40.1.0: Pavel’s report

The sun was setting. It was still hot. ‘Why are we here?’, I asked myself – feeling out of place. The party was of the garden variety. Chaotic, it left us swimming, but not as fish. This was not our biotope; not hers, not mine, not anymore. Nothing here was organic – everyone was forced in their place.

Agnes and I were still a ‘we’ then. She was the answer to my question.

Here I was, sitting under a tree, a beautiful red beech, for the happiness of Agnes. Its deep red foliage protected me from the sun. I felt organically connected to it – like the ferns growing green in its shade. This fixation shielded me from the attention of others. Eagerly they went hither and thither. They were even more foreign to Agnes than they were to me. The odor of their sweat was all around as they were trying to connect to the hive. They belonged to another order, looking for themselves in the reflection of the others. It was a garden party – with emphasis on neither garden nor party – where the guests crawled around in Brownian motion; convinced of being part of a master plan. In my idealistic world, I remained slowly yellow, without the urge to leave the beech.

Sunday Stories: Optimistically opting out of optimalism

A certain quiet came over him. He could have been me. His stomach was upset. Shit does not always happen when being hungry isn’t the reason to eat. He felt like he wanted to live another couple of years. Five, maybe ten. It wasn’t necessary though. Not for him. For me, for me it was.

The fog cleared. One has to love three word sentences. I can describe how things were not: white, clean, well designed. Disoriented, I lay ill. Dreaming of breakfast with the family, it was not optimal. I just wanted to live without deadlines. The line’s dead. Curfew for hopes and desires. I made a face.

– It could be worse, he said.

Could it?

– It is not optimal, I said.

Just an exercise. Stretching my fingers. Are you there? He was if it was the last thing he did in my life. My illness: unimportant. Names: of no consequence. Verbs: superfluous. Things one can do without. Nothing within, don’t get me started. He disobeyed – I guess it was his constipation overflowing with sympathy.

– We’re talking, aren’t we?, he said.

As if I had a choice in being cheered up.

– You are, I said.

Sunday Stories: Looking back at puberty

Remember those awkward days when your every move was dependent on being independent. Your laundry was done for you, dinner was still served and your presence at it was a sacrifice to the elders. You are ashamed now about the future you predicted for your self and that of others. You should be. It was naïve and self-centered on wishing ill on others. You had as little room for others in your heart as there was for yourself in your room.

I’m talking about the years 2015-2016. Years of stupidity that are by now mostly forgotten. Ape years paling in comparison to the big fires scarring the century before. Religion was a hot item again. Can you imagine? God was long pronounced dead. The notion of humanity was born long before His epitaph was written. But here we were: each boxed in their own room of right, sulking about the unfairness of it all.

In the end, it was all about being independent.

…

…

My wife dislikes … Kind of implies there’s more … Specifically more to do … Needing to guess what’s that … About.

I have been reading Juan Goytisolo’s Don Juliàn. He looks ferocious. The book is. It’s hard not to think this … Open, I guess. Open to the front, closed to the back. I don’t know. Just guessing. Writing words. I’ll need to get back at it. Find the thread. Use the needle. Knit a sock.

Gass brought me to Goytisolo. After Don Quixote it is the first book in Spanish I want to finish. It’s a break from Finnegans Wake as well. Halfway through it, it kind of lost me (after the Russian revolution if I recall well). I’ll get back to it. I consider it a …

altivo, gerifalte Poeta, ayùdame : a luz màs cierta, sùbeme : la patria no es la tierra, el hombre no es el àrbol : ayùdame a vivir sin suelo y sin raìces : móvil, móvil : sin otro alimento y sustancia que tu rica palabra : palabra sin historia, orden verbal autónomo, engañoso delirio : poema

Juan Goytisolo, Don Juliàn, p. 118

This bloody keyboard doesn’t even let me put the accents in the right direction! Never mind. Let us stay a bit positive in this world which is fixed to its past and therefore closed to its future.

Sunday Stories: Full Gass on Being Open

I’m jealous. So jealous I’m too ashamed to write out all my a’s. Who needs a’s anyway when you’re feeling a straight b? Flat, no capitals. Jealous of Gass, jealous of not letting the bile get out. I self-labeled myself the eternal cultural optimist and one must live up to one’s label nowadays or find no place in society’s shelves; shelf or be shelved, although that sounds better than it means. Such is the story of my life that I have self-censored what probably is my only real aptitude in it: a mild inclination to sarcasm, well-founded in an all-out hatred for ‘the way things are’. I am a self-made man in being the bottle for my own bile – only releasing some of its steam at moments of social stress such as dinner parties or occasions where I’m forced to listen (to dumb people, I wanted to add but one only ever listens to dumb people because only dumb people have a tendency to speak on public occasions).

So, as a matter of self-preservation, I need to find a way to reconcile both bile and optimism, so as to avoid bliss-less eternity too. Here goes the argument. Its form is to neutralize -1 and +1 to leave just N.

Good Bye

It’s not my place, this place. But I feel responsible somehow, as I always do. It seems it came to an end. So I think a tribute needs to top this page. I could talk about the splendid people who contributed here. The fact of the matter is, I don’t know any of them. From 2 or 3 I know approximately where they live and what they do. That’s it and that it is part of the heteronomous wonder of this place.

Instead let me talk about myself. I am a lucky bastard with the inborn capacity to feel out of luck. I am like most lucky bastards, that is. Things came easy to me, mainly because I settled for what comes easy. Kind of at least. Is that a crime? Just because it feels like one? Because the received opinion is that worthwhile is in association with  making a tremendous effort? With pain and trembling?

Sunday Stories: Anti-political politicians

“I will not allow anybody to destroy the education that allowed me to become who I am.”, said a politician in response to the question whether it was possible for him to agree on reforming an education system reported to increase inequalities. A sentence which he knew to appeal mostly to the unfortunately many with unfortunate experiences with schools. As he knew whom the sentence “I am the living example that you can make it also if you’re born from working class parents.” would appeal to. Sentences hovering like drones above the heads of voters which believe there is only one bigger enemy than politics: statistics. Sentences that will fire their charge with surgical precision on any politician daring to rely on a statistical finding.

Some politicians like to focus on the ever increasing gap between politicians and their electorate. From another politician: “I earn only a modest income so I know what life is like for an average voter.” The anti-political politician is not monopolized by the right. Politics by hysteria replaces politics. Nobody even tries to explain what we know about the facts. If somebody tries she’s set aside as a naive nobody, the real politicians who hate politicians smile wearily and that’s that. I know who stands to gain from this type of politics although I don’t know whether it’s by design or by invisible hand that our politicians get converted into a selectorate of one-lining sons of bitches which glorify and praise science as long as it is not applied in the social sphere.

It matters: if it’s by design we can only fight it. If we fight it we need to use weapons even more powerful than theirs. Which means we will lose. If by invisible hand we can educate and apply some real politics to cancel out the bias and move on.

I’m naive but the question is: how naive are you?

Sunday Stories: Paideia (1?)

I had visitors yesterday: an old friend who moved abroad and visited his home country with his kids. His eldest is a year younger than mine is. The discussion came to choosing the right path for their higher education. My son chose politics. His son is about to chose civil engineering. There is no discussion these choices are the right ones for the two respective adolescents. The interesting part of the conversation was my friends’ sons’ question to my son on his choice: “Qué es la salida?” (could have been ‘Cuál’, my Spanish is kind of rusty).

This sums up the modern view of education: you learn to be able to land the right job. But whilst the job may be the right one, is this the right conception?

Sunday Stories: The eater

We went to the theater last night. There was a message there somewhere. As could be expected, I guess, from a piece carrying like a cross the title ‘Golgotha’ (never mind the addition ‘picnic’). Anyway, we didn’t get it. Too unprepared I assume. One doesn’t go unprepared to a thing filled to the brim with biblical references and come out unpunished. That’s a pun. Well, at least pun-ish.

I peed when it was done, then smoked, then joined the after-theater. I was hungry. The thing is that I don’t cope well with alcohol, less so when I’m hungry. So now I’m in a foul mood writing this. But back to last night, I drank beer and only got my snacks during the second one. At which time I ate almost all. Conversation til then was about what it meant, the piece. And why there was so much nudity. “What makes a couple of tits and penises so essential to modern theater?”, was the second plate and actually the main meal. ‘God only could know what it meant.’, was the quick outcome of the first dish. Even if God was hated in it. Or so it seemed because on the other hand there was a large and, all things considered, long piano piece of Haydn in it. Let’s go out on a limb and posit that Haydn did hate God and move on to nudity.

Sunday Stories: Gass if

Time for my story.  It might very well be the last (I say, as if anybody cares). As if I care whether manybodies care. Faux is the pas of making an out-of-bracket comment on a between brackets comment. And that quite sums up my story. That and a rather improper use of the words ‘and’ and ‘that’ and that mainly at the start of sentences. And excessive self-commenting, I guess. That too.

As if I know the only one watching me am I; compelling me to do, comment on doing and reflect on the commenting – all at once. Not – also not a word to lead a sentence with, I might add (and just did: add that is) – particularly an attraction people will pay for. Not even an attraction people won’t pay for. Not even one to ignore. Just something not to notice. What if, then again, what if such and such?