knowing that you can always return to my scribbles

and say something about them—about me.

But careful—

not like today,

So clever.

“Rarely do we feel happiness when it is ours. Only after it has passed do we look back and understand—sometimes with astonishment—how happy we really were.”

—Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis

More is in me poetry than prose these days. I disagree with prose more often, though with poetry sometimes too, but you know that poetry disarms us more. I think someone had already said that poetry is something we do not have defences against.

But with you, with your texts…

This is also something I find very pleasant and endearing in women—that they are never interested in apparent problems.

Artists have always been successful with women. The notions of honour, consistency, and logic are often foreign to them. They are intuitive, “unpredictable”—in a word, “effeminate.” The term “effeminate” is, in fact, a compliment. It means that a given person washes frequently, does not like killing people, is capable of compassion, and does not enjoy shouting or pushing forward just to prove their importance.

Women understand the value of human life—not only because they give birth, but also because they raise children and know what torment, responsibility, and effort that entails.

Men’s resentments toward women stem from wounded pride. From this comes contempt and disregard, as a kind of artificial compensation.

It is entirely natural that women do not need to search for translation, catalysts, or substitutes—just as great mystics do not. Women, like mystics, have a direct contact with reality through love.

I do not like masculinity in the majority around us, not like an anthill-type creature like the Chinese, though that kind of collectiveness is, in some sense, also a way out. Unfortunately, many men we know often remind me of the behaviour of certain animals I observed many times as a child, in my grandfather’s yard.

And how you sign yourself at the end of the letters, like here:

he wrote,

happy that he could tap on the keys,

M.

despairing,

pointlessly satisfied in despair,

not entirely defined,

longing for something or someone,

yet at the same time expecting nothing,

a dream

like nothing…

like you,

the absence of you, who knows more than you suspect,

the absence of you, who knows less than you expect,

the absence of you, who understands the unobvious,

the absence of you in being this way and not another,

“whatever you wish”—
your words wrote everything above.

And now, that I left your apartment when you showed me your viola, you received from your grandfather, the only thing I can say is a short quote and a poem:

“The union we experienced in the square was so deep that ordinary conversation now seems… well, simply ordinary.”

—Late Lovers by William Wharton

Funny

by Anna Kamieńska

(Translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Claire Cavanagh)

What’s it like to be a human

the bird asked

I myself don’t know

it’s being held prisoner by your skin

while reaching infinity

being a captive of your scrap of time

while touching eternity

being hopelessly uncertain

and helplessly hopeful

being a needle of frost

and a handful of heat

breathing in the air

and choking wordlessly

it’s being on fire

with a nest made of ashes

eating bread

while filling up on hunger

it’s dying without love

it’s loving through death

That’s funny said the bird

and flew effortlessly up into the air

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You wrote important things in your letter — the one I’ve only just received. Do you know there are important matters in it? Hehe… well, this troublesome knowledge concerns various small problems that people caused in the past for our friends, because some of our friends liked someone just a little too much, and expressed that liking a bit too strongly… at the wrong time, in the wrong circumstances, and, to their misfortune, it happened a little…

This knowledge makes it so that I would never want to expose Little Being to the inconveniences caused by such problems… it constrains me, therefore — because it keeps me from dancing with Little Being as carefree, joyful, and wide-open (remembering also the adjective “purely”) as I would like.

On the other hand, there is the sadness that comes from such ‘passivity’ in this dance… it may lull Little Being and give rise to frustrations and other unpleasant little sorrows sometimes — exactly the same, or very similar to mine — and the indifference she wrote about in that letter… and the longing for the train…

The only consolation I have is that perhaps these are smaller sorrows than those that would be caused by precisely such unpleasant problems in the style of the ones “people caused in the past for our friends, because some of our friends liked someone a little too much at the wrong time and in the wrong circumstances, and, to their misfortune, expressed that liking a little too strongly…”

Do you understand?
I know you do…
I know you understand the responsibility that comes with this knowledge.

That would be enough from the MATURE Me, sitting here in butter-stained glasses, sniffling and pondering ethical questions, sipping cocoa from a little cup. (They turned the heat on for me in the radiator… ahhhh, pure joy!)

And Miss Mantis searches for truth about herself and writes to me about it so beautifully, just as below…

I don’t know how it really is — after all, I haven’t stopped caring, yet it feels as if I have, somehow — what is it? It happened somewhat indifferently — I tell you this because you know, and I don’t know, it hasn’t become mundane to me, but something else has happened, and that’s why I asked about habit. You know it isn’t that, so why is it difficult to express what’s inside? Is it so complicated that it’s hard to describe, or is it so trivial that it can’t be described?

It all somehow happened indifferently… you write… and yet… even if it is indifference… it is “my–indifference–towards–you” and “your–indifference–towards–me,” and thus “our–indifference,” and because of that, in my way of understanding things, it is an unusual indifference, for it stands in contrast with a certain equally “ours” non‑indifference…

And if within you there is being born some cold and foreign indifference, and you write about it, then… are you not Alienne, Mantis — a being in whom indifference is sometimes precisely what allows her to live to see the next day? If it is indifference toward me, or toward dance, then is it not a good gift, one that allows you to look at all these matters in a different, objective light and weigh all the pluses and minuses, in order to take the next two little steps in this direction or that…?

Well, tell me…

Because YOU of March looks at me differently; the June Little Creature, somewhere near the cinema, sees him differently; differently still looks that lovely, quiet and well‑composed Miss Mantis from somewhere somewhere there in some distant village; something else is noticed by the one who finishes celebrating by giving me the most extraordinary mouse of my life (which, by the way, has already properly settled into my room and is at this very moment on the little shelf gnawing her way through another hefty volume of The Foundations of Cybernetics, for she is — I must confess to you — a highly educated mouse); differently still looks the one beside whom I sat yesterday/the day before while a gentleman was singing… and most differently of all looks that very Little Creature who, somewhere among her many affairs, discovers within herself some kind of indifference, because she searches for warm things inside herself and cannot find them…

Because there is within her a longing for something that seems too precious to be attainable for the time being… because there is in her a longing for better worlds… truly better ones, like the one she wrote about in a certain very beautiful poem…

Little Creature… this multiplicity of gazes may save you… precisely from me… precisely from yourself, if such rescue were needed… it is precisely the multiplicity of gazes and the abundance of perspectives, including the most difficult one. That can help best — better than me, or anyone who is not you…

And so, thank your indifference as well… and I will say, as usual, that it is good, because it is your indifference… the word “your,” in my understanding, is truly a very positively valued adjective…

Heili, that sounded wrong, with those “imaginations” about the blue letter… that is how I formulated the thought and the question — if it can be read as unpleasant…

I simply wanted to ask about one of your sentences, once here in my room, right after the blue letter, when it turned out that I had somehow become upset, you said that “it wasn’t meant to be like that…” (that sentence truly helped me a little then…)

And I know, I know that “it’s not that there was nothing true in the blue letter.” That’s exactly it… your difficult thoughts are frightfully interesting… and truly, whatever they may ultimately mean for me, I still feel extraordinarily privileged to know at least a little about them…

“Adoration” is a beautiful little poem. Ahem, ahem — I myself don’t quite know what to think about that poem… well, well… Him, once he starts writing… tends to land in various places… the poem is, above all… English.

There is in me a memory of things to come… of those very best things…

With all my half-dead heart, I thank the Being for making me realise just now that there is a memory of things to come…

With all my half-dead heart, I thank them for this beautiful sentence… such a very, very sad sentence, partly a sentence-judgment, partly a sentence-hope…

You say: “I am angry.”

I say: “I am angry.”

I somewhat guess what you mean when you say “I am angry”;

you somewhat guess what I mean when I say “I am angry.”

Let us leave in these sentences a wonderful freedom of interpretation—a liberty that ensures, despite everything, we remain a mystery to each other…

Perhaps a cruel mystery, perhaps an ugly mystery,

perhaps a mystery with no answer,

or a mystery whose answer is almost every one of our gestures, every one of our words, and not a few of our deeds…

but still—a mystery…

He loves dark, terrifying, cruel mysteries, because they are the truest, because they tell him the most about himself… the cruelest mysteries teach the most…

So even if this is such a mystery… well, it stands before him, and before the Being.

You are the Being, maybe good, maybe bad.

For me, you were good (so hard for me to understand why, and from where your goodness toward me came)— and you are still good, because you speak, because you write, because you want to be, and you are here or there.

And you are exactly as you are—not otherwise; maybe it seems to you the worst… but you do not know how it looks from the outside.

And it looks…

THAT MUCH

with TNT

boom boom boom!

Being…

M.

I don’t know how many years have passed. I don’t know how many times I’ve persuaded myself not to remember us. Yes, that wet-behind-the-ears version of us. You, in your black sweater and glasses alike, and me, drinking my first Viennese coffee on our trip together; how we visited a shop with candles and how I gifted you a photo frame with giraffes, since “giraffe” was my nickname. It must have been May, although I cannot possibly remember that.

Funny enough, the memory of these moments comes to me when I see so many expiration dates approaching: the ointment that will always be fresh and working despite the date on the package; the coffee I’ve been keeping for special moments—and now those moments are forced to arrive before the end of this month. Although I will stretch those beans—oh, how I will stretch them…

Many people, armed with the knowledge they already have about me, think that I have not arrived at small joys, but at a handful of minor matters; that I have not encountered clear traces of longing for what is eternal and magnificent, only undeniable evidence that most humans are guided by a petty instinct for momentary satisfaction. Today, nothing stops me from acknowledging this; more than that, I find in it a peculiar delight—to call, using worn-out terms, the struggle I wage in this situation, in a human world oriented solely toward tangible realities, a struggle to discover subtle form, “desperate.”

I had in mind a form that could express a situation stripped of perspective, the times in which people… as simply put as possible… live deprived of ideals. And a manner or form, even the subtlest, to express such a thought, I understood relatively quickly, cannot arise from our will, just as thought does not know freedom without limits. This manner of expression or form, I believed, must stem from a sensitivity. And this was precisely what I could not find in generality: I did not find the sensitivity, and the fact that I could not find it—because it was not there, among the majority—filled me with the aftertaste of which I cannot rid myself of to this day. I drink the sour, and I drink the sweet, the spicy and the salty; I try everything, yet... My experience tells me that a story like mine does not capture the attention of the majority of today’s listeners. And this certainly does not happen because, though utterly banal, it is, according to them, too “difficult”; rather, it is because everything that reaches them from this direction bores them, namely because they do not understand how someone cannot acknowledge that the human world is either vulgar, or deceitful, or both vulgar and deceitful at once.

C’est pourquoi tu me manques. Yes, you are missing from me. As present as you are and as absent you recall “things” to me. You are reminding me of you. Tu me manques plus que je ne le pensais. I was clearing my desk yesterday, and my mind brought up the words from Shin Kyung-sook’s The Court Dancer: Whoever carries music within will know solitude, even when the listening is shared. For music speaks not through the nearness of bodies, but through the intimacy of the soul. But then all this soul nonsense we are meant not to believe, for its very reason, only God is your soul-mate, all other relationships are lived, only if we want them to live. And so I thought of another words from him:

Tidying my desk always makes me think of preparing for death. Once, after cleaning the room this way, I looked back with such terror that I returned and scattered my things all over again.

And yes, my desk was tidier, the right drawer fuller of all the things that live there and my memory of you was livelier than ever.

So I thought of all the outings we had—how I tried capers and anchovies with you for the first time, how I took pictures along the way. I thought of a discussion we had on Hamlet, on IT, on adultery, and on poetry, all at once.

And when I recently went shopping, I strayed to the bookshelves, as I always do, and read one of the poems from For the Women by Donna Ashworth. And that is poetry exactly—the kind we do not like is precisely the kind we do not agree with. And that suits me.

Yes, this is the first half, because I did not agree from the very first line. Yes, my thinking of Donna will not change because I don’t like this and some other poems of hers, I still believe she shares the same father with another friend of mine, although there is no proof found, at least for now, as no one is digging… Can you imagine how many women, still conforming, are reading this?! I must think they are still very young. How else would one not figure it out? We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are, as Anaïs Nin would perhaps put it. In this regard, I am a very old soul; I always was.

I open The Diary of a Young Girl (Anne Frank’s) and read:

Everyone here is reading a book called Salute to Freedom.

Mother thought it was extremely good because it describes a number of adolescent problems. I thought to myself, a bit ironically, ‘Why don’t you take more interest in your own adolescents first!’

(…)

It’s funny, but I can sometimes see myself as others see me. I take a leisurely look at the person called ‘Anne Frank’ and browse through the pages of her life as though she were a stranger.

Before I came here, when I didn’t think about things as much as I do now, I occasionally had the feeling that I didn’t belong (…) and that I would always be an outsider. I sometimes went around for six months at a time pretending I was an orphan. Then I’d chastise myself for playing the victim, when really, I’d always been so fortunate…

(…)

Everything has become much worse here. But you already knew that. Now God has sent someone to help me: Peter. I fondle my pendant, press it to my lips and think, What do I care! Peter is mine and nobody knows it! With this in mind, I can rise above every nasty remark. Which of the people here would suspect that so much is going on in the mind of a teenage girl?

And I laugh to myself, as a teenage girl, and I think that my soul is so so young, just like yesterday when I found a card from my dear girlfriend, she wrote to me in 2005 after our outing to the same city we went to that day when the sun was so beautifully out. And before, on the way to the train station, when crossing the veg market in summer, she told me that she had got engaged to a man who was going to change her name to what literally translates to puncture. And this brings me to what Tomas Tranströmer noticed,

“Two truths approach each other. One comes from within, one from without — and where they meet we have a chance to catch a glimpse of ourselves.”

And yes, I still do not understand the popular phrases, for example, reading for pleasure… The last six books I read tore me apart, disturbed my sleep, to say the least! One of them? Set in a bleak town, a travelling circus featuring a colossal stuffed whale and a mysterious figure called the Prince arrives. Their presence disrupts the fragile social order, unleashing hysteria and violence. That’s in two sentences The Melancholy of Resistance, but what I liked in those novels, alongside others I discovered, is how dense and continuous they are, often running pages without paragraph breaks. That feeling of entering someone’s current thoughts is also present in Krasznahorkai’s novel I am reading right now (Nobel Prize for literature 2025), a gift. So, here, below, I am sharing a slightly altered version of the poem by LANGSTON HUGHES (Why would I not shorten it to my needs?)

I, too, sing.

They send me to eat in the kitchen

But I laugh,

And eat well,

And grow strong.

Tomorrow,

I’ll be at the table

Nobody’ll dare

Say to me,

“Eat in the kitchen,”

Then.

Besides,

They’ll see how beautiful I am

And be ashamed.

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Would you believe we have just entered a Year of the Fire Horse (symbolising passion, dynamism, and transformation)? So hear, please hear this poem entitled in the original Jianzi Mulan Hua by Su Shi, who wrote it from a remote corner of the world (sent there as a political punishment):

Beginning of Spring

Spring ox, spring staff

From the ocean’s edge, the boundless spring breeze sweeps ashore.

Hand in hand with Nature’s hidden artisan, It blushes peach blossoms to a tender, living rose.

Spring streamers, spring talismans

A sudden vernal gust sobers the lingering wine.

Not like the far-off ends of earth

It whirls up willow down, drifting like a snowfall of silk.

1)

You know I lose myself inside myself. Enough that I don’t know how to write a letter about myself.

After all, supposedly:

“There is nothing here.”

I write furiously. My hands tremble. I could burst into a grim laugh to express the helplessness of rage… — you can’t do that in a letter.

⸻

2)

There is not enough of you.

Your words are not enough.

No matter how much you speak to me — it’s not enough.

No matter how much you write and I read — it’s not enough.

No matter how much you feel — it’s not enough.

Not enough!

It is not your fault.

There is not enough of your being.

Especially now, when we were already in that Big City of the Future, and on Saturday evening I couldn’t hear from you …

Not enough of me either.

My words are not enough.

No matter how much I speak — it’s not enough and never as it should be.

No matter how much I write — not enough.

No matter how much I feel — not enough.

No matter how much I do — not enough.

Not enough!

I feel guilty. And furious.

Because you deserve more, and a thousand times better. Maybe you’ll leave, because maybe one day that’s exactly what you’ll want. And I’ll stay here alone. Why sit in an empty room painted black — on a cold concrete floor?

That’s how it is with Monty.

That’s why I’m not sure you’ll stay, although you have allowed me hope — and now I have it — although it wouldn’t be good if that hope bound you in any way.

Little Creature — that’s what I’m afraid of.

That is why, if I could, I would burn the Garden.

Then Monty would die — and I — and I — and I — and I.

Only the purest “it” would remain — the shell.

But then certainly you would no longer be here. Therefore, I cannot burn the Garden.

Let it remain as it is. Or maybe something can be built?

I sit, so dull and undefined, by the wall of some burnt house at dusk. I don’t have the strength to stand up.

I think you know what that is.

You know much.

⸻

3)

If I made the first step balancing above the ultimate abyss — if I struck the first blow at a man with a knife, in a surge of anger — in revenge for being hit in the face — if someone forced out of me that animal behaviour — if I once crossed the first boundary — the boundary of revenge by violence — there would be no return. One would have to go further, consistently, until the end, one or the other.

There would be no way back. I would never return to the initial state — before the knife strike.

Therefore, such an act demands the next, and the next — an aggression no longer restrained by anything — an explosion of everything that has sat inside for years, deep down. And then not only that man who struck me, but the whole world, every person around would have to feel the revenge of what would come out of him then. And destruction would follow him as wide as he could make it — he’d be able to bite with his teeth into the throat of the most innocent of innocents — until he would be stopped completely — either by death or by total physical incapacitation.

Such was the dream of past years.

If I were to fall asleep forever, I would prefer such an ending to the railway tracks.

⸻

4)

How would I like to appear in the Little Creature’s dreams?

Uninterruptedly.

As an object — somewhere in the background — almost unnoticed, present but not intrusive. And sometimes, when she needs it, as someone close and understanding. Someone close enough, someone who understands enough.

And Alienne — listen — these points — these are, hahaha, CONFESSIONS. Confessions of something that sounds terribly banal, because so many idiots have spoken of it too rashly, that when one uses such words now, one sounds like such a rash idiot oneself. Confessions of something that only time can ultimately confirm — time not lost, future time, the time that lies in reserve.

Besides, all this cannot really be defined precisely, nor named, in the case of such a unique being as the Little Creature.

In any case, perhaps on the occasion of this awful letter — worthy of burning — and using this absolute, irresponsible freedom:

I confess something to you. Or maybe rather something. Something that would like to be as gentle and painless as intention, but ultimately often causes things to be the worst and the most painful — perhaps just like now? (And I’ve never confessed “something” to anyone — so by confessing “something” to you, I confess a great deal indeed — Little Creature.)

Choose for yourself what you will take from all this.

As for me: please choose something.

“I adore generalities and I love not naming anything by its name!!” — he shouted, folded his hands like a little child, pursed his lips and began shifting from foot to foot, slightly embarrassed.

Before you give that “something” a name (and you may be certain that the name you choose will be the most accurate possible), look how they all speak of me — and remember, this is only the beginning of a dreadful, gloomy story, whose beginning and ending are unknown…

⸻

Oskar speaks in him.

To the Little Creature he says:

“It is not good, nor cosy, nor pleasant inside. Don’t listen to this pseudo-sentimental idiot when he talks sweetness. The only feeling he is capable of is hatred — and even that in a limited way, for it is only hatred toward himself. Sometimes he doesn’t even know when he is pretending — and gets lost in it. Beware of him — every bouquet of flowers he brings may hold a cobra or a scorpion. Look how he treats those considered closest to him — that tells you everything.

⸻

Alien speaks in him.

He says to the Little Creature:

“We are something proud, and in all our rush and need for self-destruction we love ourselves selfishly — perhaps in that very way — through the need for self-destruction, the cry of the desire to live breaks out from us (paradoxically), to live at any cost, even at too high a cost. We are proud and blind to many things that the Little Creature sees; therefore we will hurt her more than once, and more than once she will feel the need to strike us.

We say of ourselves that we are Mayhem — Mayhem is the son of chaos, destruction, and error — for it was by error that we were conceived. The truth that our mother became our mother by mistake allows us to be Mayhem and the Stranger, and therefore:”

⸻

Mayhem speaks in him.

He says to the Little Creature:

“He will spring at you from the most unexpected places in conversations. He can exhaust you mentally — he can torment another rational being so much that they lose self-control.

He can tire you by being in many places of his and your worlds at once — he is unstoppable if he decides to play, to achieve absurd goals, or to run around without any goal at all. He can race through a thousand useless, irritating ideas, or circle obsessively around one thought — bordering on monomania.

Then he forgets that anyone next to him — or worse, inside him — exists. But there is also a part of him I dislike: Soho. Down below he pretends a little in what he writes, but in truth he is somehow organised and still tries for something. What he says — I would say myself. Yes, Soho is a bit twisted…”

⸻

Soho speaks in him.

He says to the Little Creature:

“He can satisfy himself with the worst junk, with anything; he doesn’t need to eat or drink like other people when he allows himself to be that way. How he dresses, how he looks, what he reads, what people surround him — it all becomes irrelevant (although recently he found someone “the truest” among people, and would prefer not to lose that person).

He would probably feel quite at home as a homeless man, forgotten by everyone. He is blind to many values — the fact that it is not so obvious is due only to habits he developed from his surroundings — nothing flows from him himself. Therefore sometimes he calls himself a machine. Sometimes he believes he is dead.

You see how foolish that is.

I, Soho, am the one people know from the computer — perhaps I will write to you again.

I, Soho, first noticed the Guardian of the Garden:”

⸻

The Guardian of the Garden speaks in him.

He says to the Little Creature:

“He is happy you chose to come here. Because you are inside the walls of the Garden — where no one is allowed. For instance, you see the little poems; for instance, no one else will see your letters because they are in the Garden. If you want to burn the Garden and kill me — he, the dog who is ready to give so much for the Unreal-Real Dream of Dance, will accept it with gratitude.

He trusts you.

As do I.

Yet Little Creature, if you kill me and burn the Garden, I will revive and return as the Ugly Dwarf, and I will rule it so that no one else will enter whatever rises on the ashes of the Garden.

Perhaps you, however, will be there first — before the Ugly Dwarf — even after the burning?

Yes, he is definitely glad you came to the Garden. I see it in the great northern lights blazing to the north of the Garden. There are horrors in him too, such as Mr Leech:”

⸻

Mr Leech speaks in him.

He says to the Little Creature:

“I believe and know that he is fundamentally evil.

I believe and know that he cannot give you anything good.

For example, you do not see that he says nothing precisely in those moments when something must be said most in the world? That he does nothing in those moments when something must be done? The only thing you can do with him is create what you need inside him, tear it out and take it, without caring about him at all. Then you may come back for new things, and when he is no longer useful, you can throw him away like an old toy. I have nothing against it. He isn’t worth even a minute of your attention — and he knows it too, but until now, certain beings have defended him from that awareness. You must know this fact — it must be your foundation whenever you decide to engage with him in any way.

There is also that entire Bat:”

⸻

The Bat speaks in him.

He says to the Little Creature:

“He prefers the night.

He likes black.

Is he drawn to evil…? Perhaps a little — as an idea.

He is deeply negative — have you noticed?

He speaks of the future like a pessimist, even says he is waiting for the Verdict and its Execution. True, he speaks of Him, but on the other hand, haven’t you noticed that sometimes unintentionally he mentions “them” or “him” — sometimes he attributes to “him” noises from nowhere around him.

The Bat knows things about him that perhaps even he himself doesn’t know. I reach deepest into the borderland between him and “them.” He fears his contact with “them” is too close. Sometimes he flees from “them” to “Him.” But don’t you see that “they” are far smarter than he? Maybe they are leading him by the nose… right now…

Little Creature… do you realise what that means for you, if “they” are leading him — if he eats at the wrong table and serves the wrong master?

Listen also to the music in him — Little Creature, listen to what that music whispers — whether it is white and good, or sad and evil and dark.

My sister in pain is the cruel Dizzy Doll, twin of Mayhem:”

⸻

Dizzy Doll speaks in him.

She says to the Little Creature:

“I’ve been in him for a long time. I am similar to Mayhem. I think we all came to him long ago when he had nothing and no one. He invented us to defend himself from himself.

But I won’t speak of those stories and fairy tales.

I, Dizzy Doll, become him often; I am here all the time. Because of me, he can contradict himself and not worry about it. Because of me, he loses track of hours and days. Because of me, money is just paper, and people are dolls with whom one may play. Dizzy Doll can save him from the worst situation with a fairy tale — he can just forget it.

I, Dizzy Doll, most infuriate all reasonable people. I let him promise things, though he knows in advance he won’t fulfil them. Along with the Bat, I am his greatest danger. I believe I could kill someone outside him, convincing him that the person is a puppet and that he himself does not objectively exist.

Besides, I cannot kill a human.

Oh — and I speak in the feminine because I’m a man. Exactly for that reason.

Meet also the one everyone knows: “Me”

⸻

“Me” speaks in him.

He says to the Little Creature:

“Hi. He uses me to deal with people.

I am a fully functional set of spontaneous reactions with feedback, designed to give the biological organism in which this ‘something’ resides the most comfortable existence possible by arranging the least troublesome relations with people.

You once called me a ‘silly shell.’ Quite an accurate term.

How did you get through me? I cannot understand — after all I am a very effective oddity developed over long years.

Anyway — bye, kisses!!! Listen to Joker — actually, this entire letter should never have been created, he is not ‘reasonable’…”

⸻

Joker speaks in him.

He says to the Little Creature:

“This tall, skinny middle-schooler (lately there have been many jokes about them, have you heard???) with his naïve eyes thinks he is funny. And he dumps the responsibility for that on me…

Hahaha, he so lightly assigns me this banal role, and does not even know that I power his entire existence — if he didn’t treat this world as One Big Joke, he would have ended himself long ago.

He lives only because I let him burst out laughing when he hears of his grandfather’s death (and he once burst out laughing in such a situation); only because I taught him to laugh stupidly, with drooling saliva, at all the ‘reasonable’ and ‘trying’ people. Otherwise that fool would not have survived even three days under the weight of this beloved, highly educational world.

Joker has an everlasting smile, a smile for every occasion — wide — burned in with acid and mutagen — a grim, happy smile of something that walks with an axe among sheep in a flock, striking left and right — that’s a bit what I am — Joker, who in the Garden on a throne of gold…”

Stan is a noble creature, Stan speaks in him.

He speaks about him to the Little Creature like this:

“Normally I am not here.

But today I appear, exceptionally, to tell you that personally, I consider Joker an imbecile.

That’s all.”

⸻

He-I speaks in him.

He speaks about him to the Little Creature like this:

“Sometimes I speak about ‘Him.’

I want to be useful to Him as much as possible in the present situation. I’ve gotten a bit lost, and I feel too far from Him. On the other hand, I am as close to Him as I can be. He still has a lot, a lot to teach me. I don’t want — I don’t want to be a hypocrite.

I cannot pretend to be someone I’m not. And yet, despite my will, people take from me whatever appearances suit them and mercilessly make me into whatever suits them. That’s their problem. I have no intention of straightening everyone out — it’s enough that you know, because you wanted to know, and He knows.

I cannot destroy your relationship with Him — never allow me that — I know you know this, and that you will do exactly that, but I would like you nevertheless to read these words under my hand, here, in this letter.

If I pose any threat at all to your relationship with Him — then remove me.

If I take your time and energy meant for Him — then remove me.

I will not leave by myself, because I am not able to judge it; besides, I do not want to, and no longer know how to walk away on my own, but you know, don’t you? You know how it is.

And this is Dummy:”

⸻

Dummy speaks in him.

He speaks about him to the Little Creature like this:

“Dummy means ‘mannequin.’ Dummy means that he holds himself back from natural gestures, and then feels sad because of it. On the other hand, when he allows himself a human, natural gesture, he feels ashamed and despises himself.

That’s more or less how it is.

I am Dummy — I have the greatest sense of guilt in him.

I speak as the second-to-last to tell you that perhaps, in this pointless, stupid, crippling guilt of his, he may not manage to say openly to you the things that are sometimes the most important. You know, at heart he is terribly allusive, so allusive that he sometimes gets lost in his own allusions. That’s why he often saves himself — from what, no one knows — in vague generalities.

I, the mannequin, can hold him back so much that he resembles a catatonic — truly. You have not seen him in that state — it is not a good sight, and certainly the behaviour is repulsive for anyone who does not understand Dummy.

I’m sorry, but in him there is this illness. And it is not good, it is disgusting.

I am Dummy, and he is Monty:”

⸻

Monty speaks in him.

He speaks to the Little Creature like this:

“For such an exhibitionistic and nasty letter, one may stop liking me.

One may shrug.

One may use the power given by possessing it to break this whole senseless being-of-mine about which I write with tears, break it like a dry twig underfoot.

Perhaps nothing good will come from this knowledge, Little Creature.

I know nothing…

And that is, I think, how I love—

And maybe that is exactly my low—

No one knows — and no one will know or understand, not even the strictest judge of these words, unless they are the Little Creature and Him.”

What is behind the door?

Thank you for being—although sometimes it happens that I think it might have been better if all this were a little different.

I had a dream. I set my alarm half an hour earlier, just to see what I might dream about at dawn, so that a moment later I could go back to sleep, still remembering it. So I dreamed that I came somewhere beneath your skyscraper, and all the buildings were research stations, tightly covered with something that looked like panes of glass collecting sunlight and turning it into energy. I didn’t decide to look for the entrance to your building—honestly, I only wanted to look at your skyscraper. Next to the buildings, there were swings, so I was hanging there somewhere, reading this poem:

To be alive: not just the carcass

But the spark.

That’s crudely put, but...

If we’re not supposed to dance, Why all this music?*

Today, I somehow felt that something was missing inside me, although I was outwardly oddly optimistic.

How aware am I of the insignificance of our being, of our existence? Take Japan: maybe the most technologically developed country, functioning wonderfully. And it was actually a step away from disappearing from the face of the earth. You watch ski jumping—magnificent, taking place somewhere now in beautiful mountains. But what are these mountains? The result of a catastrophe of the Earth’s crust, right? I assure you—mountains were formed by the collision of tectonic plates. So this pathetic, elevated, heavenly beauty is the result—embarrassing to say—of the brutality of this celestial body, this planet, as battered as everything else. On the Sun, there are explosions all the time. I read somewhere that one such explosion on the Sun is like five hundred million Hiroshima bombs. Five hundred million—not fifty, not a thousand! So what is there to talk about, what wisdom to dispense, what to lecture others on?

I am only a little Being—and what can such a Being do? What can she be that others cannot? Why do good things happen to her when she doesn’t deserve them yet?

It is such an enormous privilege to know you in a way no one else knows you. To see a little more…

And perhaps you’d like to attend a sung-poetry concert featuring texts by Herbert soon? Maybe it’s worth it, at least…

I’ve started reading a supposedly good book, The Catcher in the Rye. Very little “happens” in a traditional sense. What matters is how H. thinks. As for the books I have from you, I probably won’t read them. You understand—very soon I have The Miser, The Tao of Pooh, etc.

I am really happy…

Tomorrow I’ll try to do tomorrow what I did today—I’ll see what I dream. It’s good that memory exists—very good—without it, one couldn’t create dreams.

It’s so nice to be able to write.

This was written to you by that little Being whose life has become interesting.

So for now—be!

A treasure is what we guard.
What we lose is something entirely different.

T. Alienne
the little being who remembers
very
well….

*To Be Alive by Gregory Orr

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The Prayer of the Traveler Mr. Cogito

by Z. Herbert

Lord
I thank you for creating the world beautiful and various

and for allowing me in Your fathomless goodness to visit places which
were not the sites of my daily torments

- that at night in Tarquinia I lay in the square by the well and a gunmetal
pendulum rang out from the tower Your wrath or forgiveness

and that a little donkey on the island Corkyra sang to me from the
unfathomable bellows of its lungs the melancholy of the landscape

and that in the ugly city of Manchester I discovered kindhearted and
sensible people

nature repeated its wise tautologies: the forest was a forest the sea the
sea a cliff a cliff

stars revolved and it was as it ought to be - Iovis omnia plena


- forgive me - that I thought only of myself while the lives of others
cruel and inexorable turned around me like the great astrological clock of
St Pierre in Beauvais

that I was lazy distracted too timid in labyrinths and caves

and forgive me also that I did not fight like Lord Byron for the happiness
of oppressed peoples and studied only the rising moon and museums

- I thank you that works created for Your greater glory yielded to me
particles of their mystery and that with great presumption I thought that
Duccio Vaan Eyck and Bellini painted for me also

and also that the Acropolis which I never fully understood patiently
revealed to me its mutilated body

- I ask You to reward the gray old woman who unbidden brought me
fruit from her garden on the sunburned native island of the son of Laertes

and Miss Helen of the foggy island of Mull in the Hebrides for offering
Greek hospitality and asking me to leave a lamp lit at night in the window
facing Holy Iona so that the lights of earth would greet each other

and also all those who gave me directions and said kato kyrie kato

and take under Your protection Mama from Spoleto Spiridion from
Paxos the good student from Berlin who saved me from oppression and
then when met unexpectedly in Arizona drove me to the Grand Canyon
which is like a hundred thousand cathedrals standing on their heads

- Lord let me not think of my moist-eyed gray deluded persecutors
when the sun sets on the truly indescribable Ionian Sea

let me understand other people other languages other sufferings
and above all let me be humble that is to say one who longs for the
source

I thank You Lord for creating the world beautiful and various and if this
is Your seduction I am seduced for good and past all forgiveness.

Dear Little Being,

I’m writing to you.
Today—there, in the world of your photographs—I finally realised that speaking is not enough for me. I want to write as well, though even that may not be enough. You spoke so sincerely, your head slightly bowed… a little shyly. For all those beautiful moments, I say thank you, though even saying that feels too little. Far too little.

Lost in the sunlight, on the yellow sand of a strange city, between people both unreal and, paradoxically, the most real of all—we spoke. But what was it we said there?
It makes me sad that the dream of dance sometimes takes on different dimensions. Thoughts appear before which one is so childishly defenceless—there are no arguments against the Law of the World or the Law of Statistics.

And yet—I don’t trust answers very much. I’ve begun to suspect that the moment we explain everything, we stop listening. That what people call wisdom is often just the comfort of having a conclusion. Don’t we feel it around us: a readiness to judge instead of understand, to answer instead of ask. Something fragile disappears—what does not claim to know, but still wants to look more closely. Perhaps that is why I believe so stubbornly in dance, in writing, in whatever refuses to close the question. And so, I’m glad that we see the same things, and see them equally, despite the cheerful sun.

That’s why I say—it’s time to tilt one’s head mischievously, cling to the ceiling with all four paws, and with gleaming green eyes shout, “So what of it?”—then burst into a thousand white flowers and fall straight onto the lawn that lies on the floor.

I’m so glad I was able to hear those things: to ask for them to be reconsidered, for they are matters that must not be ignored.
And if the following cruel statement is true—that some of the most beautiful flowers must be plucked and killed so they can remain forever as beautiful as they are now, preserved for eternity—then what?
I will never believe that such a truth could apply to this dance.

But blood and signatures… Blood fades so quickly. And day after day, am I not placing a truer signature—a signature of honest openness? A signature simple and sure—made surer, better, because it requires being redrawn, thickened, renewed over time… sustained by effort that will keep it alive. Such a signature, such a guarantee, will not vanish or grow old, even if much time passes and our worlds collapse or change—if we continue tracing it, it will (perhaps forever?!?) remain a guarantee stronger even than a heart preserved in another’s refrigerator.

Will such a signature be enough?

She knows the paths of reason and the quiet roads, the roads of patience and of strength. That knowledge allows her to act according to her delicate sense of dignity—with all the consequences and conclusions that come with it.

Why do I want to watch her dance more often?
Well—because isn’t she an intelligent, thoughtful creature? She reads—and understands what she reads—without pretence. Likewise with knowledge: she knows more than others, yet she doesn’t care to make others painfully aware of it.

I want to dance with her because she manages paradoxes and knows how to create them herself. Words, to her, are words—not an absolute reality.
In her eyes, one can read curiosity, but also something else… something terrifying—because (perhaps it’s a foolish comparison, but I can’t think of a better one to express that ineffable something) it resembles the weary wisdom of beings who have lived very long—perhaps even immortal beings, and therefore so sure of themselves.

Her smile speaks of something incredibly good deep within, yet it also foreshadows danger. I dance with her because she speaks sincerely, listens astonishingly, and wants to know. I dance with her because, although she almost doesn’t care, she moves so gracefully through a reality where no one truly can be indifferent. I dance with her because, even though she says everything—and says it so honestly—she remains a mystery, impossible ever to fully understand; you can never quite predict her next move. She’s capable of almost anything, and yet none of it is ever in bad taste—because she has a sense, almost an instinct, for what is right and beautiful.

These are not empty compliments—I couldn’t forgive myself such things. There’s something behind each of them. Perhaps one day she’ll ask me about them, and then I’ll tell her. Perhaps one day all these abstract words will take real shape… who knows?

When you speak, the whole world shuts off—and it shuts off more completely than with any book or computer.
Please, tell me everything that’s new.

With great curiosity,
Someone different—
And yet the same.

you see
it is morning and yet the walls are silent
only a sheet of shapeless hope separates us
the one we wrap ourselves in
out of fear of the pain
of waking too early

it is so early
you are there, and I am on the other side

sometimes it only seems to us
that we understand more
than our poems—
which are not at all enough
for living

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— Lewis Carroll

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Over there, with you, it seemed to surprise you. But now, when you’re so close — it’s not that it’s hard to accept,…

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I’m writing, and behind me, the world exists.

Life here is very hard, but that doesn’t matter, because there is the Garden — and there, one can always find refuge. And that is the best thing, and that’s how it should always be: that the garden is the most wonderful and unique thing, never boring, a source of strength and of all that is possibly good.

I’m …

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