And so it happened! It just so happened that you have before your eyes a book filled with all sorts of adventures, both mine and others. And the first story you'll encounter here happened in our Poland in February 1989, when I was barely twenty years old. What more could be said by way of introduction? Perhaps it's that I dedicate a significant portion of this diary to my own sclerosis, in other words – to that grandfather whom, decades from now, I'll probably have a hard time associating with someone I knew so well in the mirror of my youth!
So much for the unnecessary introduction, and now, my dears – since you've already started, let your reading mania continue!
February 8, 1989 (Wednesday)
Last Saturday was a party for a friend's birthday. I'll tell you about that evening, because you have to start somewhere. Nevertheless, Saturday's experiences were nothing compared to what happened on Sunday. And Sunday was so incredible, it would probably compel anyone to pick up a pen and try to write something about it.
I arrived in Wolin, where Bogdan had recently moved, late in the evening. As I left the cocoon of the station after checking the return trains, an unexpectedly frosty breeze hit me in the face. To my delight, this and the crunch of ice underfoot guaranteed that my shoes wouldn't get wet that day. Glancing alternately at the twinkling stars and the windows of the buildings I passed, and, on behalf of my holey shoes, content with the biting frost, I reached Bogdan's building, probably faster than the period in this sentence. As I entered, I heard girls' giggles rising above the bustle of the familiar door. I thought, "This will be nice!" But knocking and ringing the bell had no effect. I felt uneasy. I turned around, nervously circled the corridor, and then reached the bell again. And when I found that it was not working, I then kicked the door with all my might, after which I heard someone's voice expressing surprise that someone was knocking from outside.
Within five seconds, the door finally opens, and I see the happy birthday boy. His spread wings and ear-to-ear smile invite me in. I hand Bogdan the book he'd ordered, then proceed to introduce the girls chatting animatedly in the kitchen. Then I greet the guys tinkering with the dishes and glassware in the living room. The group seems friendly. I'm not surprised, though—I can clearly see they're already well-drinking. All I can do is blend in. But something stands in the way. A shop. "Yes." "I was supposed to buy vodka on the way, but the only late-night shop in Wolin was closed. So, I feel uneasy that I didn't bring any alcohol into my friend's establishment, and that I have to catch up with the crew, drinking the pitiful remains..."—before, of course, shaking the bottles and checking if anything is still sloshing around. Yes... it must have been a pitiful sight. I was aware of this, and nothing could erase it. Instead of enjoying the nonchalance of my sips and wooing the girls, I wandered the rooms like a drunkard, bottle in hand. I was a slowly evolving idiot. Later, from idiot, I transformed into an unwitting witness to the lack of restraint in sharing my own reproductive hormones. If I wanted to continue the evening, I would have to focus on the erotic scenes taking place in that apartment. However, the purpose of this story, as I've already said, is not an orgiastic description of Saturday's events, but Sunday. I'll just mention the last remembered moment of the evening. Something rather strange happened, because I, who had initially wandered aimlessly, then sat for a long time at the table listening to conversations filled with giggles and teasing... suddenly, out of nowhere, I moved my arms and, pounding my fists on the tabletop, screamed: "Be normal!"
Needless to say, a certain consternation reigned, reflected on the alcohol-soaked faces with an additional complexion of individual, intoxicated astonishment. Consternation, Complexion. But let's skip the rhymes, because the moment I screamed out through my throat, when the room, following the example of the throat, expanded in all possible directions—I felt as alienated as ever.
Not knowing what to do—and wanting to—I clung with all my attention to the process of saliva production and how the throat muscles feed it into the esophagus. Nightmare! However, the nightmare was short-lived, as that something quickly came to the rescue... "And that Something—seeing me swallow, seeing the incomprehension I encountered when I asked these people for normalcy—clearly decided to take pity and interrupt the broadcast of reality. A black curtain descended over my eyes...
Alcohol on the Horse, through the veins—pursue Kornel's entire body,
through the night and I'll release the tissues—sprint without senses or words..."
Meanwhile, the drunkard—let's call him that—falls from his horse,
and instead of trying to remount, to run madly
through the entrails as if across the steppes, he slowly burrows into the flesh,
like a worm burrowing through the earth ... Sunday has arrived. That time of day when the gray sky positions its flashlight so that its light first illuminates itself blue, and then enters Bogdan's apartment. Within it, it moves slowly, just as it does on every fine day, when, in a good mood, it glides from object to object, leaving behind that golden, translucent cloak, like a blooming flower of light, or rather, a spell that restores yesterday's radiance to objects. As I lay on the floor, hands stuffing a roll into my mouth, the sunlight reached me, but instead of the external radiance that objects possessed... I felt a piercing pain. The overwhelming urge to get rid of it made me open my mouth and accept the roll. Today, I want to take this opportunity to thank Bogdan for that intervention. If it weren't for him, I wouldn't know how to deal with that damn hangover. Part of the ritual of meetings with Bogdan is trying to resolve various issues. "That's when we confide in each other our observations about life. This Sunday was similar. At first, we didn't talk about anything specific. However, after two hours, we suddenly started asking questions about something we hadn't discussed before, something that touched on the finiteness and infinity of the universe. He found the topic somehow by accident, and for some reason, it began to grow." As the next fifteen minutes passed, it intensified to the point that the music from the record player faded away. But something wasn't just happening with the music, it was happening with us too—actually, it should be said, it was happening throughout the entire apartment, because the air throughout the apartment began to thicken, harmonizing everything it clung to and adhered to. You could say that a surprising orchestra-like harmony had taken place in this apartment, a unity between the thickened air and the humanizing objects. Objects that, yes, had always been objects—I wasn't going crazy, after all, but damn if they didn't give the impression that they no longer wanted to be—in short, if they didn't want to break free from their material skin! We felt something! Also, that in the increasingly uncanny atmosphere, our separate Fates were converging into one shared one, which, moreover, demands something of us. It wants us to place our lives either in the finiteness or the infinity of the cosmos.
Accepting the challenge resulted in a long discussion, the duration of which only reinforced my belief that nothing could be rushed. No farmer sows and reaps at the same time. Thus, our struggles initially took the form of clumsy arguments. A case in point is Bogdan's monologue, which referred to a finite world. I cite it here because this, among many others, was the first glimpse of a nascent tragedy, the first clear realization of the lack of ground beneath our feet, that is, the lack of a world in which one could, calmly or uneasily (depending on preference), but EXIST! Bogdan said something like this:
How is it possible for the universe to be finite? "Let's assume we draw a line that marks its end." "And what next?" "But logic dictates that there is always something beyond—at least a vacuum!" But a vacuum is out of the question, as it too would have to be contained within some space. And in general, doesn't it seem to you that depriving Something of its space would simultaneously be leaving "some space for Something else?" "And if we took it away from the Cosmos, wouldn't we be leaving something in its likeness? And if so, wouldn't it be better to expand this concept of space to better express reality?
" "After such successive speeches expressing general helplessness, we gave up on the idea that the world is finite somewhere.
However, with an infinite universe, things went much easier. We found it unimaginable primarily because we knew that humans have a penchant for marking the end of all things." To such an extent that when familiar things try to absorb us, when they pile up on our heads, we still, to a greater or lesser extent, dot the "i" over the thing that currently interests us most. Homo sapiens feels the constant need to take a stance on some content. He is either "for" or "against"; he rarely says "I don't know."
Thus, both sides of the heavenly vault, which were alternately packed into our heads but which we had no opportunity to delve into, we now rejected as theories beyond the intellectual capacity of the average person.
Once again, I, through the eyes of my imagination, ventured into a dream, in which Bogdan and I arrived at an ivy-covered shop where, besides antiques and other junk, our teachers also buy stale theories:
The salesman is asleep. Where I stand, from where I can see his outstretched legs, something that imitates a comet hangs from the ceiling, between unshelled peas and a bouquet of helichrysum, but is in fact a bell, to the sound of which the bearded man, as it turns out, is unusually sensitive. I ring it, and the bearded man rises laboriously but without hesitation. Without acknowledging my polite greeting, as lazily as he hefts his 200 pounds, he now reaches for the theories tucked beneath my breast. And although I can clearly see he doesn't expect any explanations from us, for some imperative to liven up his bored expression, I decide to explain to him that the theories we possess are too abstract. To this end, I utter about six sentences, four of which are repeated by the salesman himself, apathetically and without a hint of comprehension. I think to myself that it's some kind of corpse—a huge, walking corpse. The above thought, in turn, arouses aggression in me, so turning to leave, I declare that if he wants, he can sell these things to some damn suckers—but not to us.
The daydream vanishes as quickly as it came, leaving behind a seemingly absurd question: Is this world impossible? But before we could honestly answer that, we had to make many more twisted deductions, which I'll spare you the recounting. I'll just say that the first, perhaps seven-league step—already allowing us to see the path we wanted to follow—was the thought that if we reject the accepted versions of the universe, then, in essence, it means nothing other than that we reject the possibility of space. And after a short consideration, it became clear to us that space simply doesn't exist.
Bogdan: Okay, there's no space. And matter? Matter always
occupies a certain area of space, doesn't it?
Me: Right!
Bogdan: So what, so it doesn't exist either?
Me: It doesn't. "There is no matter, because it cannot exist in a world without
space.
I will never forget how a fever grew within us, born of the awareness that we were engaged in a discussion with unpredictable consequences – a discussion that could bear fruit for months and then drop it like ripe apples onto the grassy, barely twenty-year-old green of our minds.
Finally, Bogdan's house, or rather his mother's apartment, became eyewitness to one great run, during which our throats screamed: "There is no matter! There is no space!"
Finally, Bogdan stopped, looked at me with fear in his eyes, and asked:
"And time? Damn it, what about time?" "Could it not have existed?
" "Friend," I said after a moment, still panting.
"After all, time primarily relates to space; it's a relationship between matter and space." "So it doesn't exist either! Think about it!" "If they don't exist, then there can't be something we call the feeling of time passing!
" This brief exchange led to a final change in the formula of the scream. From then on, instead of shouting: no matter, no space, we screamed: "Nothing!" "The world doesn't exist!" And it wasn't a fever anymore, it was pure madness! I remember that not for a moment did any thoughts dart to the house, or even to the currently chosen one. No one looked at the watch either. Time didn't exist, and with each passing moment it didn't exist more and more literally. Bogdan, as befits the possessor of an alert mind; from the point of view of the just-ascertained: THERE IS NOTHING – said after a moment:
"There is something, damn it!" "You can see that something exists!
" "It's an impression that it exists," I said, and suddenly I caught myself at the word, because I felt that it wasn't I who had uttered it, but rather some newcomer had said it with my mouth – as if a philosophy professor had just dropped in on us, and since he had, he had also given us a necessary word.
I shouted: "Exactly – An impression. This is God! An impression is God!"
Bogdan caught at it too; his gaping mouth spoke of it. And looking at his gaping mouth, I continued:
"Nothing." there is none. - There is only God. - God who is an impression. There is only one Moment: "Now", Moment - Impression, Moment - Eternity. But an eternity that does not occupy the smallest space, nor the smallest fraction of time. All past time is unreal—what's more, it never existed, because it's only an impression of the present moment, "Now." "Listen, friend," I continued. "If what I'm telling you is true, then one of the conclusions that follows from it is incredibly interesting for us, because it affects us in no other way than physically." "Well, we don't exist!" "We don't exist, because we are only part of that Impression!"
After a long moment of reflection, Bogdan's eyes sparkled with understanding. But to confirm the validity of such a complex explanation, Bogdan once again held his bulging eyes still—"and... and..." He checked. He made sure that Kiełbowicz hadn't made a logical error, or gone too far, and then the eyes became eyes again, shining with the light of a purified mind, so rarely seen in humans.
"UNDERSTANDING THE WORLD" pushed us into the depths of our seats so that, completely still, we could savor the IMPRESSION. - In a moment, each of us was this absolute God. - God aware not only of the complete unreality of what was seen, but also of the unreality of what was heard, felt, thought, or imagined. This wonderful moment lasted for two, three hours - it's hard to say. In any case, when we had had enough of this flowing, eternally present rain of impressions, then we allowed a tiny stream to flow from our heads, then a river... and finally a great river of BOASTING. And we boasted because we realized how many philosophers over the centuries had tried to take by the horns, tame, and finally lock up in a philosophical system this furious bull that is our world - and that they never succeeded, because in the cages for this animal, there was always missing at least the last A rod that would have definitively eliminated the possibility of escape. Suddenly, today, Bogdan and I are giving humanity a completely closed system, a bull's cage to behold, and most importantly, our own creation!
I will never forget Bogdan's chuckle that, sitting with bare feet, he had mastered 20 volumes of Lenin, the works of Kant, and even Christianity, that he had accomplished a great feat without the slightest respect for authority. "Here, to all those capable of scandalizing themselves with Bogdan's attitude toward the builders of European civilization—I hasten to assure you that things would certainly have been different if Bogdan had known in advance what a great discovery we would make, that he would have certainly done everything to ensure that we were covered in decent suits for this occasion. But he didn't do it because he didn't know... because how was he supposed to know...?" "How can a person know what he'll think in a few days, when he doesn't even know what he'll think in a second, nay—in a fraction of a second?!
