone. The stir, murmur, conversation and hubbub are replaced by the dexterous fixity and indefatigable silence. (Neither the buzz of the fridge can be heard: it turned off achieving the perfect temperature, the Presbyterian equivalent of a thrifty device). Walking from one wall to another, the only thing which is being convened is their absence. (Their presence diluted to such a degree that it couldn’t be found even in the solution). Outside, the same, dirty snow from yesterday, inside also the same (luckily, small enough) number of objects which, however, stubbornly keep silent. Wherever to look (listen) around the room - there is nothing more ingratiating for the next move. (It would be the best to fall asleep now, but it’s only noon). Vanishing behind the corner while looking back (to know how to return), the deficiency makes faces. It lets me know that it itself is what, besides the refrigerator, remains. (Equally cold, neither one would thaw before its time). Having got a chance by the sudden retreat of the inevitable perfection (the deficiency) to the morning class about hasty kindness (behind the wall), the various little events from the memory of this abrupt visit run in. Among them, enters the room their, until a few moments ago, resonant crack (clank of pearls of family neckless), but also its increasingly emphasized absence, at the end ajar for a yawn of a singular. As if having received visit in jail, and all those years yawned from a single cell of a mouth.

* * *

(Complexity and Simplicity). At first sight (according to first impressions, for which it is said that they are the most authentic - the others serve as a habit), all this with and around us is crystal clear, reflecting itself sharply, without shadows. But as the time oozes (down the vein of summer, into deadened salvation), and the initial hit of life crosses over into a cinema reminescence, that which was clear becomes unclear. (Anatomy of crumpled atlas, borderline of the amphitheatre of birthplace). While to the children it is recognizable, simple and logical, to the point that they make a play about it, to all the more mature and older it becomes increasingly fuzzy, there turn out more and more complex laws about the principles of all that, finally a little which is explainable remains. (Sometimes not even a little). Whether the increasing complexity, as the time goes by, produces itself internally or externally - it is not known. If it is produced externally, then the pieces from which the vista consists are true only in the first, original moment - in the next one they already are not what they were, as if they disowned themselves. But if (all of this) is generated internally, the vista is constant, only it collapses more and more in ourselves.

* * *

Yesterday’s late afternoon, in a guarded hesitation before the evening, foretold for the first time, so weakly that, if one didn’t have a thought about it, one would neglect it, a modest prolonging of the daylight. Lonely red (what else is, these days, red?), the Sun’s appearance (it is assumed that it is real) soared above the clear horizon for a few moments longer than in the previous days, upon that it (too) suddenly went down (on the great depth it stumbled upon).

Approximately three weeks after the shortest day, yesterday’s was the first one which stretched if it could only go on a bit longer. (It twisted its neck, sniffed a reason). Emphasizing that advantage over the previous days, this one, a somewhat prolonged day, behaved as if, besides the frost shaking off the impartiality of itself, it decided on change.

Even though the winter will continue for some time, the prolongation of the day, established so unperceptibly but also suddenly yesterday, illuminating the winter more and more, will increasingly jeopardize it. Finally, having nowhere to go, the winter will escape to what has been agreed upon, the periodic place where, fled along with it, all the shorter days and longer nights will brighten it up again. (Every time with it, the winter, it is like that).

While yesterday’s, somewhat longer day will stay in its memory as much as it roused it (the winter) up from the seasonal dream (in front of the ice an outline of bed, in the outline an eye of persistent patience) and forced it to the longlasting and capacious preparations for the new migration, on the old road.

* * *

It is difficult describing days if they are the same. On their surface, they indeed are. (Isotropy of a whole day’s crust, truthfulness of poultice of the world). The only thing which remains then is to hollow them out. As the agricultural equipment, microorganisms and celestial phenomena that are boring through the earth, drilling a tree, feeding people and overpowering animals’ barking.

Entering the composition of something, its infinite picture is seen. (It is neither known where its beginning is nor where it will shake itself from the final explanation).

Upon that principle, everything which gives a way to doubt can be portrayed. Something always appears there, something gets displaced, that which was thought to have stood petrified suddenly as lizard vivifies, a great substance is being offered for small entries about each of its (belligerent) parts. Even the insignificant things, until then silenced, seeming worthless for the description, attain significance. In that way, in fact, the writing can be done about anything (intolerability as a pedigree of generalized heaven), acclaiming to the proposition that, after Utopia and Arcadia, one crosses to Eden although the proposer (Evan Eisenberg, in "Ecology of Eden") even there does not take out live species from conflict.

(Even a greyhound turns into an arrow, wouldn’t the thought in despondency?).

The only thing is that, while the thing is drilled and whetted to be described, the one who does that dissolves himself. Getting into the subject of attention, the describer enters the description. Describing the subject as much as the subject describes him, he is not loosing the battle nor is he winning it. He postpones, in fact, even such a small description of the world, from St. Benedict to Henry Ford.

* * *

01/11-12/96

Although a while ago it could have been anticipated that the amount of daylight lengthened, it is far from summer -winter is persisting like a forgotten soldier on the frozen front. (Because of that, the anticipation is an unreliable sign). As much as summer is far away, so much the imprisoment by winter is the most obvious obstacle to any disturbance of the things, and at the same time the most logical excuse not to change anything. (The enslavement by the thought is, for distinction, steady - even if summer comes, the same, icy, hush shines). We’re justifying ourselves that we’re not able to even pull out from this coldness (nor is the snow from the civilization’s finale, under the tons of the industrial salt), not to mention our inability to, so benumbed (see the Freud’s description of a Prothetic God in "Civilization and its Discontents"), put into disorder something more significant (overthrow the government, for example). Without a sign of revolt, we’re carrying out our duties - even if it existed, in this winter the insurrection’s been killed. Such automatism threatens to demolish us even theoretically; that we’re practically destroyed can be seen from every corner of this (falsely-cathedralic) pseudo-monastic room. Neither are we any longer as we were, nor are we as we were ought to be. It is better and easier to say to ourselves that this is not happening to us but to a stranger which we temporarily turned into, and this winter, unfortunately, froze. (Consolidation of small things, compromise of crossed arms). As if we are in a bigger, certain tera-organism, waiting all the time to pack ourselves up and return to our self from before, carrying the same, original suitcase.

* * *

On account of what can someone spend a lifetime in a place like this? Because of habit, fear of change or ignorance of other, possibly better places? A whole life can be washed by the habit; many give in before the apprehension from change, including the voluntary change of employment - it is best to be in the ignorance then: nothing forces you to make the comparison and do the questioning because it is not known that to which the comparison is to be made. (There are, in the world, places of still bigger misery, in the sense of poverty and despondency, but they’re without their inhabitants - instead in them, they each live in their own, like a poppy squandering Pandemonium). The population of places like this one, appeased in one of the above mentioned ways, spend their days fittingly, without ups and downs, stoically evenly, almost melanchonically, without immoderate glow but still with a minute of contentment: the pragmatic beneficiaries of the computed order, with the morning evened out according to the loyalty at noon, they are based on the axiom of a daylight fullness. That such days are (unbearably) unperceptible and dull, to them is not being shown. That these streets and houses are a simple rationalized collection of piled and stacked objects, in such a manner and as much that one can enter, exit, perform, join (the so-called Democrats or Republicans) and that all of them spend each day in that way - to them it is not strange. (Similar or the same, with the exemption of worse, is applicable to other places, in other parts of the world, but there nobody speaks of superiority of such a life, which is being emphasized here; as a matter of fact, the situation there is criticized, often with the exaggerated irony and complaint). While in places like this the purposefulness is shining underneath the lamp shade hemmed with the aim, their inhabitants, with easiness of a dough expanded over other possibilities and circumstances, live for a long time, up until unwillingly meeting the conditions for that, inevitable and last metamorphosis. Having risen up (having anticipated it, the ultimate change), they (in a form of a melted away, although possibly reddened personage) start pondering, soon however returning to the rocking chair in an indurated porch of a white painted home from the last century.

Broken Window

01/13/96

It was an old-fashioned house on the outskirts of the city, more precisely on the hilltop of a dyke with reference to the level of street A. and the apartment buildings across the street, on the lower side of the dike.

At that time, in the early fifties, regarding the civil constructions and habitation on the city periphery, B. was twofold: in the case in question, on one side of the dug up streets (those dikes originated from that - throwing out the dirt into Prosaic Side, during the excavation of the Central Idea) there were rows of pavillions built (a phrase was going around - shockingly fast, which did not affect the truth, i.e., it was true) in less than six months; from the other side the pavillions were watched (with awkwardly concealed underrating, that is, with a barren disdain, attributable everywhere to the autochthonous feeling of primitive superiority) by the pre-war houses, more precisely by their inmates.

The house (under the scrutinization here) was a yellowish colour. [Whether its former, and more probable, white color in time slid down and finally disappeared under the moist times of autumns and winters because, since the then current war and up to that point, the house owner shrank and kept quiet, that is, did not paint it again, or it nevertheless was its original (so roguish?) colour, we did not know even though we (from the pavillions) were running around that house whenever our playing would bring us there].

I cannot clearly recall the owners of the house (probably a shrivelled man and a clumsy woman), but I remember that they had a son and daughter: their daughter was fat and because of that she had her own world; their son, on the other hand, was slender (frail) and significantly older than us, still then he was a college student and, because of that, he did not (either) associate with us. With a briefcase of black leather (fairly chopped up or, at least, such as even it, like his parents I suppose, whined that it had seen better days), he could have been seen only briefly, usually when, characteristically leaping away, he would be coming in or out of the house. (He was walking jumping off: maybe still then he saw where all that was leading to and was getting rid of it or, maybe, he also had a world of his own in which was jumped in such a sharp manner). It was rumoured that in his briefcase he carried books and notes from the complex subjects he studied, which to us, occupied with more important things, was unclear but about which we did not rack our minds.

(Easiness of approximation, false measure of complex solution).

Nevertheless, the most impactfull distinction of the house, besides its run down facade and relatively strange, or at least insufficiently known tenants (although, by itself, the existence of them all was impactfull in the lustrous, new era, when the ultimate simplicity and friendly directness of cleansed and to all, except to them, unambiguous pith was stretching up to the breaking), was in that it, between its walls made of brick, had a black wrought fence with, in it, the same kind of gate which was opening and closing with an unavoidable creaking, and that, perhaps to offer a comfort amidst the grating noise (of condensed time, firm equity larva), over all the iron, imperfection of the mechanism and taciturn bricks in the fence, much of the flowers and fruits was toppling as if it decided that right there, on the locksmith-derived metal glade, it should have made the seething burst into the fermentation.

A whole rose-garden, lilac and accacia, and of fruit trees a cherry, an apricot and a sour cherry.

(The abundance of unnecessary memories, bold evidence of typical growth).

All this was planted (and foreseen to increase) inside the house yard but, in those years, the yield was copious, the ripeness unstopable, the wasps and bumblebees diligent the entire summer (waxen calm from the reader of a saint), so that the (although forged) fence could not hold up the toppling of so much significance over itself.

And I would have forgotten both the house and its dwellers [even though a short while ago, in a ringing fear, I’ve dreamt about them by the cherry tree, that is by the creaking of the overheated gate (while it was closing before the falsely embelished memento) - which actually led me to this doubtful testifying], if I didn’t remember that, on an August day, responding to the rocks attack by the adversary’s army from the street K. (for a difference with the previous and present war, the foregoing fighting was conducted using rocks although the regime of the time long ago had been proclaimed, in a miraculous way, that is with the plenty of imperfection, as having been worse than the former and later ones whose wars, thus, turned out more acceptable and more perfect), my rock missed the one who was my target and struck the centre of the house’s main window which, therefore, broke into pieces.

Of course, I ran away and hid in the basement of my pavillion.

It never became known who broke the window but that troubled me for a long time. More than 40 years passed by since then and I would still offer that the window be repaired at my expense if only I could buy myself off of this secret and, with that, once more run through the, overturned across the fence, rose-garden and fruit trees, but not being afraid in a herbarium-like, almost herbivorous dream.

* * *

01/14-15/96

(Settlement With Banishment). During the banishment (as this one is), the only thing which remains is to keep describing it.

One ought to, by describing it, set up the same bone in its throat which it set up in ours. To disclose it, examine its structure, find out in its composition (it must consist of something, too) a sign with which it, in (as it is said) a quaint manner, tore us off from there and placed here. One ought to establish in writing that, by exchanging the masks, it (the exile) poorly masked itself. It must be described such that it gets sick of it. Parting with the original on account of the left over imputation, transplanting the subsequent into the center of the original sense: the history indeed consists of that, without our doom dissociating it. Since it is the way it is, it is necessary to enter the banishment’s jaws (move appart its jaw-bones), to crush its teeth, come out of its head. To stop retreating, conduct the fight. In the fight, one ought to finish it (the exile) before it finishes us.

Finished off, one ought to shake it out in a big river such as the Amazon, to sit down in a punt and come down to the bank of ours, in the jungle.

* * *

"All that was, and is not again, it happened only, till the first rain." For the first time this winter, a southern wind was blowing last night: it divulged itself by (and by what else could it?) the dubious warmth. (At this time of year, it blows from the north or northwest, it warns who the boss is).

If this wind were from the south, it could be felt more through the wall than through presentiment. It had a shiny horse on which it rode galloping around (and which, itself, was sniffing it), running (on its crupper) around the solitary building, rearing (on its hind legs) up to the dumbfounded (resigned) tree crowns - it warmed them a bit so that, forgotten from both God and people, they could withstand the winter without breakage. It gave me a hope, too, for something warmer, at some time.

(The quant foam of Copernicus’s cross, phenomenalistic growth of brandy’s fermentation).

With its southern scent and classical origin (a layer of iodine, a slice of lavender) it reminded me of amphora’s immaturity which, under the jar’s handle, matured in the south (and now, mellowed, it’s filtering itself like an empty sleeve of the contemporary moment). It took out all that fruit, opened it up (sliced it in half) in order that (only in that state it is possible) a support would again start flying to the South. But not to the present one, defeated and broken, but to the one, forgotten, however by this wind from the south (as by the unearthed wine) preciously revived.

Enlivened, though, for no longer than the lasting of this very southern wind which, here it is, with its first incautiousness fletches the rain that, ungrateful (which resembles it), increasingly but not all the way extinguishes it in the state of being premature, like when a small glow with large tongs is being lowered down in a still possible flight.

Momentary Lackeys and Callous Masters

01/16/96

The entire pretension of theirs is conceived on nothing. It is comprehensible with difficulty (and only with the world’s lassitude explainable) that, still, the earth (that is, its "civilized" part) is full of them. (The "uncivilized" part hasn’t gotten to that point yet, the wrapped gappings are not on sale there, rather, for a long time already, in it there cooks that which both will taste at some time except that those which are counted as "savages" will not decrease on a worse broth).

Pretentious, what’s more strutting, there teem the advisers, theorize the experts (pouring from the hollow to the empty, inside the cordial institutes and golden temples), the state journalists and (cable) anchormen tap each other on their backs, the smart ones multiply - all together keeping the dance of the ruling ones, in both the "freed" East and the "free" West. ("Sharks Have No Bones", Trefil, James). [Today, only domestic animals are not free - excellently comprehended, they are in some sort of (veterinarian) check; already those anthropomorphic/ anthropoid/humanoid/human-like (in a word, all those little animals from the nursery rhymes), because of such similarity with humans "free" as much as them, according to that supposition still fly, rout, sniff a romanticized call while, in fact, like their "higher" examples, they dismember each other silently: the incertitude of the universe is the goal of free hunters]. While those up there intimidate with hell, redeem with paradise, packing both products into docility. (That all of them together, in a pack, tell opposite things, for now escapes the tired attention, but this will not be able to continue indefinetely). Tightened in their stern shirts and even more austere collars, they moralize without scrupulousness about justified bombardment and unjustified insubordination. (Without a blink, they polute History like their soulmates, the clones before them). With a fat bank account they are - not many of them will die of hunger. They even have solutions and, thank the Lord, advise for the unpretentious as well as the poor. As if they were on the right, or they’re ostensibly on the left, as if they’re not shining cemented in their own centre. While talking nonsense they act seriously, that one does not believe oneself. They speak about knowing bigger and more complex things but do not know about smaller and simpler things. They can explain both sense and nonsense, engage into large subjects, but don’t know how the TV set, from which they bubble so much, works. (The pert they are, and hasty, they want to execute you if you’re disobedient).

And their masters lead the countries and religions since the beginning of time. (At the state and church positions they are - isn’t it that, through the ages, they help each other by that?). They singe the wars, after that (as if nothing happened) they create peace. Meanwhile, they are bored with their momentary lackeys.

All of them do to all of us whatever they like until, due to so much tattle and crime, they choke when those who were listening to them with disbelief and disgust raise the hand to ask them the right question. And, in their hand, sharpened by the reverberation, lit up by the uprising, there shines the Gubec’s sickle.

* * *

01/17-19/96

We pity something in a cage as if we’re somewhere else. As if on the firmly carved, foreseen road we ourselves are not moving. Thoughtfulness of neatness: voyage to strictness through tenderness of details, reality of a flag at an imaginary destination, habituation of track. Judicious behaviour: irreproachableness of the voting mechanism, proclamation of congressional truth, official correctness. Dutifulness: from morning to evening, from day to day, over the years - it is not easy to sustain oneself on the list of followers of loyalty. In the morning, crowded transportation means going in one direction, in the evening - going in the other. (In them, only unemployed are not taking the ride - those who’re taking it anticipate frightened, tinier than the smallest fleck of dust. Truth to say, in the trains, buses and street cars neither are taking the ride those who are going to, today again, take the profit, that is order the bombardment - they’re driven around by a chauffeur. But that’s another story, even though this one originates from it). The day sheared, as much of the coldness as of the effort to, alone, accept all of this. The same which, in the crowd, is going to fit in today’s day (in its overloaded wagon), came out of yesterday’s and will enter tomorrow’s day. (The present, in this case, serves more as a figure of conveyance). That the day (today’s, yesterday’s, tomorrow’s) serves here as a convenient cage is not necessary to prove to anybody, it is sufficient to keep him inside, in the vitreous dogma of equanimity of skillful orderers of out precious labours and the corresponding lives - up to the breaking point of yet another mass calisthenics.

* * *

Yesterday was the first day which smelled like spring. (The scent of an instant in which, before it will be reaped, the trefoil comes to think of the fourth leaflet and then, dissoluted, it draws in nostrils of the reaper). As much as it came early, the day was fictional - it could have not been believed to for a longer than that instant. (And to what could it?). All of a sudden, the piles of accumulated snow were gone: through yesterday’s day almost all weeks of recent coldness melted (and leaked out in streamlets), together with the useless parts of our lives, frozen in them during that time. Even a Carbonic bird (the flying piece of zeroth coal) croaking clambered up the roof of the building across the street and hurriedly shook off its wings its portion of the winter. The mild air replaced the sharp, for a short while (we know), but even that brevity was sufficient attestation of the change. Although all this with seasons is not a change in the true sense of the word - it rather deals with periodicity. Inconstancy as a proposition for permanency. Caprice of departing and whim of returning. To the one of them, at a given instant too spread out, the approach (first unnoticable, afterwards all the more expressed) of the other one, dethroning until the next alternation.

The seasons contest, too; like in us - it is the war which rules in them. Lurking each other, they wait for each other’s cautiousness to relax as it happened yesterday to this winter (it knew that it would arrive next year again) - proclaiming the victory they are going to celebrate it for a month or two, until falling in the same, negligent yawn of the cycle.

Displaying Family Photographs at Work

It is a custom here to display photographs of family members at work. (This is done by the highest officials of the state, too, up to the President, probably to give an example and support the ritual, increasingly the tradition). At my present work, this is indirectly but clearly helped by providing the employees with free picture frames, both smaller and larger, for framing the photographs. That is respected by almost all: thus the images of their wives and children look at them from the tops of their working desks. (The female employees exhibit the pictures of their corresponding family members although, it is noticable, not as much assiduously or in the number of the men).

Therefore, while the employee works, types on the computer keyboard, reads a memo or goes through the piles of papers, phones or answers the phone, in front of him there are coloured figures (I haven’t seen anyone keeping black and white photos) of family members. (The labs are without the pictures, to everything there is a measure).

At first sight, there is nothing in this which is not right, even the first, reflexive, thought how this is, actually, healthy and moral deed, seems right. The integrity of the family, as a fundamental institution of society, vibrates before the eyes like the first and most important goal, the vigilance and notion about the family members do not fall behind at any moment: the family connectivity is being stressed by the golden reflection of a studio - such harmony, it is supposed and with this suggested, is present in the employee’s household too. Taking into account the incontestable (traditional) inheritance of the protestant/catholic system of values and way of thinking of the predominant portion of the population here, by which, surely, this custom is positively valued, that is, according to which this whole show with the photographs is all right, although all that may look like (and it does) as being imposed (overly insisted on) in the sense that the (more intimate) parts of the employee’s life are being framed up at a public (inconvenient) place (something like a snapshot of sudden amiability in an overcrowded subway at 5:30 pm), one cannot tear oneself away from the impression that this is a question of another, more important subject.

It seems, namely, that the main meaning and object of the display of family photographs at work is not so much the exposure of the family members to the sight of others in the work place (to, eventually, enhance the seriousness and worthiness of the employee in the sphere as important as the company’s business itself), as to, at every moment, make known to the employee that for keeping prosperity and happy hours of family life, whose protagonists (permanently smiling) from these fair-like photographs are watching him right now (with a justified moodiness - the first second of thoughtfulness amalgamated at a draught), he is supposed to, in return, keep quiet, work more, endure and tolerate rather than to derange.

Perhaps that is why, in some other parts of the world, family pictures are displayed on the kitchen or family room walls although often in shoe boxes, as well. And perhaps because of that, the commotions are bigger there.

In the Library

01/20-21/96

Whoever plunges himself into an (usually big) effort to explain a little, everything large surpasses him by during that time. And if one does not occupy oneself with the smaller and comes to know it well, neither will he know the larger because it consists of the smaller. Only, and with a significant effort, something small or smaller can be established and, so determined, placed in yet another box, more often a tiny box, of knowledge. This is done by scientists and such, toilsome, job of theirs makes the science. (It is true that, at the same time, it is them who discovered the nuclear bomb and, together with the, so-called, technical intelligentsia, perfected other weapons, including the present ones, used in the "surgical strikes" on the remnants of the rebellious honour, but that is a theme for a particular, planetary description although, even so weakly started, it devaluates the utility and usage of other useful inventions). The scientists, however, deal with the tinier and the lesser, which is the only way to deal with the voluminous and the considerable, although they do not even come close to pretending the latter, if they do that at all in comparison to liars, quasi-experts, clergy and charlatans. [Politicians are not included in the list on purpose: even all of the above (the ultimate mixture of their composition) is not enough to cause shame on them. Whilst an honest ignoramus, as if leprous, is ashamed of his ignorance or, at least, hides it, they make honour and virtue of even the more fundamental categories (than it is ignorance), the disgrace and infamy, at the same time raising their entire nose up]. Contrary to the circus-like performance of the aforesaid "interpreters" of the big, even the tiniest minuteness of anything small is so complex that laymen are simply not aware of that, and if confronted with the description of even such a minuscule detail they would not apprehend it again. (In the laymen, in this case, belong also those who are specialists, but for other little parts).

The things are, simply, (for us) construed minutely, although it is possible, but more improbable than probable, that to all, to the collection of everything, the outcome is simple.

Having found ourselves in a remarkable library such as this one is, named "Whitney IC" (within the temple of the GE R&D, in Niskayuna, NY, the informal neighbour of the company in which I work), featuring perfectly stacked tens of thousands of titles including books, journals, transactions and proceedings of works in theoretical and applied physics, chemistry, medicine, astronomy, biology, mechanical and electrical engineering (from this country and other countries of the world whereby, it is seen even in passing, the political criterion does not play any role before the scientific one), one can only feel tinier than a poppy seed and, at the same time, pay respect to a man in principle (rare are such moments, of course).

Such volumes of (magnificent) knowledge (about small parts), such a penetration into the material (the only one on this side) construction of the world, such descriptions of cosmic particles, such a brisk (persistently analytical) silence of the used paper on the petrified shelves of offered sense (although, in this libray, the CD ROMs are increasingly in use) from which (the meaning), almost unpleasantly, the corrobation of a doubt pliably leers at the same instant - all that directs at least a little taciturnity and homage to that part of a man. Cast out in Nothing, he does not give up; in Nothingness he constructs himself. There is no greater bravery nor is there a stronger being. And all the other (profane, political, religious, circus-like, trivial (trivialized), propagandistic, stupid, fickle, unworthy, boorishly jocular, sly, kitsch, gluttonous, low and selfish) in one, in this library can only be abashed and gone away not to be found. At least until one steps out of it. Because, this other, outside, does exist so that the inexplicable part of the Universe, being reduced, would ridicule the explained one which looks like it is, at the dismay of the first one, increasing.

* * *

It’s Sunday. I don’t have to do anything nor must I go anywhere. (In the Holy Books, besides going to church, that is even recommended). The building is (by the act of a commission) approved for lodging, there is no need for a ramble (besides, it’s all the same). The only thing that I’m consuming today is this light bulb. (Although the reason is being consumed as well but, at the same time, restored with a lot of talent). With trained senses I am able to find out when a ghost entered the room and when it left. It came in when, because of it, the bulb was no longer visible (dead, it materialized enough); it went out when, because of the bulb, it was no longer visible (alive, it dispersed enough). There is neither a hymn nor a solemn choir to, at the last moment, before the pompeous void, from the fête-tower of the nation (it’s almost time for the Sunday supper), be listened to: a lively hush only (the incorruptibility of early stillness, incompleteness of a stitchwork) embroiders its silent embroidery between the sleepy alloy of a late comprehended bell (the inertial mass of Sunday’s exaltation) and an amnion of reverberation (the suborder of sonorous dragon). And what if something (suddenly) happens? If something puts itself into disorder, the equilibrium stays away, the orientation is lost or, in amazement, one is beheaded. (In those, sacral books, nothing is written about that, nor is even administrative instruction issued - it is counted on the tranquility of conviction as on the clause of salvation). If a jump must be made, a sudden adversary be defeated in the beginning of the attack. (The stupidity is in assault continually, it is not necessary to jump because of it, it is sufficient to turn to the other side). If it dares to show up (all that which plagues me). (Perhaps, today is its birthday or yet another, favourable opportunity misguided it). If it starts bringing in the weaponry and distributing it behind the hills of tranquility. Attacks, at last. [Instead of the DOD (Department Of Defense) becomes the DOA (Department Of Aggression): the W.K.Röentgen’s snapshot of the Ministry of this place. Truth to say, by the convertibleness above the conversion (by the offence as the best defence), the DOD does not fence itself from the DOA, it only perfects its bomber uniform for the new portrayal at the old fair of the world]. Even then, I do not have to do anything nor must I go anywhere. It’ll be enough to again drive it (all that which grieves me) out of my head (like a half an hour ago) or to, if it still refuses to go, denounce it to the reckless commission which signed off the reception of the building.

Dream - 2

01/22-23/96

As if I lie with my head down in a vaulted (archives-like arched) basement (sleep on the couch in its central room) when, at some time, I look around and see that where the furnace used to be - it’s not there anymore. I stand up and look more carefully, there is no furnace, I gape at everything around me, neither are the other things in their places: altered, the basement’s toxicity snarls insolently while it salutes on purpose cordially. I go towards the (basement’s) bathroom, when there some men, women and children move in a haste, arrange something, do some work including laundry. Nor is in a couple of other rooms (in the basement) "that which used to be" [and by such a pledge of the Populism (the people on the run) was recognizable]: in each of the rooms there is someone on his own and in some a multitude of lone ones. Sweated (by the wool of space, crack of duvet), I think how (again) I dream all this, I tell myself that this is a bad dream (by what, pragmatically, it is assumed that the reality is nicer), I force myself as much as I can (I remember well that effort) to wake up. Thus, I wake up. Quickly, I look around, jump to the room where the furnace is, but it is missing again. I run to the bathroom, but in it R., S. and M. comb their hair (with lightheadedness), place their finger on the mouth (of height), signal to me to keep quiet (to not make a noise). I start to run up the stairs, but there sits a child because of whom I cannot get through (to the viaduct-like redemption). I think of how this is not possible, I’m awake but the outcome does not differ from the one from the dream: the furnace is missing (the reduction to ashes in the brooch of soot - through the instict of old, a new ambient yawns), the polynomial composition of people and things is in the basis of the world: science + art = religion of the dug in foundation of the house. (Wer Wissenschaft und Kunst besitzt, hat auch Religion; Wer jene beide nicht besitzt, der habe Religion - He who possesses science and art also has religion; but he who possesses neither of those two, let him have religion", Göethe). I remember, thus, that I am not (sufficiently) woken up (from the point of the first order, the collineation of beginning) and, trying to (sufficiently) wake up, I realize: like in the previous dream, and in spite of the great effort, this (again) does not come easily to me. (The return burrowed from the memento of leaving; from the coming upon of a being: the multitude as an obstacle to escape - out of so many variants it cannot make up its mind which way to take). As in the previous (Dream - 1), in this dream this was the most difficult for me again: in the cube of the bed, to the ear of the pillow (appalled by my repeated incapability to wake up - to fawn upon myself) I started to spell those same ones, two-syllable words (from Dream - 1). So, I felt for them, until then gambled away, the keys (in the critical situation, spelling the natural commencement, they nervously clanked: from the two-syllabism to the sputtering meaning the journey was completed by the abandoned ideals, as if it would not be by them as well). With their help (the help of the keys) I succeed, I wake up (unlock myself), this time really. Awakened, I see that I did not sleep in that but in this place, on this and not that couch. (In such a confusion I am, I notice, that I no longer know where I am: whether in this or that place, confirming the truth about the ruins of other places with regards to my expectations).

Contemplating (irrevocably awakened) about both this one and the

previous, a month ago barely managed waking up, I concluded that, without the excessive manirism, it was supposed that in neither of these dreams I wake up, but that (by the throwing onto the scene at the right time a janitor character, that is the locksmith of waking up who estimated that, once more, the lock is to be unlocked, that is that I ought to wake up) I was allowed to, in spite of everything that befell me, wake up and return, although to the solitude.

I thought that it would have been better that, because I cannot count on goodwill, that is the subsequent estimation of that, after all, unreliable witness (uncertain character) of excessive dreams (who is only nominally, due to his trade, responsible for waking up, while practically he acts according to his indiscretion), I leave the apartment entrance door unlocked so that if I remain there (in a lone dream about the overpopulated basement of the world), I can return here (to the proper attentiveness of its desolated building), lie down and fall asleep again, without the worries about otherwise necessary keys, everlastingly somewhere gambled away.

* * *

Behind everyone’s residence - a desert.

Although even the conventional motley-like upholstery of the furniture (or the beneficial ideas) does not draw one’s attention off, one conjectures aguishly, the sandy care of allotropy (the existence in two forms: outside and inside, veiled by the same cracking - the powder of glycerine), one still insists on it.

Having come into it (the residence), having locked the door one does not think (one reasons) any longer about it (the desert). He looks around the apartment (sets the chair), lights up the fatal cigarette. He goes from one window to the other - it boils in him, notwithstanding room-like, the escape. However, he just returned, he doesn’t have where to go. (Except to the honourably lost war, even if killed by the dishonourable peace, but, besides the copiousness of the latter, in no way can he find the former). He looks into his soul, he sees that even it, having been contemptuous of him during the uplifting, abandoned him, he lights up another cigarette. (Spell does not flinch from the limits, he comforts himself). He leans against the wall, cools down his forehead, but in fact he measures them: how much they (the one and the other) protect from that which is outside, how much they explain this which is inside. He moves away six to seven steps (not more), dashes against - flies through the wall but also through the head. (Still) unprotected from the outside, (still) not articulated from the inside, he figures to himself how (again) he did not take the measure right.

Yet, he opposed, he concludes, true without necessary considerateness for the complexities of the world - its offended motley, the conceit of the white and yellow flowers in the not striking vase on the hyperbolic table of cosmic alliance which, he thinks, his situation has nothing to do with.

Žika

01/24/96

That Žika, from Switzerland, he died. (How, does one pass away in Switzerland too?).

Žika was somewhat older than us, before us he attended the same schools in B., graduated, worked for a year or two, and then he left for S. It’s been about 30 years since then.

But, a while ago he died over there. (In addition to our foggy memory of him, there now comes this gloomy darkness). No salvation is in prospect, as soon as the next year he’ll be forgotten. (I think that he never got married, that is, never founded a family).

But I remembered him at this moment, incidentally, contemplating about everything. (Picking out the remains of that life, from that time).

Until he went there (where, accordingly, he died), he lived on the hill Z., on, elevated by it, the periphery of the city. It must have been that he was, every day, climbing up the steep street, from the last stop of street cars 6 and 7, and coming down it, with the doggedness which, later on, took him from there (but also, it turned out, from over there although, with reference to the latter taking, the persistence does not present a significant opponent, it rather fits into its plan).

Shrunk and bent (with his back broken since his childhood), his hunch opposed to the fundamental cosmic slope in the form of that, still then metaphoric, peripheral street (concealed significance of redemption and its bee-like fall), he bore up who knows what with.

One of those days, a turntable belonging to one of us (in the company) malfunctioned. (It was rare to have that device then, in the first place). Not knowing how and where else to fix it, we decided to climb the hill and see Žika. (He just graduated, started to work, we counted on this).

One enters through a small gate in a rickety (from uncertain memory) fence, overgrown with the reticent brushwood as with the ultimate elaboration of verity, then passes by the obstinate trunks of high noon [chestnut, poplar (murmur of the world) and pine] on the way to a small dwelling (a room, a kitchen, something unsurpassable like that, czar’s) of a single-story and through time a whitish house, once painted white.

(It was possibly then, when we saw for the first time where he lived - it was always him who was coming to the company).

He takes the turntable and fixes it. (Returns the importance to the mechanism through the emendation, embelishes our, probably full of habit, day).

That was our biggest affair with Žika, with the exemption of the following one.

A few years after repairing the gramophone [Žika had already set off to S., "to live and work" (since to the dicoverers of this euphemism its causality (logical conditioning), overturned to even such a degree (it should be said "to work and live" - to placate the time axis of assiduity of loneliness), is not redundant, they would, all the chances are, set out to a more reassuring place (or replace the babbling with something more remarkable), if only they could stand up and leave the bistro): he worked, as a very good engineer, in a large firm such as "B.B" or something similar, anational and proportionally important], when all of a sudden here he is, coming for those few days of his vacation (with regards to those who occupied their seats in the restaurant garden debating about meaning).

The accident wanted it, all of us were up on the hill, at Lj’s and G’s place, when to the old spot there arrived Žika.

Where’ve you been, how are ’ya?

G. pours brandy, Lj. cognac, we stare (glistening) at Žika, Žika stares (glimmering) at us.

We, (still) rebellious (the majority of us was already working but some, of course, were still students), watch for the first opportunity to shoot at the System and in Žika, a cosmopolite, find support for our bitter and irate attitude.

Thus, after the first remote story, we fired off.

And this is not good, and that is not good, and you were right when you left (since you left, it became even worse!), and all in that sense. Žika stares, winks (rather blinks), he lets us recover our breath (all kinds of things he learned over there - we momentarily see, certain in a favourable settlement of our worry by his single move). It is true that he watches us somehow like a mom watches her kids (she sees that they go recklessly and embarrass her, but mom is mom, she has to take care of them, the benignity prevails in her), however, we ourselves realize as well the justifiableness of his seriousness approaching such an issue (it is not a joke to solve it, the world actually revolves around it).

In Lord’s name we frothed (along with the cognac), Žika glittered from the yellow brandy even more.

This is going towards its climax, we felt.

It’s going to go off now.

Žika’s got to say his word.

And he said, "Stop shitting!".

He added, "Pour another one for me, I ought to go back".

As he went back he did not return. Nor will he.

A Sign On the Door

01/25/96

Compressed in this (ready, as always, for a perfect reason) frame (not having where to go for now), it is seen (what time again?) that it is possible to write about anything, any speck: even the smallest explained (unmasked) particle of false perfection contributes to the escape from the (above) squeeze.

Thus, also this sign on the door, having suddenly appeared for a description, is annexing the move of the release. (Is it? It would, possibly, contribute to the breach if it was something else, not this panic-stricken head).

Exactly on the door of that prosaic room (closet) where the shirts, pullovers and, indistinct in the twilight, boxes are kept, there is a sign.

The door is, as always in such cases, intensively brown (its contrast to the white walls is understandable, but it is like that even when it is preliminary): it, therefore, appropriately shines due to the standard varnish for that kind of wood. With that, it is located three and a half meters away from the observer leaned against the opposite wall of the room (where, fortified like a successfully thrown insect, he waits for the solution to buzz).

And because it’s made of suddenly cut, aged trunks, on the door’s surface (at the crossing of two worlds, of which one is consumed and another branched out by the same thought) the higher order functions are visible, mainly parabolic lines but also a multitude of deterministically stochastic signs and pictures of varia