Yuppie Watering Holes Toot My Muffin
I awakened with a moderate headache that waned so quickly that minutes later, I figured it was just the remnants of a forgotten dream. A dream about Mustelids? Perhaps of Job Frustration? Or of Hynek’s cat Gnawing On My Patella During A Particularly Heavy Slumber? I’m going to go with the latter since I saw the feline quickly leaving the scene as my eyelids fluttered. Luckily, after Hynek and Nina left for their respective tasks (to transport his semi-paralised father and to take the infant to the doctor for vaccinations, respectively), I roasted the monstrosity of a chewing beast after basting it in a rosemary / dill sauce. The result was yummy, though the cleanup took out a good amount of my morning.
I began my walk at Hynek and Nina’s place. I’d spent the night with them, obviously. They were most gracious and I count them both as close friends. My European friends far outnumber my North American ones. Ain’t that special? I ended up at Restaurant Baterka, where I await Christián who had to scrub blood, fecal and urine stains from his clothing before being presentable for the world. I hope he has not been caught or I’ll have to bust him out of prison again. Last time nearly got both of us tossed into a collosal meat grinder and made into sausage to be shipped out to the poor in Southeast Asia, Mongolia and Northern Louisiana.
(at Hynek and...)
(Restaurant Baterka)
(Christián)
Hynek and Nina live just around the corner to this sign. In the deep, dark past, Hynek (but not Nina, since she did not exist yet) took me to the Computer Crypt, which was located on this street, though I forget exactly where. It was (I use the past tense because I am unsure if it still exists) a place where a group of geeks got together and played computer games, hacked various networks around the Czech Republic and most likely Slovakia, and drank until they were prone or supine on the cigarette littered floor. There was a full bar, you see. Honza Stanek was one of the creators of the establishment. He worked with Hynek and I at my first job in Prague, EIN. EIN is a meandering other story that I will not attempt at the moment - only that its blessing for me is that it introduced me to Hynek and Honza. The Computer Crypt was very impressive indeed.
The Computer Crypt also hosted parties occasionally. One such party was sometime during early December of 1999, shortly before Magdalena and I went for a sojourn to the states (also a story for another time, though I am sure it is pretty well documented in one of my handwritten journals and will find its way into this blog eventually). Magdalena bowed out of the party early and went home, leaving me there to enjoy the rest of the evening without a beartrap clinging to my left ankle. That night, I met Dana Procházková and eventually left Magdalena for her.
A side note.
Procházková is based on the word procházka. It signifies stroll or walk. I also was with a girl with the last name Rychlíková, a name that is based on rychlý, signifying quick or fast. A stroll is usually something done without the thought of hurrying. Miss Procházkova was a very gentle and reserved young woman. She had a hard time hurrying into a relationship, despite my urgings. In contrast, Miss Rychlíchová pretty much wanted to swab on our first meeting. I practically had to hold her back. She was running.
I continued my stroll towards the sculpted park of Stramovka, but before I descended into its treed, squirreled and skimpily-dressed-femaled depths, I made a short nostalgic detour.
The Commercial Agency of the Russian Federation is just behind this street sign. Had I my wonder tool with me, I’d have stolen it. I’d have mounted it, along with the remaining bones of the roasted cat, on a plaque and placed it above Hynek’s computer. He’d appreciate the gesture, I am sure.
I am not certain what goes on at the Commercial Agency of the Russian Federation, but I can guess that it involves a great amount of борщ, водка and проститутки. I AM pretty certain that they would not notice their street sign missing until centuries later.
Christián has arrived, but now he is having one of his seven to eleven times daily bowel voidings. He and I used to visit the small train stations scattered about Praha (much like this one) from time to time, sometimes during a journey and sometimes just for the swab of it. Usually attached to these small stations is a herna - no, that is not exactly correct. Usually attached to these small stations is a hospůdka - a small pub where old men and infants alike sit waiting for their train, sucking down half litre of beer after half litre of beer. We did the same.
We were one with them.
I sauntered down the slightly sloping path towards the portion of Stramovka north of the railroad tracks, then along Malá Říčka. The area was sparsely populated. I expected joggers, women performing yoga on the grass and swooping albatrosses, but I was más o menos solitary. I didn’t mind. It is the path to Troja, the Zoo and the Botanical Gardens. If you peruse the map, you can see a path perpendicular to Za Elektrárnou that leads to Cisařský Ostrov. It is a place of horses and humans who tend them.
The date on this entry is a misnomer (a word that Hynek informed me yesterday that does not exist in Czech). It’s now Friday, the 18th. Oh well. Fuck um. I was interrupted by Christián and his incessant babbling, carousing and narcissism.
Yesterday, during my walk, I did not pass over the bridge onto Cisařský Ostrov much less make my way to the Zoo. I’d like to before my time is over here, however.
After passing through a short tunnel beneath the train tracks, I encountered this oddly mangled fence. Beyond was the double track of vehicle ruts that ended abruptly in some ten metres. I proceeded to stroll through the more populous parts of the park. Spandex clad women jogged whilst white cables attached their ears to some unknown device. They trod to the beat. I am happy I did not hear that beat. Seeing it replicated in such a manner made me slightly nauseous.
I’ve often conversed about the plodding 4/4 of drum&bass, techno, house and most contemporary pop music, all of which feature the throbbing beat as the consistent frontal element (excepting possibly the last, as banal melodies sung by badly yodeling kurvy are also frontal). I have no problem with repitition and mesmerization in music, but I feel there is a point, where there is nothing more important than a frontal 4/4 beat, when mesmerization becomes hypnosis and then brainwashing. There are diminishing returns! Feeding the brain alcohol is a more pleasurable way to destroy precious mental processes, baby.
Ecstatic canines, tethered to rollerblading youths, eagerly nipped at passers-by but were always, at the last moment, tugged out of range. I passed the planetarium to which I have never been. I lingered for a moment within range of the outdoor pub where I saw Psí Vojací an infinite number of years ago. I cannot remember who I was with, but I suspect it may have been the other Renata - the one of Skanzen fame. Filip Topol is a dead mustelid. And he died very young - I believe at forty-seven. I’d look it up but I’m a lazy mustelid.
I peered into the front gates of Vystaviště at the concert hall where Jeníček and I saw Akvarium. That was in the summer of 2000, during which thousands of bizarre events occurred. Ah, Sweet Entropy - come again for me soon.
Photo before last, I was standing at the tram stop that usually takes one to Ortenovo Náměstí, Maniny and beyond. The cunts were, however, in the middle of what I might have termed in my youth as road destruction, though in reality here it is track destruction, as in tram tracks. So, I awaited a bus that sadly substituted for tram twelve. Since I am a lazy mustelid and could have walked, I disembarked at the following stop. The above photo is of the actual train station in the distance. My fleshy form stood atop the metro station as I awaited yet another bus to take me to the aformentioned Maniny. However, since I am a lazy mustelid, I disembarked once again at the following stop, the aforementioned Ortenovo Náměstí. Feeling nostalgic again, I cruised over to the area in which I once lived with Habosh. Christián and I were originally going to meet at Hamburg, but it was full of yuppie scum, so I decided for the place that inspired the subject line of this entry, another restaurant full of yuppie scum. Bastards.
(Ortenovo Náměstí)
(Maniny)
(Hamburg)
Today, which I mentioned is the following day from the date of this entry, we are sitting in another café / pub full of YUPPIE SCUM and fucking foreigners. It’s called, as you may have guessed from context, The Globe. In fact, when I first arrived to Praha in 1998, The Globe was a place of refuge. It was located in another place, however, one of which I shall not at this time disclose. I went there every night and had exactly four glasses of red wine whilst writing in my leatherbound journal (the one sitting on my bookshelf in Logroňo this very second). Additionally, I lusted after the waitress. My shyness kept any progress with her beyond courtesy at bay. Now I cannot picture her face. Well, it was approximately 57 years ago, so what do I expect?
The cubbyhole we’ve found in The Globe is rather condusive to writing, as I carry on my tradition of doing so in this place. We are also swilling pivo, but that is to be expected, unlike me remembering my ex-waitress’s face. We are outcasts in a café for the special expat in crowd. The others mill about, socialise, laugh and insert small rodents in their nostrils as we sit alone, ensconsed in our cubbyhole - shrouded in private worlds. Fuck um.
The first night I spent at Hynek and Nina’s - two nights ago - I had a long conversation with Hynek about the situation, or more - the enviornment, of the job he had just quit. Well, to be truthful, I mostly listened, nodded, grunted and inserted small rodents into my nostrils whilst Hynek soliloquised.
His situation at said job mirrored closely the situation I found myself in last year at Stonecrop in Boston. A human he dubbed David gave him and others vague instructions as to what to develop and simply stated that it must be done by a certain date. Hynek described it as a sort of UI for deploying cloud servers and found the idea rather useless in general since the deployment (how I despise that word and all of its derivatives) could be done manually by a competent system administrator ONCE and not have to be redone for … well … ages, really. We didn’t get into the details of the application, but only his opinion of its general pointlessness.
The application had to be ready for its clients by the end of this month. He claimed the point in development had been static for months. By no means possible would they complete it in fifteen or so days. He was laughing as he said this. I was, too. Even Nina was laughing. Well, a bit.
He was tasked to create a schedule with precise dates as a sort of ladder of completion (my words). I imagine such a task could be very stressful since it is completely absurd.
The conversation drifted to the space between management and development (or tech people in general). David never had time to clarify or provide specifics on any facet of the application he demanded from the lower echelons of the firm. There was a disparity in knowledge. David seemed to be regarded as the idea man and the conduit to cash (my words). I suppose the tech people were just grunts. Sheep, if you will. Replaceable. I’ve seen this attitude beginning with 1 2 Snap in Munich and continuing through many employments. The fact is, what is brought to the table (Jesus, mother of the wildest of mustelids, I despise that phrase) by the grunts is not akin at all to what is brought to the table by, say, a human atomaton on an assembly line. Programmers, system administrators, rodents residing in the nostrils of yuppies and the like have an innate creativity and ability to contribute to a project if they are allowed.
But, mock the management: FUCK UM.
Nina suggested that a middle man could be employed as a go-between - an intermediary. He / She would be technical enough to interpret the management / buiness assholes’ wishes more concisely to the grunts. He’d be half business asshole and half grunt. A hybrid! Imagine it!
I countered that he / she would eventually gravitate to one side or the other (most likely not to the grunts) and have to be replaced. The replacement would have to be replaced, ad infinitum. And, as an intermediary between the big guys and the grunts, he’d be the narrow waist of an hourglass. Jeremy, Ryan and I talked at length about this concept, even presenting it to the intermediary (who actually knew just about shit about tech matters) at Stonecrop. It did no good, of course.
Hynek followed up that the business assholes would be doing business things most of the time and maybe reach out to the intermediary during 1% of the rest of their time. The grunts may reach out a higher percentage of the time, say even 50%, but possibly never enough. Hynek was cynical. I can relate, though.
Fuck um.
To Hang Like A Mug On The Hook Of Fate
As Christián once again attends to his seven to eleven times daily fecal ritual, I begin my first entry whilst in the magnificent city of Praha. I am at U Zavěšenýho Kafe.
As Christián returns from one of his seven to eleven times daily fecal ritual, I continue my first entry whilst in the magnificent city of Praha. I’ve been here before - in this café, that is. However, it was very long ago and I do not recall the details or even with whom I was. I suspect that it was Renata. It may also have been Hela, but I doubt it. We’ll go with Renata, since she lived near Hradčanská and insisted on always hanging out in her own barrio.
Had I convinced the very lazy and recently gluteally violated Christián to ascend further onto Uvoz and then to Pohořelec, I would have encountered many more half-nostalgic cafés attended by Renata and myself in the distant past. I could even find the one where she berated me for drinking too much. I’d like that. I miss that woman.
It is very possible that we shall still ascend after our time at this mysterious but familiar café.
Soon, however, I will be forced to take the teaspoon on the silver platter pictured beside my svařeně vino and pry one of the eyeballs from Christián’s eyesocket. The reason for this is that he keeps talking about grids. When I was a child, I was forced to live in a grid with other children, and therefore to interact with them relentlessly. Obviously, this alarmed and angered my profound sense of introversion and sociopathy. The grid made these fundamental parts of my personality swell and consume most every other facet of the entity that was I. The swelling, much like a cyst on the scrotum of an infant, has never ceased, even to this day. I reach for the teaspoon.
You hear that Arp Odyssey? It's coming for YOU
It’s thrilling to be at home with the smell of freshly washed laundry wafting on the chilly breeze from the open window cross the drying rack to my flaring nostrils. Herr Wolfgang Riechmann’s synthesizers howl in my ears, playfully. In brief, I am happy I am here in this moment. It may be the beer, however.
The río Tíron is one of the last refuges of the European Mink in Spain. We think there are approximately sixty left. Well, Madis thinks there are about sixty left. I think there are less. Most important are females within breeding age. They are harder and harder to find. They are smaller than the males and fall victim more often to the highly territorial and invasive American Mink. Bastards. Well, actually it’s not really their fault, but the fault of the fucking humans who brought them to Europe in the sixties. Bastards.
That being ranted about, this stretch of the river is very calm. I can sit for hours with a pen and journal (a sandwich also helps, plus a bottle of highly potent liquid) and be lost in the current, so to speak.
And right beside where I took the previous photo is:
Ok. I slept. I have no idea where we are now in the dialogue. I was thinking of Melanie. Poor soul. Stupid expression, I know. Damnit… mind … don’t let things escape me.
When we were in New York, in Washngton Heights (I’d mapify that for you right now, but I don’t have the patience), it broke when i whipped her too badly.
We bought the whip in Arkansas, at a trailer shop that shouldn’t have been. It was to be for Corliss and Jayson. Well, that was what Melanie said. It was a fucking joke, like everything about her was. She was pretending. Cunt. Well, we proceeded to the north and fucked constantly on the way. She was that type. Once we reached NYC, and after Boston and another story with John, we found a very comfortable place in Washington Heights. I think Loyal could attest to it.
She wanted me to beat her with this thing we bought for Corliss and Jayson. So I did. Again and again. Of course, since I am an extreme person, it became too much after a time, and the bruises on her back were telling. The cycle went down from there. However, I’d never be here were that not to happen.
I’m not sure why I am thinking about things that were so long ago right now. Bastards… I’ll kill them… They destroyed my life! I think that insecurity breeds a new form of armageddon. Striking out at your friends is never a healthy option.
Oh! The hypocricy! Yeah, I’ve done bad, as well, but, even if I was the bad guy, in peoples’ eyes. In my friends’ eyes, I still see nothing I did that was wrong. Why? Why was I crucified?
Fuck um. We’ll get back to the subject of La Rioja at some point.
But really… why were all of you such assholes? (Christián not included)
Oouh!Would you kill for a pint of methane?
I’ve been knocking about La Rioja (he estado rondando por La Rioja) for nearly two months now, and, as any fool can see, none of that knocking about has included updating this blog. Qué pena.
I’m sitting in the Logroňo Public Library not because I do not have a sufficent internet connection in my small and filthy flat, but because it refreshes my shrivelled brain to change my location when doing anything other than watching films, cooking, sleeping or molesting a small rodent.
The expansive room I am in is nearly vacant of human presence. In my experience, it will begin filling up in approximately one hour. Why one hour? you ask? Students pour from the university and various secondary schools and apparently have no where else to go and nothing else to do but come to the library and continue studying! What an intellectual environment!!!
Turtles Have Short Legs.
I take long walks almost every day. Soon, I’ll cover the majority of the main town. I laughingly call it a town. Logroňo feels like a town and not a city. The are outlying barrios that will eventually be swallowed, but the center and its immediate surroundings seem to me tiny and, if I ignore the milling throngs (especially on Friday and Saturday nights), sparse of life. I like that. The contrast to Boston almost rips the ova from every woman within a 3 kilometre radius.
On a walk a few days ago, I encountered this abandoned building. It is sandwiched between two upkept and inhabited residential edifices.
Pardon me while I put on a new album.
It is also very close to the science museum - a place I need to soon visit as it appears fascinating, especially to that little brat within my heart that loves to sharpen his claws on my aorta.
I am a fan of abandoned buildings. I imagine one day that I’ll find myself squatting in one. Perhaps that adds to the attraction. They are a presentiment. I’ll tell ya, Shambal, my friend, you’ll be joining me, and we won’t mind at all. I’ll bring the pack of cards.
The café that you cannot see surrounding myself and this sumptious lunch is a place I find myself often and not only because they have excellent connectivity to the internet. As I probably have not mentioned since I haven’t written here for nearly two months, I’ve begun taking Spanish lessons because although I can communicate, my level is nowhere near what I’d like it to be. Café Bretón provides a pleasant***** and usually calm study environment between the hours of 13.00 and 17.30 or so. The food is standard northern Spanish fare, exceedingly cheap, and tasty. What you see in that image plus un café con leche was about 6 euros.
* A few days ago, however, a congregation of geezers came upstairs where I was hanging, reading, studying, browsing, molesting rodents, and sipping coffee. They were remindful of a gaggle of adolescents at a rave. LOUD!! They were playing cards and dice, whooping, slapping each other around with withered, veined paws, and generally causing a ruckus. Hey… good for them. My noise cancelling headphones came in handy that day, baby.
On another walk, I encountered these two items suspended from branches of a tree (as you can see). The left could be from some sort of kite, but the right had to be put there deliberately. Is there some symbolism here? The river is just some metres away. Is suspending a bottle clearly still full of water so near a living stream of free liquid an indication of a soul isolated from the rest of the rushing world. Locked in a blue cage, as it were? Or perhaps the entity in the bottle is proud to be held so high above the masses. The masses, after all, if represented by the swirling river, are merging and parting again and again. Determining one individual from another is nigh impossible. And they are foaming at their collective mouths. The water in the blue bottle is calm and serene.
Here we are now on the opposite side of the Ebro. I am closer to home, as the suspended bottle lives kingly and whatnot near the opposite bank. I was informed a few days ago that this mountain contains much clay. Well, yes it does, obviously.
The caves were obviously made by humans with some arcane intent. My take on it is this:
Shambal, when he was a young, strapping lad and not the decrepit old cunt that he is these days, remembered his ancestors carving them as his future tomb. He knew the mind of the mountain for his bent and twisted people from Tanzania once practised rituals that made mounds of inert earth into living beings. These living things, let’s call them capullos, hold a risidual portion of their maker’s anima. They are placed and swell accordingly over passing years. The last of the maker’s line returns to the capullo.
Shambal will return to this capullo.
The caves, or shall we say windows, are meant for his bones, distributed equally among them, and especially the cranium, which must be split into equal pieces between them. Shambal will eventually choose the poor, destitute (and she must be destitute) maid to strip his corpse of flesh with her fingernails and teeth. She’ll then separate his bones appropriately and carry each pile individually, wearing only a white ribbon around her throat, to each cavern.
Once she has completed her task, she’ll seal herself in the window that contains Shambal’s complete pelvis.
Years will pass, possibly even centuries.
At last, the anima in the capullo will absorb Shambal entirely and the whole mound will become sentient. Its windows will peer over its domain and the adjacent domains. It will be bent on dominance. The ancient tribes will war once again.
Oouh!I really should have shagged Eva
Fudruckers in IAH is a brilliant place! I recommend it to everyone. That includes Christiàn Neumann. I really don’t understand why he includes his middle initial in the name of the domain. Why not just make up something? Be, creative, cunt! Oh, I was talking (writing) about Fudruckers. Well, they supplied me a beer. Beer is important. It deletes most of the apathy in life. Well, if its amount doesn’t wane, but that is another story.
Speaking of beer, I am reminded of a pub in Praha near Vyton. Yeah – Vyton. The name is Pod Vysehradem and last time I checked, it was still there. So I expect to see you consuming their ultimately healthy smazeny syr very soon. I’d say, two weeks? Ok. Deal. Fuck um.
Eva disappeared soon after we met in that pub. She made numerous comments about an old man sitting near us. He had a beer. He did not move. He never moved except to sip his beer. Eva was apparently angered. Ok, maybe not angered, but disturbed. The vole did nothing. He did nothing! He was completely still. He did sip his beer, though. I’m not sure what I told Eva after she made her observation. I certainly did not tell her that I could relate. I’m sitting here at the moment sipping a beer myself, and I’d hardly move had I not unentrenched my shittypie from the bowels of my bag.
He was most probably deep in thought. Actually, I’d like to know what he was thinking.
Ingrid reminds me of the situation. We went out paltry often in Tallinn and she had to move from place to place often. Her body had to move. Fuck um. She is a physical entity. The man at the table was not. Perhaps he still is not. All of them need to be destroyed. Yes – fuck um.
Oouh!Don't go for the golden promises / Don't go for the easy way
I’m sitting at the aeroport bar in Midland, Texas. I’ve been here before. Two summers ago, I was sitting at the other end of the bar listening to REM Fables of the Reconstruction and drinking beer. I don’t recall if I, like now, also accompanied the beverage with a shot. The bulk of my communication with the outside world was with Karolina in Fulnek. I have no internet connection that I am aware with or I’d include a link to Google Maps so that you cartographically inclined could imagine yourselves strutting around the forested hills surrounding the village.
A Black Box by Peter Hammill sings in my ears. I don’t think I’ve ever listened to this album in its entirety. It is one of the few by him that I’ve never owned on a physical medium. I still don’t. I downloaded this version last night. Two of the songs, however, were on a compilation I bought soon after my first arrival to Praha. That was October of 1998, for you who are chronologically inclined. I’ll find and post the initial song of the album (also included on said compilation) to YouTube at this moment to share with the largely faceless world outside.
Pretty much everything is outside when I speak from within my writing.
Unfortunately, Golden Promises is not available to play in the good ’ol USA, so I’ll refrain from posting anything to YouTube, though if I ever arrive in Houston and make it to my hotel, I’ll attempt to enlighten the faceless public (for the intermingled cells within that mass who are musically inclined) with the entire album, as I am now enjoying it immensely.
Back to the timeline –
I purchased a compilation of Peter Hammill’s solo works after arriving in the Czech Republic because I had not travelled with my wallet of Cds. That wallet was unwieldy and heavy. Bastard thing. Thank the Lord Jesus Christ on his Mighty Throne on the Craggy Peaks of Tartarus for digital encoding of audio media. This compilation (along with Hologram of Baal by The Church, Radiation by Marillion, Billy Breathes by Phish and a few other things) was the soundtrack of my first few months in the country. I assumed listening to these songs (Golden Promises and The Spirit) would whisk me back to that time and I was partially correct.
I have a vague memory of listening to The Shell in the kitchen of our flat at Pankrac with Magdalena hovering around, perhaps doodling with a meal. I was writing. I could perhaps find the exact entry in the journal from those times in standing vertically in my backpack at this instant. I’ll spare the reader, however, as the entry will surely find its way into the coagulation that is this blog at some point.
(( Damn me – everything refers to time and it disturbs me. DEATH TO TIME!!! Thanks, Mr. Moorcock. ))
Nostalgia, by definition, is time-bound.
Fuck um.
Back to that kitchen episode. Well, there is not much more to tell, actually. I probably shagged Magdalena at some temporal point within an hour’s radius of the moment I mentioned. Oh – another flash appears in my mind! I had been working with James and Andrew for some time at that point. After my bizarre episode with Hela, I created at that job a CD-R for Magdalena that included several songs by the Art Bears.
The timeline doesn’t seem correct, however. It makes little sense. We moved from Pankrac to Nusle sometime in June, methinks. Eh?. But the memory is clearly in Pankrac. Fuck um. My job – place – locale – sometimes – living – place – solace was on Vinohradskà ulice. Sorry for the incorrect diacritics, but the current terminal is set for the dry -- skin -- beneath -- the -- navel *UK Dvorak* keyboard and not the smooth -- left -- cheek -- in -- the -- sad -- western -- weather *CZ Dvorak* I usually use in most situations. I stretch my skeletal memory claw back and do not pick out the specific one letting me re – experience actually creating the DV – R. Fuck um. However, I assume I was on Vinohradskà when I created it for Miss Magdalena. She is standing in the living space, adjacent to the doorway leading to the kitchen, and adjacent to the table immediately in the kitchen where I sat writing (at the same time? No, but all time is blurring, as it always does with memory. All is timebound. It is a paste now. I wrote of the faceless public earlier, so just abstract each moment to a personality within such a mass. You’ll get it) in the journal standing vertical in my backpack.
She complained that Dagmar Krause couldn’t sing. So, we were listening to the CD – R I’d made her instead of the compilation of Peter Hammill. Blur. Smear. Fuck um. I think I did not point out that Dagmar was actually singing the notes she was supposed to sing. The song was written that way. If it is true (there is no universal true in memory) that I did not mention this, it is certainly true that I considered it, in my most probably sober mind. I can even hear her (in my present imagination of a past voice) speaking it: I [just] don’t think she can sing [well].
Quién sabe?
He say nothing is quite what it seems. / He say nothing is quite what it seems. / I say nothing is nothing. (Mr. Pete)
I am brought back to the present by a WhatsApp message from… whom? Let’s see! Hela, of course. I say of course laughably, of course. I say of course laughably laughably, of course. I say of course laughably, of course, laughably, of course. Etc…
Damnit. The album ended.
Oouh!Internal changes external
Two Octobers ago, I attended a lecture in Tallinn at which my friend, Tiit, was speaking. Two people lectured before him. Well, lecture is not a proper term. They made presentations concerning their life among indigenous peoples elsewhere. The first was a woman who had spent most of her live in northern Siberia.
I’m referencing this entry. During the conference / presentation / whatnot, I wrote a number of short entries hoping to get back to them and elaborate. Predictably, I never did.
Places are not immutable, but they are less immutable than the people who occupy them. They are arranged by their occupants to reflect traditions. In this instance, the places are named after people buried in them. As time passes and other humans pass to the soil, the name of a village or region drifts. I’d like to think they first become combinations or hybrids of two dead humans’ names. Distortion happens and history changes. At times, maybe two or three humans become one in the minds of the present occupants.
In a way, I wish art was the same way. And, actually, folk music pretty much is. Traditional folk music, that is. It drifts through time and is reinterpreted again and again, reowned over and over. Printing, publishing and the internet has decayed mutation of art. Reinterpretation is frowned upon except in specific contexts, and even then rigid frameworks always remain (see – jazz).
I want to lay my hands on something / anything, and claim it, remould it into my own. Perhaps its fundamental will be retained. Maybe not.
Fuck um.
Oouh!Starless (and lost the knack)
Over the last month, I have been transferring to MongoDB (in the same manner I create normal entries) old some would say ancient hand written journals. Yesterday, I did this one – the first in a sequence concerning my and Christopher’s trip through Australia together. Oh, and an intriguing journey it was!
I was inspired to look over a series of emails that Christopher and I traded in the summer of 2011, when I was in Praha, then in Seaforth.
Writing of the amount of money spent when in a relationship in contrast with when not in one:
Christopher: Have you done this lately? Or are you reflecting on more distant past circumstances? Anyway, I think it’s a pretty common (for lack of a better, gentler word) trap. Which can become a habit, and necessity.
Me: I do it all the time. But I was especially referring to expenditures. My financial resources are very much drained by being in a relationship. I’m not cursing the relationship. I am making an observation. Sometimes I despise the fact that it happens. I’m not sure what it is about being in a relationship which makes one spend not twice as much money as if one were alone, but more along the lines of five times as much.
Later in the email conversation, I claim I was making a hyperbole by saying five times as much, but looking back on the relationship with The Smaller One, I am pretty sure five times is rather accurate. When I eventually get to transferring my writings from journals concerning that relationship to this medium, perhaps that figure will be justified. Heh, like anything I write is based on FACT and not EXTREME EMOTION.
The Emlekkonyv journal details (mostly) the year of 2000. I went through a number of wenches in that year and was drained monitarily by only one of them: Vesna. However, I was only drained of money because of purchasing flights for her. My five times figure concerning The Smaller One is up there also because of travel expenses. During the spring of 2001, I was jobless and Vesna paid for most every one of my living expenses sans rent, so I suppose she made up for it.
I began moving writings from Emlekkonyv to here also recently. Read the first about Vesna if you like. Typing that in made me understantably nostalgic about living in Tuzla. My three months there need to be remembered at some point in time, but that particular instant is not now.
When I am alone, I am exceptionally frugal. I give up many so-called luxuries and tend towards mock-aseticism. Meat and heat, for example, to mention two rhyming mono-syllables. In my flat in Tallinn, I had a swiss army knife, few plates, scant glasses, and absolutely no furniture in the living space. It was perfect for myself, but when Gudi visited, I belive she was slightly uncomfortable with the one chair in the kitchen situation.
I squatted on the floor for breakfast. Well, so did she, if I recall correctly.
Being in a relationship is the first step towards being in a family, a condition that sucks a large percentage of one’s pocketbook away into the aether. An ideal for my next (I laughingly imply there will be a next) relationship could be a completely independent woman. All finances are split. No expectations of gifts or other silly friviolities exist. Of course, I am extrapolating from memories of Dana dredged up from the aforementioned Emlekkonyv. I’d have had exactly that ideal had I remained with her.
She was a crossroads.
Others existed and most likely will again, but no other could have been such a successful merger of metaphorical highways than that one. The other Dana came close, and perhaps Hela, as well, but these stories are better left told in their own contexts.
All know by now that I chose to not have a family. If a relationship is the first step to being in a family, then I am relationshiply doomed. If so, I’m not too bothered, however. Fuck um. Nor does the fact that the past is so-called gone bother me. Illusionary time is a comfort. I relive all of my happinesses in the present.
Fuck um.
Me:
good morning from Seaforth, Nova Scotia. The pale bay which can be seen from the window also bids you greetings.
In my search for another ideal – splendid isolation – I look back to my time in Nova Scotia. I was not there alone, as the following paragraph describes, but I felt alone much of the time. Yes, that is called memory reconstruction, as my feelings now about the time are vastly different than when I was experiencing them in, for lack of a better expression, real time.
I told Hope that I’d buy the place off of her. It is a trailer house, elongated and railroad-apartment-like as any my fine reader might imagine, and everything I’d need to be satisfied. Well, the internet connectivity was a problem during the duration of my stay, but were I there permanently (I laughingly call anything in my life permanent), it’d be easily remedied.
Hope was not very keen on the idea. I don’t think it was ME she was not keen on necessarily, but the idea of giving up ownership of the roughly rectangular prism in general.
Damned packrats.
The calm here is pervasive. Even the occasional whir of a passing automobile or the sudden squawk of a seagull seems muted. I’m here with Jana. Although I am enjoying myself immensely, I, at the same time, feel I’d be happier alone. Perhaps more free. Free to do what? That is the question. I’d certainly spend more time writing. I’d help with the animals which are only a few minutes walk away, whereas I am unable to when she is here because she balks at anything “dirty”. We do spend time playing with some of them together, however, (especially the young and violent Martes Pennanti) which satisfies one of my longings. It also signals to me that Jana’s slow change out from the influence of the stoic and ironcast ideals of her grandfather is quickening. 4 years ago, she dismissed any passion for science or art as useless, as her grandfather still does. Her love for the Pennanti is clear to me.
While we are on the previous subject (or coming back to it) of women costing one precious cash, we can abstract that to something else: them costing precious time. Yeah, yeah… I’m trying to erase time completely from my life (or so that bastard Christián would retort), so why do I harp on it?
Fuck um.
Well, being in a relationship again could certainly put a spanner in the gears of my spiritual mechanizations. Just like clockwork, baby. The Smaller One was obsessed with time. I suppose we are all raised to be scheduled, as I have certainly mentioned before. We clock in when our alarm buzzes patronizingly every morning. Mostly, we clock out in front of the television or computer in the evening after happy-job-time is up.
I shouldn’t forget organized, timed and delineated evening activites. So I shall not. They are bounded by an exact window. I miss open-ended evening pub times. Fuzzy scheduling is a poor substitute for complete lack of scheduling, of course, but provides a breather, at least.
As for distaste for art, I’ll not go into it, as it is surely described at length in either other entries here or in handwritten journals. I’ll leave it at this: it was a burden.
The fantastic Pennanti, by the way, is most likely dead. His name was Henderson and the government of Nova Scotia demanded that Hope For Wildlife set him out into the big, bad wilderness unprepared. He’d been raised in captivity, you see, having been found as a cub injured by the side of the highway.
Therefore, he is surely a dead mustelid. Most likely, he’s been consumed by preditors or seekers of carrion after an accident. His corporeal form has been shat out and distributed among the receding forests of Nova Scotia. Yup, they sure released him back into the wild, all right. He’s one with it now, baby.
Mostly, we are in our small house by the sea. I spend my time writing, programming (I’m improving hpeforwildlife.org), and reading. Actually, I am now rereading “All The Rest Is Noise”, which reminds me of you because I was supposed to send you the book, but it became lost in a shuffle of moving and I have no idea what became of it. I now have only the pdf. I feel I appreciate the second read more. Perhaps since I am more familiar with many of the works. Perhaps since I am concentrating more on details this time round.
This reminds me of the project that Christopher and I had beginning in the late summer of 2011 and extending into the spring of 2012. It petered out afterwards, unfortunately.
We chose a piece of classical music, listened to in in detail, discussed it, and then moved on to another. I suppose the book I mentioned was the impetus for our aural adventure.
As most of my plaintive readers know, I grew up in a pit called Fort Stockton (the point on the map should be a smidgen south, though). Much like Seminole, there was little to do. My schoolmates (let’s call them peers) spent time congregating in the evenings, drinking and fucking. I did not take part in these revelries. I sat at home and listened to music or read. Sometimes I’d do both simultaneously. When I did the former, I payed attention ravenously. This is called active listening for all you dunderheads out there.
As I have grown towards decrepit old age, I still listen as often, perhaps even more so, but not actively near as much. This experiment with Christopher helped curb that for a time. We began with Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. In fact, I listened to it just the other day, though not actively (for the most part). In particular, I recall a bus ride to Žličín, a shopping episode at Interspar, and a bus ride back to Hůrka during which I listened to the Symphony intently. I may have even got through the whole of it. I recall this particular listening experience because I wrote about it. The files are in my phone. At one point, they’ll be come part of the Martenblog.
We continued with Sibelius’s Violin Concerto (I also listened to that at some point during the last week) and then Children’s Corner by Debussey. I believe the final piece we put under the proverbial microscope was Verklarte Nacht by Schoenberg. And, as usual, the sojourn came to an end.
I do know that Christopher perused the pieces with vigor, as he always has with any music, but I am unsure if he wrote about them. This is something I should ask him. The timing may not be right, however, as his life is rather complex at the moment – another story altogether.
A dog barks, probably the collie tethered usually to the house some ways away, reminding me of the silence. I shall listen to something subtle and continue to program.
A good ideal for a piece of music follows from these few sentences. Ambiance pervades, symbolizing silence, and is then puncuated at places with barks. Well, maybe not actual barks (but who knows?), but with harsh interruptions that come and go within instants (what a phrase! WITHIN INSTANTS!). A Boon to Dissolve (the title of the Flavigula album I’ve begun) needs a piece to host Renata’s spoken word poem.
If work continues as it has been for the last 6 months, I shall begin saving money for a trip to Wellington.
As my left patella already knows, I never made it to Wellington. It’s certainly not out of the question in the near future, however. Jeremy will be in Vietnam for a good while, a fact that beckons me to visit the general area. New Zealand is just a few metres away, no?
Christopher:
I believe I also have a pdf copy of The Rest is Noise, somewhere. Perhaps I will read it as well, though I don’t have much free time for reading. I am currently near the beginning of a novel you would enjoy, Borderliners by Peter Hoeg. It is about delinquent children (outsiders) being manipulated for their supposed good by the education system, but also seems to have some interesting notions of the flow of time.
Ah! The flow of time again!
I have not picked up this novel yet, though I attempted to find it on several occasions. Or maybe I attempted to find a place online to download it illegally. Whichever it was, I failed. I think I’ll check again right now, however. So, hang on a bit, vole.
No luck on soulseek. I can get a .mobi copy (Kindle, baby – no, not the wench) from Amazon for eight bucks. Fuck it, for the most part, everything Bender has suggested to me has been exceedingly enjoyable. I’m snagging it.
Fuck um.
I am struggling with a decision, whether or not to return to the South Pole for a summer contract. I don’t believe I told you but I recently found out that the job I was applying for in Wellington did not come through. I had contacted the South Pole group I worked with earlier to set the machinery in motion for my return, and now it is bearing fruit. The problem is I am having second thoughts about leaving Anne and Sylvia for the four months. It is hardship for them, and I would miss seeing my daughter grow up for that critical time which cannot be recaptured. I will have to make my decision soon however. If I go I will be gone from October through February, so if you intend to come here it would best if you could schedule your visit for afterwards. I will let you know what happens.
He didn’t end up going to the South Pole again. At this moment, I am very saddened by that fact. Certainly, it is not for me to judge, and I am not, but I worry about Christopher and the choices he has made. He has begun a family. It needs mentioning that we are very similar. He may more easily tilt towards desolation and depression than I do, however, and, as any of my multitudinous readers know, I am prone to those plummets often. Well, not as often as in former years when I slid down allies to funnels of despair almost daily.
What bothers me the most about the situation that Christopher put himself in is that he would be easily dominated in a relationship. Most choices would be made by Anne. And one very important source of happiness for him – and for me as well – communication with like minds about abstruse and abstract topics – would be very, very limited.
Thus a slide into lethargy and sullen days upon end at a job he hates. He has told me many times in the past that it sucked his ambition and motivation. He has also told me many times that he is an outsider there. A borderliner, if you will. That much needed communication does not exist.
I always saw Christopher as someone who could become a Suttree. Oh, he may still. Actually, I look forward to it.
Oh, and I never made it to Wellington.
It will be nice for you to spend the time there, I imagine. Do you associate with anyone else while you are there? I find myself quite isolated here, which is a drag. I have Anne of course, which is great…I would be lost without her, but it would be good to have others I can relate to. My coworkers are aliens to me. Or I suppose I am the alien…
I skipped a few of my bits.
Fuck um.
I read in Emlekkonyv yesterday a line I wrote sometime in 2000. It went something like this: Note to self: Go make some friends. That wasn’t verbatim and I am not going to look it up at this moment even though the journal is within my reach because Fuck Um.
I know that, like me, Christopher is an extreme introvert. It takes a bath in scalding loneliness for us to get off of our buttocks and socialize. I’ve improved over the years and I had assumed he had, as well. I say improved meaning that I am not as afraid of going up and talking to strangers. Alcohol is good for this, as well, but that is a topic for another time. Being less afraid of talking to strangers, however, doesn’t mean that I am able to play the game of so-called normal social interaction. So, given this improvement, I must face more rejections and let downs in general. My attitude includes a big dose of Fuck Um, so I’m not too bothered. Christopher, however, perhaps lets rejection destroy him to an extent.
My only real reference points since I know almost nothing about his and Anne’s relationship except what I surmise from his messages and our phone conversations are his relationships with Christie and Tracy. Perhaps relationship is a bad term to use in regards to the former. He was obsessed with Christie for years, and there at her bidding no matter the stakes. With Tracy, his heart was torn from his manly chest and frozen in a tub of liquid hydrogen, retrieved and shattered over an overfull wardrobe. He smoked enough cigarettes in those days to defrost each one of those uncountable pieces strewn about his morose home.
It’d be easy for him to let Anne rule because he gives all of himself to each relationship he has. He knows no other manner of relating to the situation.
Yes, I am usually dissatisfied with whatever situation I find myself in…but my desire to escape my job is not a trivial thing, as it is killing me. The job itself isn’t so bad but sitting in a cubicle surrounded by people I don’t understand (or particularly care to) is demoralizing. I wonder if it is merely a lack of talent for being happy.
Hm. A lack of talent for being happy.
Apparently, talent is an inborn trait. I take that to mean that our minds are wired for certain abilities. If the ability to be happy, or content may be a better term in this case, is wired and one happens to have a scant amount of it on board, I endorse any manner necessary to rewire.
I once decided that even if I looked back on my life as I lay on my proverbial death bed and saw I’d never truly been happy, I’d be content with that. I think I laughed. What did that mean, anyway? Many things I experience in real time have made me miserable (as my journals can attest) but find me feeling very content as I reperuse in forward time.
I want all time to be flat.
I also have a lack of talent for being happy. I’ve circumnavigated this problem with writing, making music, travelling, being generally chaotic, and drinking throughout my life. My only real enemy is boredom. My greatest fear is being locked away in a cage with nothing as company but boredom itself. Examples: a stagnant workplace, a prison, a suffocating relationship, or the bottom of a well. All qualify.
I’m happy for so many of my friends and acquaintences because they are content in their family life. For them, it is not stultifying. They are not locked in a barrel falling through a lake.
I would be. I feel like Christopher is.
Fuck um.
My uterine bulkhead is damaged (and also translucent, of course)
However much it irks my mother, I attempt to go for a walk in the magnificent Forrest Park in Seminole every day. My mother thinks that I am perpetually stranded in my pre-teens, and therefore very vulnerable to the elements, so she’d rather me not be out in the nefarious daylight.
Nighttime is even more out of the question. Her nerves are rattled if I return from dinner with Sandy in the darkened evening hours. Manifestations of evil swarm in the West Texas twilight. Yes - ultimately I shall become their victim.
What will happen, exactly? Well, of course, I’ll be swallowed by the tenebrous dusk! I’ll be another child on the back of a milk carton. Yes, the potrayal of me will not be an image at my current age or thereabouts, but of me as my mother still imagines me: a youth. I’ll be scrawny, gaunt and weak in the photograph. The public will pity me.
The demons of night will have long digested my flimsy soul.
At times, because I imbibe heavily during my time in Seminole, I must take a break from the strenuous circuit vaguely round the perimeter of the park. This photo is the place where I unerringly deposit my urine.
Stále uložím hůl chcankách právě v tomhle místě. I’ve always wanted to go up to a girl in Stramovka and tell her that. She’d be sitting idly on a bench. A portion of the wood would be caved in on the opposite side. She’d have chosen it because of the damage. No one could join her without possibly falling through or impaling their buttocks on sharp splinters. She’d be reading a book. It’d be a mystery or thriller written by an American or British author. Naturally, she’d have the Czech translation. I’d approach casually, as if just to keep on my way, but suddenly stop in front of her. She’d do nothing for a few seconds whilst I stood silently. When she finally would look up, I’d utter the sentence: Stále uložím hůl chcankách právě v tomhle místě. Then, I’d unzip and hose her down good.
My pee-place is one of the only groves (I laughingly call it a grove) of trees in the area. I wonder what the whole of the park was like in olden times. My father comments time and time again that when he was growing up in this decrepit little berg (my words), none of the area round the park was developed. Yes, were I to be zapped back fifty years suddenly, I’d plop from the height of a aproximately a metre down onto the red sand of a vacant pasture. Or, more likely, my backside would be scraped and slapped by mesquite branches. Possibly a scorpian and / or tarantula would scamper into my rectum. I am not wearing pants.
So, if my father is not fibbing, the park was a pasture. If one were to wander directly south of it in the present day, a fenced off area belonging to Hess Oil would follow. However, no trees are to be seen in said area. Only scapy and slappy mesquite bushes mottle the flat, red landscape. An occasional reptile skitters from one point to another, as well.
As I mentioned fences:
If you look closely, you’ll see the rusty twisted wire that once enclosed the whole of my special grove. It’s trampled and snapped at several points, providing me with entry and exit spaces without the danger of tetanus or some other wasting affliction.
At times, whilst urinating, I consider the dead grass and other foliage to whom I’m providing nourishment. I worry that my body’s excrement is either frighteningly sterile or poisonous, as no beautiful thing has spouted even though I have used the same spot for seven and a half years as a watering hole. Perhaps I am becoming like my mother and worrying about unimportant matters just to find any minute unsettlement in the cosmos though there may be none.
It’s entirely possible that the trees in my grove sprang from the flowing urine of other beasts (I laughingly imply that I am also a beast). These possibly fictitious entities could have for decades trotted a circuit vaguely around the perimeter of what would become the Forrest Park. Like all benevolent creatures, they’d have had to pause and empty their divine bladders. The sweet nectar could have birthed not only this grove, but one filling the entire area of the park.
As humans slowly supplanted the magnificent animals, the quality of urine peppering the earth diminished and the trees gave way to mesquite and lowly lizards. My grove, then, is the last remnant of a grand and now lost world.
Having come to this conclusion, there is nothing to do but build an altar to the urine of deities now vanished. I can sacrifice West Texans upon it. Perhaps their blood is more full of nutrients than the sour salt of their piss.
Glimpses of a pseudo-childhood
Today’s special question is what exactly are on these cassettes?
I’ve gone through three quarters of a cassette. It’s the one on the bottom right there. Interminable noise making experiments make up the bulk, but I’ve salvaged a few choice cuts. In six months, these will disappear from the server. Someone remind me to create a cron job to do so and a Google Calendar alert to force me to update this entry.
Sex with pregnant yaks
I’m not entirely sure who this is. During most of my beloved high school days, I recorded phone conversations. Only a portion of that time consisted of recording unbeknownst to the other participant. After a bit of thought, I suspect it is Richard Bays. He was no longer living in Fort Stockton, as I date this to 1987, most likely, being that it is immediately before the following snippet on said cassette.
The infamous Richard Bays telephone snippet was used on the official KRAP 93 tape and is, to this day, rather offensive. I’d like to re-listen, but the tape is in a box in Michal’s garage in faraway Praha. Here, in fact, if anyone would like to retrieve it before I arrive in April.
Bill Holstein and David Williams - What do you want for Xmas?
The Sir Alfred IV Christmas Special was, as they say, a mixed bag. Various skits (or breaks, as we called them - a term I appropriated from KWES djs John Clay and Jim Scott) featured Bill, David and me whilst others included Ira - the original Sir Alfred IV mastermind. I’m pretty sure I’ll dig up some stuff with him as I continue this journey.
Like many of the breaks on the Xmas Special, the end would plummet into Mysteries and Mayhem by Kansas. It was otherwise known as The Killing Song. For the slow of wit, that means it played when the break called for the death of a participant.
Sir Alfred performs brain surgery
Well, there you have it: Ira. I’m not sure what this was used for, if anything. I do recall the ending was to be a flushing toilet. For the uninitiated, the music switched off and on again and again in the backdrop is Anesthesia by Metallica.
Sir Alfred and the Narrator jam
Feel free to switch this one off whenever it gets irritating. Again, I’m not sure the exact purpose of it, but it amused me sufficiently enough to rip.
Miller Robison - Third eye in the middle of your chest
The Search for Sir Alfred IV began here. Most of the remainder - actually, all of the remainder is better left on a reprehensive heap. That pile of sodden creativity is there for us all to learn from. It’s sordid putrescence wafts remindful of failed experiments and the need to bury them forever.
I cannot remember the purpose of the series of breaks. Again, all of the memories are lost. I can picture Miller and I in my room in Fort Stockton kneeling in front of that iconic boom box. Everything else is rather sketchy.
What are you doing in my house?
What the hell is David Williams doing these days, anyway? Someone should dig him up and ask him if he can wail the way he used to. We used to drive around the windy back alleys (read - country roads) of that bleak town with windows down and obscure music blaring.
Once we arrived by probably no plan of our own at some chick’s ranch house. Was it Eva? Was it Missy? Was it Julie? Was it Brandi? My mind cannot dredge up the answer. David decided to let out a piercing scream as we drove away. Some time later, after wheeling about the rural routes, we returned. We faced an angry adult with a shotgun. I clearly recall him glaring at me asking…
Is there a little girl with you?
(Ok, maybe I added the little part there.)
Weird times, honeybunch.
Glaspheomus Barkestle - The fucking weather
Glassy was the weatherman at KRAP 93 in Siberia, Russia. As I mentioned, the centerpiece of that particular idea is in a box in Praha. Well, unless someone has fetched it in the meantime. Knowing much more about Siberia, Russia and the world in general now, I’ll most likely cringe at parts of the tape when I eventually do listen again.
This break was not part of said centerpiece. I’m not sure what it was for. It amused me to hear it again, however.
The Force
I believe this is the original idea / version / whatever of The Force. Expanded versions were featured on other cassettes. I hope to get my paws on them at one point for everyone involved’s enlightenment / embarrassment.
The first Sir Alfred tape was lost soon after completion. Perhaps this was a part of it. The lesson learned was to make a copy of everything. No exceptions. I guess this idea carries over well in the digital age. Har. Har.
Jim Miles lost that tape. Damn him.
Postscript
Obviously, I went through more than three quarters of one tape. I went through all I had - the three in the photo and one other. Most was drek.
This adventure was inspired by a facebook conversation began by Raymond Garcia and Randy Ham. It can be perused here.
Gurgle.
Oouh!The Desert Music (Well, that's about to be the soundtrack)
He awakens from another dream. His sleep lately is punctuated with dreams. They are small climaxes. It is like this:
He falls asleep at the foot of a wave and the dream begins soon thereafter. The wave swells and at the crest and froth is a poignant moment. The wave breaks and he wakes. He always wakes. There is no transition between dreams within sleep.
Consciousness is an interlude. He thinks it the part where the audience mill about for a time in the foyer between acts. He is the sole member of the audience.
At times he has a moment within one of these dreams. The wave, then, is a metadream. No, that is not exactly right because it is not a dream within a dream, but a calm within a rising climax. The climaxes always rise. They cannot diminish. He doesn’t know why this is so, but the rule cannot be broken. He is miniature upon the wave’s swell. To him, at this point, it is a calm expanse of water.
His wish, maybe the only real wish, is to wake up from this state. To wake up from tranquility, which is nothing. Perhaps when he was born he had this pleasure. A newborn can wake from nothing at all. Somehow he knows this is not right, though. The foetus has a mind, so it must dream in the womb. All minds dream. He at least knows that.
What does it dream of? Is it of Tuzla or Wellington? Is it of Gweek? Again, he is unsure. He doesn’t think so. Say the mother mused aloud about places she’d been during her interminable pregnancy. Well, musing wouldn’t be enough. Say the impressions of these events are passed into the infant’s mind.
He had a theory that a monther’s consciousness could pass to the foetus. Yes, impressions, at least, could congeal there. Dreams in the womb would be taken from these impressions. They could be a collage or mishmash. A jumble of images make up an aleatoric slideshow. Some more thought can be given to this, he thinks. He’s in one of his intermissions. He is walking around in the foyer thinking about the previous act.
It was about dreaming. Dreaming in the womb.
Without the experience of moving through space, a foetus couldn’t know anything about time, either. Bobbing in amneotic sac may have a sort of rhythm. It could count its heartbeats. It’d have little notions of numbers, but could manage by setting at first a random impression provided by its mother to each heartbeat. Eventually those images would repeat.
A cycle forms and the impressions have taken on meaning. The sequence is the first idea of time. It must be jarring, he thinks, when the infant is thrust forth into a world with a different conception of time altogether. He laughs. It’s the first sound he’s made since awakening and it startles him. Perhaps that infant is scarred for life by the disparity between perception of time in the womb and the perception forced on it upon entrance into our world.
In his groggy state, it seems plausible.
It is also disturbing, and brings him back to his thoughts on awakening from nothing. From tranquility. Another question is whether the foetus is even awake at all during its bobbing journey. Periods between sleep and waking are periods of the utmost lucidity. Threads from both worlds combine in this purgatory. Perhaps the transition is much slower in the foetoid state. But before the impressions or even noticing a heartbeat, a dawn of actual consciousness must occur and that is the awakening from nothingness.
He wants to experience that again.
He speculates whether he was an in vitro child. In this case, no impressions would pass between another being and himself until the birthing. His drop into our world was the waking from nothing. No concept of time existed before and therefore no trauma could result.
This state of purity is an argument he’ll have to make later at work with any clientele who’ll listen. An argument for a sort of artificial conception. He smiles and his pillow moulds the shape of his cheek. Foam is pliant much like his clientele. They hold the shape of his words whilst in conversation, and especially whilst in drink, then leave and drift back into their original shape.
His dream had been about Tuzla. He was in the midst of moving back there into the same flat he vacated years before. A few people were with him, straggling behind as he entered the space. One had probably been Shambal. Usually, it’s Shambal. The strands holding him from this world to the other had mostly snapped already, however, and the others are now unknowns.
He’d opened his refrigerator. It was packed full of jugs of orange liquid. He’d supposed, in the dream, as he still supposes now, that they were a type of artificial drink, representing displacement and its falseness. The jugs were the same that milk comes in. Milk in the United States. He hates the United States. He did in the dream, also. He wondered why the tenant between him and him again never bothered to replace anything.
The flat was one room, but a corridor opened immediately after the fridge, range and counter. It proceeded to the left, opening slightly, continuing and becoming another space altogether. He believes that in the dream, he was both surprised and not surprised at the same time. He expected it but found it unnerving. Shambal had disappeared.
The corridor walked him forward from bare plaster and concrete to carpeted hallway. He espied, in the distance, in the tunnel-like dimness, in the tube-like constriction, a red sofa. Light bathed it and the low table in front of it. Bent rivulets of steam crawled up the air from two mugs. He knew they contained green tea. He desperately wanted to drink.
The girl stared at him as he approached. Her eyes seemed closer, but receded into her head the closer he came. Her dark bangs brushed her eyes and her pink lips did not part. Her nostrils flared, taking in the smell of the tea. She was waiting for him to drink. She desperately wanted a drink.
He wondered then about constriction - not exactly of the tube’s constriction, but about constriction in general. It puzzled him the thought of the dream and his near opposite manner of living. In Tuzla, as now, he’d had a self-imposed constricted space. He’d needed lovingly clinging spaces for as long as he remembers.
The flat in Tuzla from a childhood he never actually experienced had only one true exit. One apparent exit. Two ways out onto opposite balconies only led to a plummet. Well, those, too, could be an exit of sorts. The only real exit was the doorway safely into the hallway. This new portal in the dream, and from the flat, illustrates a new direction in life. Afraid as he is, he may pierce the bubble and travel through the tube towards unknown destinations.
During the dream, he approached the girl. He knew she was betrothed. He may even have been the lucky one. He knows, however, that no matter how much importance the universe around him seems to place on human bonding, it overrated. He smiles again. The pillow complies.
The girl played incessantly with the ring on the middle finger of her left hand. She didn’t look down at it. She just twisted and twisted with her right hand. When she spoke, her mouth opened and seemed to become all of her face. He saw into the depths of her hollow gut through her jittering oesophogas.
Nataša, he whispers as his smile fades. He’s falling again into sleep.
Oouh!