Do You Hear the Qkanie of Qqłek (the quack-quacks of tiny ducks)?
— topic not quite adequate, 30.09.2000
Alright, Little Being, it’s true… phrases used too often become overused and lose the strong meaning they had when first spoken, don’t they?
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.