To two wonderful men
who left
before I could open the door
"Happiness is not only what
fate gives, but also what
it doesn't take away."
(Władysław Grzeszczyk)
The Delirium of Tomorrow
*
-You're like a dream... But you can wake up from a dream....
She smiled...:
-What becomes a dream when it disappears?...
-Nothing...?
She stepped out of the shadows...:
-So I am a dream...
-...my dream...And I'm still dreaming...
*
Prologue
I never realized how dark the night can be when the last light fades... I don't recall ever having the opportunity to stare into such darkness before... Or maybe it was just my eyes that were enveloped in the darkness of indifference, which, having taken over my soul, obscured my world...? Suddenly everything began to emanate the peace of darkness...The undisturbed melody of the night's silence. Are there truly no stars in the sky anymore, or do I simply lack the strength to look at them...? I feel each moment anew... as if I were living backwards... I feel myself crumbling into the dust of my own being... At the same time, I know there are no longer any boundaries for me... I am free, because I am no longer a prisoner even of my own humanity. I don't have to struggle to live—I have destroyed its value. I will scroll through the pages of the next days... to understand why I suffer with peace, why I challenge fate with silent screams... I delude myself that I will find in the emptiness what I couldn't find in the chaos.
You ask me my name... And I wait for you to name me. Until, gasping for your last breath, you tremble in the cold of my embrace, giving me a new name. For a split second, I become the peace of the fulfillment of all your desires. You don't know I'm coming. You don't feel me. You don't see me stepping out of the shadows, spreading my black wings over your existence. But I am there. Waiting at the final door. I dismiss anxiety. I soothe fear. I wait with you until the last light fades. I beguile you with an insidious illusion.
In perfect silence, I deliver the final blow... The last memory... pain, cold, nothingness, oblivion...
***
*
'Time to decide,' I thought. It seemed somewhat prosaic. I knew full well what would happen, and yet, to give my fate some expression, I decided to embellish it with a trivial dilemma:
"Heads or tails?"
I asked myself teasingly, tossing the coin into the blinding light of the morning sun. For a moment, I followed the disc spinning in the air. After a moment, I lost its image in the sun's disc. Dazed, I lowered my gaze, waiting for the sound of metal hitting the ground, which soon echoed right at my feet. I leaned forward:
"Tails."
I stretched languidly, slowly exhaling the air trapped in my lungs.
"Sigh... Your freedom is a curse to me. If I could just rip off your wings, maybe I could finally stop." Meanwhile, it's time to say goodbye to whomever is needed...
I took a neatly and elegantly wrapped piece of paper out of my jacket and read my resignation letter again:
"To the Dear Management:
I resign."
I'm not ignorant, nor even a cynic, though that's how people perceive me. It's just that after repeating the same action a certain number of times, we stop caring not only about the action itself but also about everything related to it. That's why I wasn't the least bit concerned that my current, and soon-to-be former, employer might feel a certain dissatisfaction after such a concise statement. In fact, I didn't even care what opinion I was giving myself. My employer had long since stopped keeping up with me. Eccentric. Yes, that's undoubtedly who I am. Thanks to this, I separate myself from reality like oil from water. I'm a greasy dot on a seemingly pristine surface. I drift, bumping against the common grime of the surrounding liquid, stimulating something supposed to be the so-called "world." A broken pedestrian crossing light, a protruding sidewalk tile, a wet matchbox, a torn button on a favorite shirt, a lack of drinks in street vending machines, a too-tight pink sweater on a bleached blonde behind the counter at a liquor store, the unambitious slang of youth always in a state of secondary freshness... All of this, which is truly hidden behind the H2O formula, sticks to me like iron filings to a magnet. Such an unhygienic relationship with life, conditioned by laws that people have not failed to name—fortunately, in such a way that it's easy to forget. Of course, it's an individual matter to utilize the opportunity to perform a 180-degree turn, which, as I've noticed, has been assumed to guarantee a radical change in the current time-space-situational continuum characteristic of a given individual in a given material medium. No matter how absurd this sounds, it certainly results in an apparent change in the perceived landscape—assuming, of course, that our world doesn't exhibit a tendency toward parabolic behavior. In both cases, however, the horizon remains the same curve, chaotically drawn through the center of our field of vision. And me? I've been torn from every pattern. I'm like that magnet: behind me lies the opposite pole of my existence. The slightest movement is enough, and the intricate mosaic surrounding me undergoes irreversible transformation. This limitless power to create, to change the character of my surroundings, does not allow me to remain still. I spin within my 90-degree arc, never crossing the magical boundary. This would push away all the familiar "garbage" of human mundanity. At the same time, somewhere on my body, I feel the steady, warm breath of what could create an alternative to my humanity. I know I'll look back...
-A lousy feeling...
*
...eyes...
-Go away... you're dooming us both...
...it seemed to me that only blood could turn such a deep red...
-You left the door open...
...hair...
-I didn't invite you...
...how heavy is pure blackness?
-And yet you waited...
...a voice...
-The end is expected from the very beginning...
...soundless...perceptible...
That night took the form of silence just before the loudest scream I was to hear.
...
I didn't have to look at her to see her. I knew what she was like. I knew who she was. It was enough to stand before the mirror. A crystal trap. A reflection. Now she was reaching for me. I wish I could feel the need to ask questions... I would have the right not to understand...
-Time...
Sitting on the bed, leaning against the wall, I turned my gaze to the window with a slow, almost imperceptible movement... The moon shone far too brightly today...
-So I'm fighting the sand in the hourglass?...
-If you want to call it a fight... A series of moments... Sad. You can't let go of hope and rebellion. You've become so weak..., so... human!
An ironic smile. Perhaps the last...
-You're shattering the mirror of my values...
She laughed. Quiet, calm... Cold.
"Suddenly, it turned out we were so close. We passed people on the street..."
"You destroyed my sky..."
I looked out the window at the night.
"...Now it's empty. It's gone. You leveled it with the Earth... There's nothing to believe in...
" "Perhaps you're reaching too high with your faith...?
...
Time... It surrounds me, beguiles me, enslaves me. What unit would measure the end to equal the value of the beginning?
"
This hopeless lack of need to do anything... It's one of those days, filled with stuffiness and boredom. Everyone around you is consumed by a frantic race against time, while you drift peacefully from one minute to the next. The frustrating feeling of not belonging to the present moment leaves you irritated, sometimes even agitated. The whole situation ends with a formulaic 0.5 in some uninteresting pub. Except, for me, 3 p.m. is a terrible time to end. For me, it's the deadliest of all hours. It contains more hopelessness than its nighttime sister. Rush hour. The hour of the solstice of the impersonality of metropolises like this one. A soulless city of tangled individualities. Yet, in everything, you can find something that builds the positive value of a given phenomenon. A city wouldn't be a city if it didn't provide a certain anonymity. If it weren't for the dark corners, unfamiliar streets, ruined buildings, faceless crowds, and all the other things that allow us to squeeze through clogged streets without a particular destination, sometimes simply to keep us moving. Just as it serves me today. I pass parks, skyscrapers, intersections, shops, stalls, people, dogs. Everything flows past me as if I weren't in the way. I force my rhythm into the machine of everyday life, which governs the avalanche of events so inconspicuous yet so overwhelming in their multitude and enormity. That's why I stick to big cities. To be able to walk as long as I want, whenever I want, knowing that each time I'll end up somewhere I've never been before. That I won't get trapped in a vicious cycle of formulaic routines. All I have to do is finally lift my eyes from the sidewalk, and I'll see buildings, people, streets, lawns, and a sky that hadn't yet dawned on me. It's like a kind of catharsis—you fall into a kind of delirium, allowing yourself to disappear into the crowd of ordinary things. You walk, and everything around you fades to gray, fades, slows down—as if you were the only character of color in a black-and-white film frame.
Just sometimes you have to stop and go into the supermarket to buy something that will temporarily imitate our meals and drinks. The prosaic nature of life often delights me more than anything hidden behind the curtain of the mundane. This simplicity, primitiveness, and commonplaceness amuses, delights, intoxicates with its comicality and purposelessness. It is the greatest and most powerful thing of those things we so assiduously try to get rid of and repress, and without which it is impossible not only to function, but even to exist properly. Although the value and significance of the concept of correctness have always been so relative that it might as well not exist. After all, people have become so accustomed to empty concepts that words have become mere flimsy veneers of the emptiness they carry. Despite this, it's astonishing how necessary they are. Words. The most sophisticated murder weapon you can commit against a person.
And that's how you end up in supermarkets. In my case, it's practically always the same. It's my "idiotic stability," as my friends call it, wherever I am and whoever they are. While I never attach myself to cities, I don't attach importance to places or people, I must have my own shop, which ends the intricate line of my journey through each day with a symbolic "X," even before the chapter of an empty room begins.
I don't know why, but I love the large, sliding doors of such shops. The sight of people pouring through them in every direction. I generally have a weakness for doors—I don't know if for reasons that don't need to be explained, or for reasons that cannot. Or maybe it's just me who doesn't feel the need. It doesn't matter. I don't know if it destroys me or creates me, but I don't have the habit of explaining myself, neither to myself nor to others. I don't need understanding or acceptance. Besides, people don't exist to understand each other, only to help each other. That's the only way they can exist simultaneously .
In fact, I'm not even hungry... As always, I don't know why I came here today. For some time now, I've been crumpling a wad of banknotes in my pocket—my farewell card. A person's deeds, however, are expressed in numbers. The paper value of what I haven't accomplished anyway. I pulled my hand out of my pocket and looked at my paycheck, which was supposed to constitute my last day in this place.
"Is it funny or tragic that I despise what others chase their whole lives?" The cold irony in my own voice and the mocking smile that crept onto my face surprised me with the coldness and indifference radiating from within. "You're worth nothing but a can of beer and a pack of cigarettes."
I walked into the store... I'll drink that beer again today... This is the eighteenth time..."
"I'm probably the only person who drinks on the flip of a coin." I really felt good about that.
As usual, I didn't take the basket. Security hadn't even bothered me for a while now. They'd probably gotten used to me like a scratch—they'll wait until I'm gone.
Just one can and a small box. It's worth working for trivial things sometimes.
I like the cashier here. She's my personal, close stranger...
"Good morning. Is that all?
" "Yes.
I like the sound of the cash register too."
I collected my change from my plate, put the groceries in a disposable bag, and nothing would have been any different from usual if she hadn't said,
"Goodbye..."
She never did that. I paused for a moment, but didn't turn around. I smiled involuntarily... I slung the bag over my shoulder and headed for the door. I knew she wasn't looking at me anymore. It's amazing... how much people know, and how little they can express or use it. But that's what saves us from them and ourselves.
"I'm getting old..." But it's a more interesting feeling than I thought.
*
"Do you know why people don't fly?"
I stopped twirling the silver lighter in my hand.
"Because they had given wings to their hopes, and letting them fly, they clung to their shadows. Sadness, despair, fear, pain, and uncertainty held them grounded. What could be heard behind the word: human ?
"
I clenched the cold piece of metal in my hand. I pulled up my knee and rested my hand on it. She had been standing by the window the entire time, gazing into the distance I couldn't see. I fixed my gaze on the silver railing of the bed... "You can
hear the clang of chains... Chains with which life and reality have bound people..."
I involuntarily raised my eyes to see her weakening, leaning against the doorframe and shifting her sightless gaze to the floor... "
But it's not those people, aware of their captivity, who can hear the chains. It's the metallic reverberation of the mad dash of those who, having failed to notice the golden collar around their necks, allowed themselves to chase illusions and dreams." They leave behind a crowd of gray, resigned prisoners of fate to try to touch the horizon. Each link is like a golden bell, its melody counting down to the end. And when they are truly close, only we see the chain's coil disappear before our eyes...
Her words faded into silence as she struggled with her own weakness. She looked at her hands as if she didn't believe who they belonged to or what they were. She was right—I had long awaited her arrival. I knew why she had come here today, what she wanted, and what she intended to say... But I couldn't... or perhaps even more, I didn't want to make it easy for her... I felt rebellion rising within me, a sob and a scream. In my inner fury, I fought the urge to lose myself in this night...
-...and suddenly the running stops. A violent and unexpected jerk tightens the trap of reality around their necks and knocks them to the ground... The bells fall silent...
She lowered her hands to avert her gaze again, towards the night enveloping the world outside the window. But she continued...
-People say it's the sound of death... That's because you wait for the last note... But in truth... there is no more beautiful melody of life... That's why you can't leave them alone... let them live on when they fall. Losers, enslaved, decadent, cursed. In the name of divine punishment, they teach the world despair.
-So God exists?
-And should he?
-...
-God is hope, I am possibility, but you are a promise.
...The woman who speaks the language of my thoughts comes to hand me a knife...
*
People think I'm crazy, because who walks everywhere in such a big city, where the subway commute sometimes takes more than two hours? If I were to say whether I avoid or find people this way, I don't think I'd be able to make a clear, definitive judgment. Somehow, both possibilities are fulfilled and intertwine with every step I take. The strangeness of a single person I pass is more faithful and more precious than the strangeness of artificial groups and crowds. It may not be romantic: strolling through dirty streets, dilapidated sidewalks in a haze of exhaust fumes, dust, and the smoke of metropolitan landscapes, but who said I expected or sought romance in what surrounds me? I long ago resigned myself to the dissonance between imagination and reality... Besides, my materialistic nature adeptly memorizes all the benefits that flow from every stroll, ruthlessly contrasting them with the failures of my expectations. If I listened to the people around me, I would probably learn that this is a fabrication, a lie. Perhaps that's why I only listen to those who don't speak. Sometimes I just can't answer them... I delude myself that as long as I can start a new walk, it doesn't matter. And yet... Even if I choose a different direction each day, I won't forget any of the paths I've already traveled... For this, I curse my memory—it's a door that can't be closed.
Much can be learned about human needs from observing the city. Everything surrounding us is a simple, primitive representation of our needs. The sheer number of pubs, tearooms, pastry shops, nightclubs, clothing stores, and markets is the common code of human existence. Nothing comes from the outside. It all arises from within. There are no explanations, excuses, or coincidences.
If it weren't for the beer slowly warming in the bag, I could have made the long detour and said goodbye to him. I could have, if it weren't for our agreement. I admit, however, that I never thought the reason could be truly trivial...
*
"Shoot," he repeated, pulling my hand with the gun to his face. I didn't even want to ask where the hell he'd gotten the gun. He was only supposed to be going to the bathroom. Trying to understand and decipher this man was tantamount to an outright suicide attempt. Before I met him, I thought only alcohol and cigarettes were eating me up inside. But it turns out you can destroy yourself with another person.
"You underestimate me," I tried to talk down my own urge to pull the trigger.
"You won't.
" "Are you suggesting I'm afraid?"
"Should I know the answer to that question?" No, it's not about fear. You won't shoot because you don't know if you want to be there when it happens.
"Maybe I just couldn't kill you?"
"You could." You'd just have to want everything that might come next. That's why you're drinking beer today. You didn't pour it into a glass just to test it out or for the sake of it. You wanted to be in the position you'd be in after drinking it.
"You're talking nonsense." I inhaled slowly, keeping my eyes on the shadow play created on the opposite wall by the candles on the tables.
"Very possible. And yet you're listening."
"I should charge you to sit here with you." I think for the first time today I felt like I might want to smile.
"I want you to come to the concert tomorrow."
"Out of the question. I hate your music."
Luckily, he was laughing for both of us.
"You hate that I waste words on truth.
" "...
Another cigarette burned out in my hand. I focused all my attention on the small, red, glowing point. "
Truths can only be thought. Words are a secondary product that will never catch up with the meaning contained in their original." I'll come when you need me. Just don't forget to call me then.
-Bastard. I'd scream in your ear and you wouldn't hear me anyway.
-I'll only come back when I'm gone...
-It's good that I've already said goodbye... Remember, I don't want to see you for my last beer... If you came back, I might not be able to understand why...
I sometimes wondered which of us spoke less... I never came to say goodbye... But he called, and then more than ever I wished I could not hear...
*
-If I ask you not to go?
-I'll refuse...
-If I tell you to stay?
-I'll leave...
-If I hold you?
-I'll run away...
-If... I let you stay next to me...?
-You'll pass sentence on yourself...
-So let me be silent until the end, so I can forget that I could have said anything more...
*
Let the frost cover the windows, let the frost be my artist again, let it be my savior. Too warm, too simple, too quiet... It's so hard to get up. I'd like to go to the window, but I don't want to see what's beyond. Images. Winter images of illusions. Where are they on summer mornings of compelling powerlessness? Landscapes of the world of imagination, born from the cold of winter emptiness. Unique and unrepeatable flowers, trees, hills, meadows, lakes. Endless expanses of white skies at my fingertips. Melting steadily to the rhythm of our breathing... This is how hopes vanish, dreams vanish, hearts stop... This is how we lose and are lost—slowly, calmly, until the moment when nothing remains. When, reaching out, we encounter nothing but the debilitating emptiness of air. Then we know for sure that we are alone—regardless of which side we are on. But why is it always easier for the one who leaves than for the one who stays?
...
Cold. My inner cold demands the sun's fall. What I miss most now is snow... I need natural beauty. Another moment of weakness, in which I dare demand from the world a little artistry, which always comes so unexpectedly. I stand in a dirty puddle, waiting for the water to freeze... And nothing ever happens. People think I have so much time, that my life is empty and monotonous... But I simply stand and wait. Sometimes I get fed up when another lousy driver zooms past me on a wet road, splattering the last of the mud from the tires onto my old coat, the color of a late sunset.
You look down and see how close you are to the ground. You look up and see how far you are from the sky...
And then it starts to snow.
In the dim glow of the streetlights, another car passes. With a gentle touch, it splashes water from a roadside puddle. A faint splash fills the silence of the night street. Small, dirty droplets first dance in the red headlights of the receding vehicle, only to shatter a moment later on the pristine white of the snow, which has already covered the gray of the city sidewalk. Some reach my blanket. They shimmer with the apparent immaculateness of the water, only to sink in a moment later, leaving a trace of their imperfection behind. The filth of reality... And the snow continues to fall. Appearing from nowhere, it dances madly around you, enclosing you in the icy embrace of its own uniqueness. Standing there, in the world of your own delusion, you begin to disappear... You don't have to close your eyes, you don't have to run, you don't have to hide. You just have to look away in a direction that doesn't exist in everyday life.
And then the snow stops falling.
An ironic smile of apparent ignorance shatters the delicate, glassy surface of memory, the impression that we can create something valuable from what we possess, even when a feeling of contempt for everything around us seems the only comprehensible truth.
Somewhere in the background, on some tower, a clock strikes three in the morning. I put my hands in my pockets and clench my right hand around the cold keys... I didn't lock the door today either, but these keys remind me of certain facts, keep principles alive.
And that's exactly what it is:
My own world, distorted to the model of realism.
* "
You won my belief in the reason for your existence." She looked in my direction. I saw a smile of calm, joy in her eyes, one I wish I could never forget. "The sky I could return to would be empty, for it would lack the truth of what has been done to exist. A word is not enough. A promise is an injustice... Wings are too weak a weapon against the skies." Look...
I raised my sightless eyes to the figure looming in the fading night. I didn't know what I wanted to see. I didn't know if I could believe what I was seeing. It had always been easier to doubt and mock. It had always been easier to walk on the earth I felt beneath my feet...
White.
Snow.
Dust.
Lightness.
Faith. Air.
Magic
.
"No. Magic doesn't exist..." Without knowing the light, I couldn't see my own darkness.
"Then there are no people, no hope, no us. And yet people exist. And that's enough—a saved person. But he's the first to go, alone. That's why everything we close our eyes to dies... That's why I believe I'm making the right decision...
" "Dying so I could kill?"
"So you wouldn't let me die."
I didn't believe in the emptiness I was creating within myself. With downcast eyes, I waited for them to change their verdict. At my feet, I saw the world in ruins and ash. I already knew why I never promised to return... first I would have to leave. "
When God is late, when faith is late, you will make it to every door. If nothing hides behind the last image—help them turn back one last time. See how inexorable time slows the passage of those they await. Let them see the tears that have not yet fallen." Only in this way will they be able to depart happy, though they will not leave peace behind, for knowledge will perish with them...
-The fallen angel of salvation...
-...on the wings of imagination... Only one. Because in truth, there is always only one possibility, only one way out.
-So today you will leave...
-I couldn't have dreamed of a more beautiful walk towards the last page... You will be the strength that will make me believe what I want to see.
-One last time... -I slowly got out of bed. I walked to the window. To her. She didn't turn around. -One last time, the moon always shines the brightest...
-Your wings...
-They will be sick. Sick by the crime of fate... -I ran my hand along the back of her neck, slowly turning to her chest. In one violent movement, I embraced her frail body and with a gentle tug, pulled it towards me to whisper in her ear, "So let me create the first Heaven for you..."
...
From that day on, every last smile I saw before my death became my peace...
...
*
I remember how he invaded my life. I remember how he simply sat down next to me, when he could have sat anywhere else.
"Free?
" "Like any other seat." I looked around the cramped, dark room of my favorite pub.
"Then it wouldn't matter much if I sat here if it weren't for the fact that it was the only seat I could occupy..."
I remember exactly how reluctant I was to engage in any conversation. I looked more closely at my interlocutor, wondering why I didn't feel a distinct desire to brutally dispose of him. For some reason, I wanted him to leave while staying.
He placed the beer on the table, sat down, and, after shaking the silver lighter a few times, lit a cigarette.
Silence fell. Only after a moment did a familiar melody play from the speakers. Something from the world beyond this stuffy room. The treacherous words of another lost poet, trying to enchant your world when you're locked in a room alone, with its combination of silence and sounds, in which you seek solace.
"Why does music heal everyone except the one who creates it?"
"Because he alone knows the truth beyond it..." I replied, not knowing why. I didn't want to engage in an argument, yet at the same time, every word he said evoked a response within me. As if I were its conclusion or fulfillment. I didn't know this man.
He'd come again...
"Have you ever counted hours for beer? Suddenly, it turns out life is full of bubbles.
...I didn't even notice when.
How many times has it been?
" "Why the hell can I never get here before you? Man, do you live here or something? And apparently I'm the one addicted to alcohol... Damn it! Why can't I get ahead of you?" "
In every good play, the roles are already assigned...
I don't remember." Maybe the only right number is always ?
Too long in one place. I should have left before I let them catch up, and yet...
Even looking at the empty chair...
Or maybe that's precisely why...
Maybe precisely because I know this view and wait until I'm sure no one will come.
I've allowed people to trap me in routine. The triumph of failure over imagination. Surprisingly, it seemed to me that I didn't need people. In fact, I've recently come to the conclusion that I've filled my entire mind not only with lousy data, which, by cramming into piles of documents, I turned into a livelihood according to the rules of the universal politics of life, but also with imaginations that ultimately meant even less than the tables of the annual report. But while until now I could ignore everything, now I suddenly realized that something inside me had gone silent, only to hear the ominous sound of the calm before the storm.
"...this was the only place I could sit... You know..."
I didn't turn to leave. I only wanted to remember the words.
*
You won't hear them leave. You won't understand why you stay. And though you'll want to make it on time, you won't know where you're supposed to run or how much time you have left... But your fear, anxiety, and concern are my strength, thanks to which I turn the cold emptiness surrounding them into dust and ash as they depart in a loneliness that will never come true, because... I am there. Dispelling anxiety. Soothing fear. Waiting with them until the last light fades. Beguiling them with an insidious illusion. In perfect silence, cradling them in my arms, each absent one... My first memory... warmth, lightness, sleep, and then oblivion...
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