Since time immemorial, philosophers have been asking about the meaning of life, but I know…
People are not afraid of Thursday the thirteenth, because Thursday the thirteenth has no ring of superstition about it. People are not afraid of superstitions on any other Thursdays either, be they the twelfth of the twenty eighth. There is little point in fearing superstitions, because they can’t do shit, no harm will come of them. On the other hand, things are not quite so simple, because on the other hand…
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I took the face out, carefully, trying not to damage the reflection, a little fragile and warm still. The plaster mask cooled slowly in my hands, as I looked at its interior. I could see the imprint of the eye brows and nose, forehead and lips. I could see myself from within.
I was overwhelmed by a strange feeling. Probably not because I had made the first ever plaster cast of my own face and could see something I had never looked upon before (no mirror could offer such a perspective), but also because I had read Paz’s poems about the process of permeation. His words speak of touch, and the aftermath of touch, the kind I was experiencing having removed the mask in the cool, empty room which served as my workspace that night.
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Written in a Brit-Pol jargon, this is a novel about two very different Poles who have gone to seek their fortunes in the Emerald Eire. Working in a Dublin factory, their days are filled with mind-warping monotony. To counter its effects, they escape into a surreal world of cartoons, music and daydreams about the return of the Little Prince.
Involving, original and wildly relevant, this is the kind of fairytale no one expected…
Already published to serious acclaim in Poland, OFF_ gives you a teaster taste of its translation;
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- For God’s sake… let’s finish… enough for now?… – thought the man with short hair and glasses.
- We need many more flowers to be walking beautifully… – thought the woman in a black biker
jacket, skinny black jeans and black suede boots. This is not her favourite outfit… today, though,
this is the only thing she could wear… leather jacket, black underwear, black jeans, black boots…
only in this outfit – this is what she felt, feels and will feel… only in this outfit does she feel today
enough appropriate distance to that which has happened…. in thought, speech, deed and
dereliction…
Leaning across the passenger seat, she opened the door of her black Toyota for the man.
At first he sat with his back to her.
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Frankfurt, Flughafen
I
The restaurant is rather empty. The blank tables, their very centres, set with salt and pepper. White Chinese women, with the air of porcelain dolls, help themselves to heaped plates of colourful food from the buffet.
II
White sausage-shaped planes are laid out in even rows, each one labelled with a brightly coloured rudder. Those waiting in the departure lounge from time to time cast hungry looks their way.
Poems
The writing of a poem is the shielding of uttered words (words with simple meanings) with additional dependencies: phonetic links, semantic relativities, visual connections – we protect them, make access more difficult, in the understanding that we are no longer in Eden, and therefore words should not go naked either. Not to write poetry means: to behave as if one were still in Eden.
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Evening time. Workers streaming out of factories and workshops, vanishing somewhere in empty space. The chill of rotting leaves slowly envelopes all. Before us once more the vast and rather inconsequential mystery of life playing itself out – slowly seeping through everything.
Icy silence, black abandoned trees, grey empty parks, hollow streets, the smell of chimney smoke, alleys abandoned and extinguished, littered with leaves. The light cool already, slowly departing, so unlike that which fully warms in July. Now is time to put on a thick sweater, a woollen scarf and hole up somewhere far from people. Reading books, firing up the stove, taking long walks in deserted parks, studying this slow and silent provincial life; shrunken women wandering through the dusk after work, shopkeepers noticing and with some ever so subtle gestures letting us know they too sense the same melancholy and the cool, ancient sadness, in spite of their inherent coarseness. Read the rest of this entry »
When she says that she is all the time thinking of how other men are fucking her, then at school you treat such declarations like gospel. Or a challenge. You finish your beer and say, coming to get you, darling. I’ll take you to the ends of the earth. You point. In them there bushes. Read the rest of this entry »
At first, I only saw the face. A delicate smile reflected in the window of the underground carriage I was riding. The eyes of a spirit. The one who visited me several hours later – dressed in a khaki uniform, it saluted and stood there in silence. Heavy drops of rain fell from us, right into the earth beneath our feet, smelling of spring.
In the morning, I knew time had come to tell his story.
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Water. Foam leaving behind unnamed jelly upon stones and shells. Glands. Malignant growths. Noise when waves hit the shore. No. No, no shimmering sounds, no gull song. No friendly kind of spray. Noise. Screams. A wild look, through semi-shut eyelids. Dank breath loaded with salt. A giant sky-blue smooth-skinned creature, as yet unwritten upon. Read the rest of this entry »
