Gray reality

 

It was a cool, wet spring day. In a gray room in a neglected tenement building, where everyone lives their own life, hidden in their own little world, lived a man—a poor man.

Through the half-closed window, rain slowly seeped in like a sticky stream of hatred.

The man lying on the bed slowly reached for his cigarettes. The crack of the lighter echoed like thunder in the mountain valleys.

Adam—for that was his name—was lost in thought. He wandered through a land of dreamlike apparitions. He was absent from the real world.

He was in a land of a diseased mind.

He saw beings approaching him with outstretched arms in a gesture of warm welcome. He felt a growing joy that here, at least, they were welcoming him warmly, with a declaration of love on their lips.

The lit cigarette smoldered in his hand. He took a drag, and he was in the home of a beautiful, tall blonde who joyfully enveloped him in a feeling he didn't know, had never encountered before.

The sticky scent of exquisite perfumes evoked extrasensory associations of distant landscapes, green meadows and forests, the scent of flowers spreading their damp leaves on the freshly dewed soil by heavenly emissaries of happiness.

With a gesture, the girl invited him to dance to the music recorded by his subconscious.

Slow body movements—embraces—kisses—all as if in slow motion. An atmosphere of rapture and pathos unfolded its beauty, bewitching the mind like the best drug.

And so it is—you sink to the ground and stop thinking—you dream.

Body wrapped in silk cloth, hair washed in the morning dew, you gleam like a statue, an ancient work of great masters.

That vibrant color of the descending horizon fused with the poignant hue of a paradise world.

The sun, like a painter's hand, sketches the distant vistas of star trails. Life, a brief moment of galactic nothingness. Life, a brief moment, a warm moment in which scenes of insignificant importance to the overall concept of existence unfold as if on a stage.

Man—a small being in limitless space, an imperceptible speck of dust, a planet millions of light-years from the sun.

He constantly tries to do something, something that might attract attention. But for the general concept of being as a timeless space, his efforts, his life, and he as a being—exist in such a tiny percentage that he should not exist at all.

Thought—what exactly is thought? Tied to earthly existence, assigned to a given individual, it is something fleeting, unspecified.

One thinks of shapes, of colors, but they blur in the mind. Sound is also a thought – it will vanish, leaving only a memory, just like the girl who was here – nearby – moments ago and suddenly vanished into the mist, and the feeling of joyful idyll transformed into a state of madness.

Under the pressure of numerous thoughts, the power of creation, so necessary for existence, transformed into the power of destruction. The image of people in the likeness of the creator vanished under the influence of an uncritical gaze into the future. Manipulation of will intensified the growing image of destruction.

Mechanical hands, in an icy grip, made the transactions necessary for survival.

An ineffective cry for help disrupted the stable coexistence. The hand no longer feels the friendly gesture, and the body demands self-satisfaction. Terrible pain – thousands of hearts torn in half. Images painted by a madman's hand, like glass in a kaleidoscope, begin to form a comprehensible whole. The madman's visions blend with reality. The sound of a church bell shatters the minds of the faithful.

A long funeral procession marches through the streets of the old town, spun by the cobwebs of time. People's faces in the windows—old and worn, grimacing with satisfaction—that they weren't the first, that someone had beaten them to it.

A black car, and inside, a coffin containing the corpse of a man deprived of his own perspective on the world and life.

The times in which existence, called life by the wise of this world, unfolds are a pile of false imitations of happiness, an infinite mass of being. Man—or perhaps a miserable worm—searches for his place in the abyss of city streets. Crying pierces the possessed mind, pain intensifies aggression—like a wounded lion, he pursues his prey through the dark labyrinths of concrete streets.

After what has happened, no one can muster a joyful smile, a kind look.

The man in the room rose from his bed, panting heavily—movement was difficult for him—crushing pain in his knees—a remnant of his nightmare in the tropical jungle—and he went to the window.

Beyond the glass, human figures shrouded in the fog of everyday reality drifted into a boundless abyss.

The man standing by the window had just dreamed of love and bliss—but encoded in his subconscious was a nightmare stronger than he could imagine, from which there was no escape.

His thoughts wandered into the abyss of impenetrable emptiness and loneliness. He didn't want to revisit the events he had participated in, didn't want to relive the nightmare of those days.

He wanted to find his reality, he wanted to overcome fear and loneliness, he wanted to live—a normal life—but the dream, like a nightmare, kept reappearing.

Trees like the masts of enormous antennas, jutting upward among the stone buildings of the 20th-century metropolis. Small people—like programmed robots—without feeling or joy—bustling about their daily lives, unresponsive to external stimuli.

In the morning newspaper, one can read again about rapes, robberies, and murders—for that's all they live for in this godforsaken world.

Adam reaches for a glass of beer. He wants to escape this nightmare at all costs, but something intangible strongly attracts the visions of his deranged mind.

In the middle of a vast stone desert stands a reinforced concrete cross, upon which hangs a painting depicting a child giving its mother a bouquet of flowers. The colors on the canvas begin to blend, dull, and flow like blood down the structure. An empty white space remains—a screen—like the memory of a newborn child—on which a film slowly, as if in a cinema, begins to play—a film depicting everything—scenes of war, death camps, murders, pornographic scenes, and political intrigues—and then the projection ceases, as the brain has received the necessary information for existence.

Elegant, elegantly dressed men emerge from the building housing the projector, get into magnificent cars, and head home where they will indulge in pleasures unavailable to others.

And on the cross, instead of a blank screen—in an SS uniform—appeared a child screaming a single word at the top of his voice—KILL!

The man in the room, screaming, shook himself out of his lethargy. Someone said, "What have you done to us, what have you done to our future?"—setting his beer mug on the table to wash his face in the invisible embrace of thousands of hands and minds—rinsing away the corrosive dust that seeped like a flea into skin flecked with the hues of bygone eras.

A body wrapped in silk cloth like a shroud in the bright glow beneath a ruined bunker.

The reluctance to take responsibility for wrongdoings not theirs coincides with the maddening visions of a possessed, depraved humanity.

The apocalyptic sight shatters the contours of human thought, coupled with the visions of fashion dictators.

People lie on the beach like corpses on a battlefield. Warm rays of sunlight cover their bodies with a brown coating. From time to time, someone will interrupt the monotonous ticking of the clock with a quiet cry.

People have withdrawn into themselves like a herd of turtles hidden in their shells—awaiting the next tide.

There is no system to limit human action. There are no subordinates and no superiors—no losers and no winners. There is one great cry calling on God to take the lives of those left behind. There is nothing left, absolutely nothing that could resemble human existence, human civilization—except the deranged and dying remnants of what was once called man.

Alcohol intensifies the feeling of nightmare and unawareness of one's own existence, one's own existence outside of time, outside of reality.

A person in a room reading the morning newspaper is overcome by an ever-increasing fear of the unknown—of death—of loneliness—of the mystery of what was and what will be.

He swaps the newspaper for a Bible. He reads—he thinks—he immerses himself in a world of beauty and evil. He converses with angels—he sees revelations. He sees a world gripped by a mania for destruction.

He tries to break free from this impasse—he tries to navigate this tangle of unknown causes. He feels a growing hatred—the intensified power of old, dried-up minds that cannot accept that someone can be more beautiful, younger, and happier.

The Bible transforms into a newspaper. Adam reads of another suicide. They were thirty-five years old—they were young and beautiful—but they couldn't withstand the pressure—they lacked such willpower.

In a cloud of indecision and fear, sleep slowly dissolves, like the poor man's hidden gaze, into an atmosphere of confusion.

The lonely man cannot decide which way to go. Various questions plague his mind—he doesn't know how to act—where to go.

For some time now, his heart, locked behind an iron gate, has ceased to play a decisive role and decide his life.

Unfortunately, no one had the courage to knock and awaken the dormant forces with a kiss of love.

Behind the barbed wire, camp identity – cracked bodies – torn minds – broken hearts.

Somewhere in the clouds, a sign appeared, heralding the fulfillment of a plan, a bloody plan to reconcile the feuding camps. The walls slowly crumble – the barbed wire rusts – cracks and reveals previously unseen landscapes.

A lonely radio antenna mast juts out like a dead tree in the ruins of a former city.

The sun falls on the face of a blind and mad man. Perhaps someone will show him the way home, perhaps someone will offer him a friendly hand?

Will rain ever fall, washing the faces of passersby with pure, almost spring-like water? Will joy ever reign in the homes? Will we see a joyful smile on every child's face? Will true love prevail?

Life – a brief, warm moment – ​​a poem on a sheet of paper that can be destroyed or burned at any moment, but the memory will remain in the minds of others.

Tears, identified with pain and suffering, appeared on the face of a man enslaved by an overload of impressions, intensified by the power of suggestion. The grim reality is more terrifying than torture – painful and yet idiotically funny.

The man in the room drinks another beer. He wants to forget the problems tearing at his heart. He wants to escape into the recesses of his consciousness, to burrow deep and wait out the period of anxiety – to awaken in a new – perhaps better – world. But this awakening becomes another inescapable nightmare.

Yet the man finds a way out. He goes to the bathroom and takes a well-sharpened razor from the shelf. One cut, and the mind is overcome by blissful peace, by oneness with what is inaccessible in life – with the eternal love of the creator.

But is this really the case?

In the moment of cutting, for a second we think about everything—life, joy, agony, pain, but also about the cage—another cage—this time with no exit.

Will we remain free, or enslaved by another prison?

Unfortunately, no one will tell us. We must find out for ourselves.

And after all, all that remains is a trail of blood on the carpet and a body lying between the armchairs.

What remains is the gray reality.