…I have written, about words. Here, a great place to be.

(While I deal with a detrimental colonization by a foreign species, i.e. bacteria & viruses.)

Someone adores you. Someone blames you. Someone calls you when you need to be called. Someone disrespects you. Someone exhausts you. Someone forgets you, a few ones forgive you. Someone guards your house. Someone helps hates hurts you. Someone imitates you. Someone judges you, a few ones justify you. Nobody kills you – you’re already dead; someone knows what happened, and when. Someone loves you, of course, love is required by convention. Someone mentions your name. Someone neglects you. Someone opens you the door. Someone peruses the tiny hole in your brain. Someone quotes your words. Someone remembers you used to be stronger, someone remembers you used to be weaker. Someone says you’re bad (abominable, deplorable, hopeless, ill, ill, ill, ill, ill AND lousy, malfunctioning, no-good, severe, spoiled, unsuitable), yes, even worse. Someone trusts you. Someone understands your language. Someone verifies your peripheral nervous system and your olfactory receptors. Some others want you to believe the trivial lies they say. Someone yells to you from a window. Someone zips your jacket up – because it’s still so cold outside by night. So cold.

; this is not a story; it’s a splinter of wood; an atom; I’m walking; Monday morning; an old man is walking; opposite directions; I think I’ve seen him before; just a familiar face; he’s biting his nails, walking; slow, inattentive; I don’t know, he’s not that old; he looks old; he looks senile; he looks, well, ancient; archaic; I can’t say why; his face reminds me of Homer; homêros means: he who is forced to follow; he’s walking; step by step by step; we’re far; we’re face to face, though; his presence covers the whole space around; I don’t know how to tell this; the man is not in a specified place physically or mentally; he’s walking; from the beginning of history; I look at him; I’m walking; we’re meant to meet; I look at his face; words loom up on the horizon; obsolete ones; “continuum, noesis”; his face has something to do with Yerevan, with the Ararat plain; with Anatolia, or the sea of Marmara; he scares me, in a way; no definite reason; his walking is too accurate; he keeps time; he keeps good time; he is a human clock; I feel it; he knows something I do not know; we both walk; he bites his nails and his eyes, well, his eyes are disturbing; a sorrowful tale of despair; he’s white-eyed; eyes of a fish, a primitive salamander; an amphibian; his eyes belong to an early stage of civilization; he’s walking; we’re getting closer and closer; his steps, one by one by one, can culminate in the emergence of new species; I feel stupid; I feel dumb; we’re meant to meet; our lines converge; we’re front to front; approaching from an opposite direction;
( pause, here; )
you know, he says; what, I ask; he’s deaf; he’s blind; you know, he says; listen to me, I tell him; can you hear me?; he smiles; you know, he says; he’s walking; biting his nails; what do I know, I shout; I close my eyes for a second; a breath; a flash; he’s walking; he is still walking, white-eyed, amphibian; but this is not a story; just a molecule; an elementary particle; a granule; it scares me; I’m glad I’ve lost my memories; that’s what I think; while he walks away; biting his nails; ancient, archaic, sorrowful; I’m glad I don’t remember; no recognition; I retain no knowledge; I see; I hear; I talk; words come; often at random; he walks away; step by step by step; I’m here;

[Just a transient post. Read this and this instead.]

• Events are just events. Don’t believe they’re pivotal. Events repeat. You are in a movie. Learn the terminology: long shot = plan d’ensemble; med long shot = demi-ensemble; mid shot = plan moyen; close up = close up. Events are just a Sturm im Wasserglass: a tempest in a tea-kettle. Now: take a morning shower singing “cherchez la femme” and laugh aloud.
• Do not play La Mujer Rota. Remember: Ophelia woefully dies every night. She’s a bore and you’re not a girl. You are Gide – in Congo. You are Chatwin – in Patagonia. You are the cheeky boy knocking on every door in Macondo at 3.15 am. You can draw maps of countries having no verified existence.
• Cry, if you want to cry. Cry like a bodhisattva, though. Cry for all those who can not cry; cry for all those who can but shed tears.
• (KEEP AWAY FROM RIVERS.)
• Do not type secondhand words. Moth-eaten theories about objects of warm affection or devotion. “Judas kiss, betrayal, disloyalty” are tantalizing vocables, but they interrupt the music program – and you must dance, instead.
• Call Frida. Call Camille. Call Tina.
• Your dear, dexterous dealer is Father William. His mission is to bring you great ****** wherever you are, at the lowest price. Regardless of distance, he delivers at the same low rate. 7 days a week, 24 hours a day.
• Do not hurt your mother: once she pulled you out of her womb. Like a magician pulls a rabbit out of a stovepipe hat. Rabba-cadabra.
• (Rejoice: you learn new tricks.)
• YOUR SKIN IS PAPER. In case you print yourself out. Otherwise, your skin here is: pixels. Blur your fingertips away.
• Wait for cholera to come. Cholera is coming. Stand up, pirouette on points and ask: where is your drama, after all? And what is the curtain line which gives the cue for the revered drapery to come down?

The truth. About the room. About the microscopical damage, the tiny mutations. Small-scale changes. The imperceptible deaths; the gradual, unobserved rebirth. Now, imagine this «truth»: it looks like a geometric figure. A circle within a circle.

The outer area, or “A” zone, is black and viscose, sticky; a lethal fluid spurted out of a tanker; coastal birds lie covered in oil, their wings sealed.
I know every gorge of this external area, every blind alley, every dead-end; I know every courtyard and every poisoned well; I know where road blockades are, I’ve learned all the watchwords and the countersigns. I know how many scabby dogs move about aimlessly, often in search of food; and how many men behind those windows, ready to fire. And how many women, whispering, at dawn, their otiose, doomed lullabies. And I know all the languages they speak – these hollow words, their hungry names: Elisheva, Alžběta, Eilís, Elka, Issa, Liesbeth, Špela, Zabel, Zsóka. I know where in the qassabah (the alcazaba!) we could buy 240Bravos, bullet-proof vests, smuggled books, and madak, or absinthe. And I surely know where the few open gates are. This knowledge is sterile, to be true. I can’t say much more about the obscure, outer circle. If you want to understand, I tell you that – it slowly widens.

The “B” zone is the room. Here I move, crawl, rarely dance; it smells musty, coffee and sweat especially in the morning; during the afternoon, all animals sleep. Night, here, is very brief. The room has its four walls, drinking calcareous water, and a Koudelka photograph is set in a tasteless frame. Gentle, murmurous malarial fevers. My stiff, inflexible fingers; the photographs I can not take. Dark stains on the blankets. You can hear sirens, outside, the raucous call of crows, and the tolling of the bells. And no music.

And then, the unfounded suspicion: those who step into the room are blind. They wave their arms to orientate themselves, to distinguish small and big objects – but they only find a long wooden table, an abandoned desk – and cardboard boxes where maps of nonexistent countries are piled.

What is the word.

{ I was just surfing through her posts, yesterday night, and something clicked. }