Back & Forth--Experiences Off Generations
1. Knowledge, Power & Other Bullshit
Walking quickly, one’s stare observes the pavement, as its immobility is turning into a stream,
simultaneous with one’s steps conquering the spaces of the company estate populated by neatly
cut grass, water fountain, and the impressive headquarter architectural colossus. Around the
central building are the smaller ones, nothing short of the mastery of urban planning. Only, more
modest in expressiveness, so the idea of power can be sustained. As if the very fact that the
person who is observing the surrounding were not enough to prove that ridiculous insistence on
superficial orderliness. One’s hand awkwardly forming a shield around the electric cigarette,
head slightly bowed, between a harmless transgression and an imposed sense of guilt, mouth
hidden behind the scarf, exhaling whatever it is one inhales smoking aids and supplements. As if
an ordinary person approaching the workplace weren’t enough to bear witness to the exhausting
senselessness of formalities for formalities’ sake.
As one is walking through that empire whose irrational rationality one is trying to seize day in,
day out, one recalls college years when campuses were crowded with numberless student
population, offices of admission congested with a ceaseless influx of applications from
knowledge-starved youth. They say knowledge is power. Only, they don’t say whose definitions
of power and/or knowledge are being referenced. Neither do they elucidate the notion of hunger.
Anyways, back then, in cafeterias, over a light meal and coffee between classes, students would
reminisce stories they inherited from the time bygone, when their parents’ conduct was
exemplary recalcitrance given their persistent smoking in the lavatories on the premises of the
institutions of higher education, boasting of a successful implementation of the law that prohibits
smoking in public spaces. Poor grandmas & grandpas were not offered such a luxury of
transgression to start with.
Instead, they were looking forward to see their youngsters quenching epistemic thirst. Little did
they know that along with fine-tuning of the definition of thirst, refined will also be the
understanding of education. Learned faculty were welcoming ever growing generations of
students. Corporate world, ever so sternly enhancing the rigor of employment policies, defining
skyrocketing dimensions of competition, strangely reflected the guiding principle in all segments
of culture: expertise matters. So, countless professionals safely guarded the fortresses of their
respective disciplinary kingdoms. Well-trained, disciplined, widely-read, in possession of all
communication skills, unreservedly obeying business dress code and other aspects of the
etiquette, those magnates of cognizance, sadly, radiated no inspiration for anything other than a
successful journey through the labyrinth of curiously conspiring power relation narratives
between culturally constructed idea of omnipotence and carnally conditioned hierarchies. Not
that they were expected to emanate anything beyond such a magnificent goal to begin with.
*To fuck with nostalgia!
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*To fuck with the fortresses of dim-lit definitions!
*Stop dehumanizing threats of somnambulist thinking!
*Stop the torture of the ill-defined authority!
*We are not fucking robozombies!
*We are not fucking robozombies!
2. Bravely into the Company's Protective Arms
Years of studying do deprive one of a night out here and there. And yet, what they give in return
is, perhaps, incomparable with the transient ennui experienced in the loneliness of the dorm, in a
conversation with the only interlocutor—the book. What one does not see during those years is:
a) How young age conspires with a fabricated sense of wasted time; b) How wool is not only the
fabric sweaters are made from; c) How little of it all matters in comparison with other things. To
complicate the situation, life does not reveal what is not worthy of agonizing over the allegedly
missed fun until those things disclose themselves in the fullness of their actuality.
One of them is triumphantly entering the company’s estate. The very first step along a mile long
driveway erases the misery of the numberless nights spent wrestling with untamable sentences,
impossible equations, and incomprehensible formulas. The walk along the driveway is calming.
On the one hand, it is dissolving the anxiety of the exams, frustration caused by the interviews,
distress during the period of waiting for the response, disappointment when letters of rejection
overflow the mailbox, futility of thinking of further attempts, hopelessness increasing with every
nanosecond of planning the next application, waiting for more responses, more reasons to be as
fucked up as a fucking fuck.
None of these venomous feelings exist once the breeze starts gently blowing the shiny curls
freely falling over the shoulders exuding the smell of the champion shampoo—the winner of the
competition for the product to keep hair healthy, sustain its natural glow, and make it look as
vivacious as ever: the healer among shampoos! As the curls are engaging in a playful
conversation with the vibrations of the air, the greenery of the surrounding is opening to show
the area where antique statues decorate the realm of the estate across which an elegant water jet
is profusely dispersing microwatery formations. A huge fountain guarding the entrance to the
main building stretches its wings to release the camaraderie of the minute brigades. As the
droplets travel along the rollercoaster path from the inside tube, spurting out through the opening
in the weird shape of the modern design, they are like a tiny army of tin soldiers marching as one
across the unknown territory. Until the brightness of daylight almost blinds them. And they start
dispersing, begin their individual dances, carried by the light air stream, united with its
movements, touching the face now and then—the face that is now sending the signal to the body
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about the triumphant moment of the sensation felt on the foot as it gets in contact, one at a time,
with the three stairs leading the novice into the palace rightly bragging to epitomize an incessant
celebration of the fusion of expertise and power.
It was going to be the new sales manager’s first day at work. She started her career chairing the
committee for the recruitment of interns. Soft leather chair welcoming the muscles eager to send
all the energy to the brain as they get comfortably relaxed:
Good morning. What was your main motivation for applying for the position of an intern with
us? Nice. I see that you have a years long experience working as an intern with reputable
companies praised in the business world to be the giants of rhetorical skills used for advancing
sales. That is certainly something we will take into account. Will you be willing and able to work
extra hours should the dynamic of the company so require? Very good. Do you plan to extend
your family in the near future? Our company is respectful of the employees’ privacy, yet needs
information regarding certain aspects of their private lives. Thank you. Will you be able to
tolerate sometimes not having weekends off? That sounds very accommodating to the company’s
pulse. Do you imagine that your future career could in any way offer something that would be
strikingly different from the experience one may obtain working with us? Clearly, that’s the type
of job one would expect to both crown and result from the years dedicated to internship. Sounds
reasonable. Do you have any anticipations with regard to a pay rise once your initial period at
work is completed? Excellent. Will it be impossible for you to sometimes stand in for a coworker, should circumstances so require? Outstanding. Would you characterize yourself as:
Punctual? Reliable? Cooperative? Tolerant? Responsive? Are you: Competitive?
Uncompromising? Energetic? Well-trained? Widely-read? Well-mannered? Well-dressed? Wellshaped? What newspaper do you read? What’s your favorite salad? What’s your favorite beer?
What do you wear when you go to sleep? When do you usually wake up? How do you spend
your free time? What’s your favorite holiday destination? Where do you usually spend your
weekends? How do you like your steak? Do you like fish? What do you think of when you eat
chocolate? Can you make a cake? Who is your favorite tennis player? Do you like to work?
Hope the conversation between the breeze and the tickling watery dispersal will generate some
answers to this inquiry staccato. I feel the suppression of the desire to know them is receding.
And it should not be confusedly equated with the unleashing of the want for them. All I know is
that I now want things differently than I used to. I thought I lost something to an unknown
season. I don’t think so any more. But I still think. Think hard. The harder I think the lighter the
thought. Like one should always be thinking.
3. Business and Thinking
Wooden desk, richly decorated with neatly laid documents, pencils, pens, type-writer, and a
couple of reference books, is protectively facing a comfortable chair. Carved oaktree bookcase to
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the right. A glass coffee table next to it. Chest of drawers further towards the wall. A state-ofthe- art water resistant door, ornamented with computer-generated motifs, reveals the secrets of
the beauty hidden under the surface of the ages-long accumulation of ideas, thoughts, and skills.
Good afternoon! It is my duty and honor to welcome you and immediately proceed with the
realization of the reason why you are here. My uttermost pleasure is to present you with the
surrounding that the company is proud to have in its museum collection of antiques and rarities.
Feel free to inspect the pieces of furniture as well as the office equipment if you wish to
familiarize yourself with the aesthetic of the eras bygone, only to, by juxtaposition,
contextualize contemporary design, business etiquette, and corporate normativity.
FYI, the interview is going to take place in the room next to this and you are more than welcome
to join me once you have observed objects on display.
Good afternoon! Thanks! I know everything about museums, stools, and tables. Let’s just
fucking go to the interview room and fucking talk.
It is my honorable duty to present you with an opportunity to satisfy your desire to do so. Please!
Thanks!
The purple glass door opens as the bodies are approaching it. A view of the room, spacious
enough to create a sense of security even in the most destabilized of interviewees, opens up its
lungs caressing the interlocutors with the vibrancy of cutting edge technology-meets-industrial
design that defies its own definition. Namely, the tendency of new aesthetics tends to be out-ofsymbolic in character, so that offices would, for example, comprise of the equipment that is not
easily recognizable as a corporate aesthetic. That does and does not provoke a desire to relate it
to a typical idea of an office. The desk consists of several components—collapsible and
unfolding—so the computer in the drawer can be reached if the material sensitive to human
presence gets activated.
How old are you?
Three.
What is your main motivation for applying for the position of an intern?
What’s your fucking definition of motivation?
I will have to kindly remind you that you should be familiar with the term?
What term?
The term motivation, especially when used in the context in which I am using it now.
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Which is?
What is your main motivation for applying for the position of the intern?
I am interested in the cultural flux.
That’s most astoundingly akin to the ethics of the company.
Dope!
Allow me to proceed with the next question.
Shoot!
Would you consider contemplating upon the problem of why humans still speak when everybody
knows that: a) Whatever one says by miles misses the actuality of what is to be expressed; b)
Everybody can violate the verbalized contents at his or her leisure and according to the
increments on the scale of distastefulness?
Yes. The answer to the questions is: c) Because language is what humans do.
What about the languages of different kinds?
Methinks those who can understand them have the right to talk about them.
Thanks! Could you now refresh our conversation with a thought or two about the very
specificities of your interest in the cultural flux.
Like fuck!
Could you be more precise?
No, you can! Whadafuck do you think is on my mind if not to talk about the core issues!
Absolutely. Having said that, can you, please, provide a glimpse of your attitude towards the
currents in the corporate world during the last two decades.
Popular psychology/sociology packaged in a daring leftist journalist vocabulary is, in fact,
mainstream politics politically correct to the bone. Such journalism presumes that the equation
between monogamy and love is an untenable one. Journalists of such persuasion are right to
assume that there are many monogamous marriages within which the couple do not love each
other. An implication that there is love between and among individuals outside a relationship of a
monogamous type is probably also true. What is not plausible is to presume that an alternative to
monogamy ensures tenability of the equation. Put differently, debunking monogamy is not a
wager of love.
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Additionally, advocates of popular sociology/psychology/journalism do allow / acknowledge a
possibility that there are couples who live in a monogamous marriage and love each other. The
logic of these intellectuals lays further claims about lousiness of the very notion of fidelity.
According to them, to have sex outside a relationship is inevitable. Not only is the statement
itself highly questionable, given the fluctuating character of the definition, but the tone of such a
claim almost suggests that the opposite is a deviation from the norm. To support their argument,
they insist on the constructiveness of the model. They, however, never leave room for raising the
question about infidelity being culturally conditioned, as well. It, one would assume, is either
assumed (that it is a construct), or, is not relevant for the debate (which exceeds logical, or, any
other reasoning). The crux of the conundrum seems to be an extremely narrow-mindedly
understood the notion of the yardstick.
Another topic the debaters are keen on is the lives of singles, who, according to a popular
doctrine, are liberated to the extent and in the way in which individuals in a relationships are not.
True as it may be, the claim does not create an impression that it is aware of its unilaterality.
Neither do those who lay it seem to be able to boast of such an insight. In other words, such an
idea of singleness does not allow for a possibility of freedom within a union of two individuals.
Stunning is the overarching understanding of being single as a triumph of individuality. Clearly,
such logic does not make a distinction between individualism and individuality. Needless to say,
one couldn’t even dream of expecting from it to know the difference between uniformity &
union.
Answers can be given in diverse keys. Stories can be told in different languages. There are keys
and languages that define the answers in the ways in which others cannot. Only those keys and
languages one can understand, albeit sometimes in a highly inexplicable way. Other stories can
be beautiful, irrelevant, or, just self-dissolving. Reshifting onto the logic of love requires the
language that makes it communicable.
FoYr: Fuck Barbed Wire
We walk through the shadows encircled with barbed wire. We see the cameras all around us. We
look--alert, yet not alarmed--in order to penetrate the realms behind surfaces. Find the world
beneath. Different world. Our walk is insecure. Our muscles shiver. Our mouths are dry. We no
longer have a clear idea of what kind of look at the realities will and which will not be tolerated.
We are scared. We hear languages that we don’t understand. See deceitful mirror images. Hear
deceptive stories. Even when told in languages whose syntax we know, whose morphology we
also know, phonetics and semantics alike, but whose phonology is not entirely within the grasp
of our linguistic potentials.
Our bodies are exhausted. We’ve been running for such a long time. We are hungry and no food
seems to be in sight. The landscape is barren. No berries to pick up, no wellspring to water one’s
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mouth. No clearing in the desertlike country. Hilly formations are turning into buildings as one’s
dessert-induced blindness is fading away, as the images are becoming not what they are not. As
the dry, cracked, wounded paths and thirsty earth are being irrigated and sending the liquid
supply to the surrounding. To the remote parts of the landscape. Other scenery.
Where the walk might still be troubled. Where the step might still be heavy. Where the warmth
of sunshine cannot be felt as it spreads and is spilling over the tortured bodies. Crawling through
the desert, mouth smeared with sand, mistakenly attempted to be taken instead of water during
those long, monstrous hallucinatory hours.
Hours flow. So does water. So do thoughts. Thoughts about dryness, thoughts about how mind
works when no liquid is available. How the self-mobilizing generator of stashed fuel is being
reinvigorated as it is propagating energy nutrients. How it triggers the sources invisible from the
surface, perhaps previously unknown, but found and set in motion: quiet uprising of the thought.
The thought about the desert, the thought about the thirst, the thought about hunger, the thought
about all the ideas that can be gotten from the stories told in languages whose syntax one knows,
whose morphology one knows, phonetics and semantics alike, but whose phonology is not only
out of the grasp of one’s linguistic potentials, but constitutes a very clearly defined territory for
which one’s storytelling detector shows no inclination whatsoever.
TherefoYr, barbed wire: Hello! Who can tell barbed wire from spaghetti? Who can tell the
difference between sand and dust? Who can make a distinction between water and wine? Who
can tell the register in which the story is told and, by so doing, identify the subtonic message?
Who can disclose the fact that some stories, despite being very quiet, know no subtonic hi-fi?
Who can say that the fact that some are loud doesn’t speak about the vitality slightly different
from what passes for the fuel enabling them? Who can generate gentleness of the breeze that will
sooth the afflicted, dry skin. Who can write the story in the language understandable to the selfmobilizing generator of the fuel and the flow.
5. How One Learns
Thinking about childhood, an adult might be prone to see one’s current habits as a consequence
of a peculiar need for protection. The sense of vulnerability is perhaps among the intensities that
can easily make one believe that certain type of conduct is sought in order to sustain the very
oscillations between fear and safety.
We are moving through unknown lands. Our steps are insecure. As we are moving, we know that
there is noise obstructing the walk. We are not always sure were noise comes from. We know
that it is not always an audio sensation. We have been through many noisy situations. Seen
numberless examples of the sabotage in question. We bear witness to the most brutal violation of
stories. We can tell when rhetoric is being imposed to pass for something it is not. And yet, this
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by no means is to claim the power to prevent anyone from exercising such communicational
persuasion. It is more than obvious that freedom of interpretation can result in misuse of the very
terms. Consequently, it can affect the perception of words in the way that makes abuse a
euphemism of the highest order.
Woke up and felt sick all morning. Thought I might go and make a doctor’s appointment.
Decided against. Felt too sick to go. To sick to think. To fucked up to care how it felt. Realized
some tea could do me good. Hesitated. Muscles too limp to move. Limbs too disinterested for
reintegration. Head too heavy to engage in focusing on how long to steep the tea bag. Herbs
always did it for me. Knew it would be the same now. Still, couldn’t bother to try. Wondered
why. For a second thought masochism could be the infatuation governing the situation. Thought
just for that fucking second. Gave it up. Couldn’t move despite the awareness. Thought laziness
was stronger than the desire to get rid of the fucking sickness. Too lazy to believe that shit. Felt
like crying. Thought why. Felt lonely. Thought thinking about it made me feel lonely. To fuck
with loneliness.
Although it may sometimes have nothing to do with words, rhetoric is noise. As one is becoming
persuaded in the multitude of the ways to obstruct flow in the communication channel, one
realizes that just as symbolic is being disturbed, so can such an act be exposed in the entirety of
its distastefulness. Furthermore, its sorry attempt to pass for something it is not can also be
disclosed. Needless to say, it suffices to make it an instance of self-aggrandizing, but also selfannihilating linguistic acrobatic of a cannibalist kind. Its versatility is fascinating. And so is its
skillfulness. Perhaps for those who haven’t seen anything else.
Thought thoughts of feeling fucked up would leave me if warm liquid melts the paralyzing
anxiety. Didn’t feel thrilled. Thought if so unappealing was also the thought of getting rid of
loneliness. Decided it didn’t matter. It was the very perseverance in the indulgence that was
indulgence itself. And it made the perseverance ever more persistent. Thought sadomasochism
could be at stake. Decided against. Clear as fuck: the preservation of the very sensation was the
key parameter in the whole experience. To fuck with imposed labels.
Abusive rhetoric in nihilo-cannibalist culture assaulted words by the very effort to deviate them
to the point of grotesque divergence from the source at which it takes a lot of time and energy to
detect it. Sometimes, the distorted meaning features such mimicry of playfulness that it can
hardly be identified as sheer exhibition of combining learned patterns to the point when in the
communication channel the flow gets so heavily obstructed that the only way to comprehend that
it is merely a manifestation of the society of buzzers is to actually look at what kind of living
environment it creates. One of the most striking impressions is how it affects education. More
precisely, it seriously threatened and almost squeezed out the academic discipline called cultural
studies. Having traditionally been delineated by the four cultural categories, cultural studies has
been reduced to only one due to nihilo-cannibalist rhetoric. In particular, gender, ethnicity, and
race have been taken up by the very prevalent one—class. Now, class has evolved into a miracle
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of a sort. Not only has it been the most peculiar hybrid among the categories to start with, but it
has been so daringly demonstrating its reckless inconsistency that it tricks even itself. To say that
its hybrid nature results from its relentless oscillations from biological, via sociological
determinism, to cultural constructs and other kinds of conditioning is only to realize that it no
longer cares how it oscillates. Not because everybody decided they were born well off. Neither
because all became communists. Rather because how much money per hour one can make
became the ultimate fantasy of humanity. Or, so a firm belief in the logic of the market has it.
After the tea soothed the harshness of the nauseating weakness, the feeling of not being
vulnerable felt alienatingly dissoluble. Thought all mornings should be an extended sensation of
latent torture. Thought that seeking that moment of the herbal power lifting the torment is what
evokes experiences that confirm the existence of the need to be protected and, by extension,
there still being something unadulterated that an adult can scarcely reach within oneself, be it not
for such mornings. Worthy of resuming as the feeling might be, it should not confusedly be
equated with the reason for unquestionably adhering to a habit ensuring a continuous invocation
of vulnerability as the gateway to being relieved of it. Because there are other childhood
experiences. Vulnerability is certainly not all what childhood is about. There are other sensations
so carefully treasured that no vulnerability is necessary to make them more vivacious than they
are.
I wish I knew more combinations of words to invoke such moments. I wish I could still believe
that all the memories of the past are but a reminder of a shameful succession of unenticing,
uninspiring moments leading to even less impressive experiences that by very virtue of its
insipidness proved incommensurable with any possible candidate for a comparison.
6. Syntax Like Rhetoric
Tiny, grain-like portions are flowing slowly, swerving as they reach each other. Like sand
playing with the salt the sea splashes it with, those minute currents speak the language of
movement. They move slowly. To the rhythm unheard. To the rhythm known. Like something
they knew from before. Something that initiates the sway. Something that constitutes the
dynamic of those miniscule formations. They are being carried. But they also carry the flux.
Now, it’s burgeoning as its inside bubbles are creating a new direction, a new shape.
The particles are slowly diverting. Each of them pulling towards itself a swarm of other particles.
Together they dance! And then, all of a sudden, they stop. As if they didn't know they’d been
conjuring up a ballet narrative under the patient microscopic eye:
It used to be science back in the day. Now, they do it differently. How is beyond my modest
research skills.
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There is a store that defies the notion of a store. It is an anti-store. At least, that’s how it looks to
me. Because it is designed contrary to popular consumer logic. It does not entice hunger for
purchasing. Not in the way typical stores do. Its aesthetic is not how one imagines something
intended to appeal to customers anxious to spend, spend, spend. It is entirely unornamented. Neat
as a pharmacy. No ads. No glitter. No sales. Only clean surfaces displaying the merchandise.
Electronic price tags next to the product. Takes one a second or two to figure out which is which:
the product and the tag. Takes a couple of seconds more to be fully aware that in such a store
people buy stuff despite the unlikely unappeal. Doesn't take much longer to realize that even if
all pharmacies looked like anti-stores, one wouldn't call it a consumer aesthetic. In no time one
decides not to purchase:
It is the look of stores now. Back then, they used to do it differently. Why exceeds my guessing
potentials.
I didn't buy presents for myself when I was a kid. Not unlike many other kids, I guess.
Nevertheless, I took an immense pleasure in every opportunity to be given a dress, shoes, coat,
schoolbag, stuff of all sorts. I still like the memory of those moments. Not unlike many other
adults thinking about childhood. I would hope. I would also imagine that a characteristic
confusion of chronological categories and experiences in time occurs in many such reminisces.
Thus, many have a sense of the times bygone being more in tune with the needs, desires,
inclinations, wishes, and / or aspirations of the person in question. And yet, the person fails to
see that the impression results from the very person’s being that same person, only years or
decades ago when desires, wishes, aspirations, inclinations, and/or needs were slightly different,
too. Kid’s stuff. Like fuck:
More often than not, critical reading of history is nothing but distasteful, self-indulgent
intellectual virtuosity failing to acknowledge the importance of living the pertinent aspect of the
lesson.
One has always been moving through the lands. Known and unknown alike. Periods of
aggressively contagious buzz is not a new experience, but that fact doesn't make the situation
desirable. There are languages comprehendible and those much less so. All languages are
language solely in the service of itself. Or, so syntax has it. Untrustworthy syntax. Kin to
rhetoric.
Living in an illusion of its misconceived chameleonic perfection. To put in words a more precise
specification of such a delusion is to contaminate the communication channel with ever more
lousy attempts to say what eludes verbalization. To agonize over it is to proliferate more failure.
To know that is to know what a pharmacy is what a store is what a need is what a kid is what a
person is what a tag is what a product is what buying is what knowing is what chronology is
what fucking past is what is now what the future is what soft is what crystalline is what clear is
what imagination is what thought is what is what! To fuck: yes. To fuck: no.
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Sometimes, I think I wish I could see the same specimen every time I look through the
microscope. Before the thought even starts to excite me, I know it’s a silly thing to wish. So, I
don’t. At the same time, I’m pretty sure I have no interest in being exposed to the same site over
and over again. But then, makes no sense bothering, since the tiny portions, albeit slowly, are,
nevertheless, moving. I wish I was the specimen. I wish I was the scientist. Either would make
all these assumptions more sensible.
Are you castrated?
How do you feel?
Potent.
Then you probably are.
Fuck off!
Am I potent?
How do you feel?
Fuck off!
How do you feel?
Fuck off!
There used to be a thought of memory of the days when all one could do was imagine in order to
feel lovable. A raindrop dripping from the cloud. Like a droplet touches a leaf. Melting like a
shower merges with the ocean. Like noise dissolves as one learns.
They say the world has changed. But, has it ever been different? For me, it definitely did.
Because of the freshness of the unlikely summer. The summer after which I've been thinking the
world in terms of the twilight disguised in the colors of the dawn disguised in the shade of the
unknown season which made me question that reciprocity. But I still don’t know how to get rid
of the impossible desire.
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7. Walks n Streets
The streets I once walked I walked again. Time passed. I walked those streets again. I wasn’t
unhappy, but not happy either. I knew some intersections well. Some I found as I walked. I liked
the walk. I liked the buildings. I liked how I felt and I didn’t. I learned how to walk the known
streets with a new pair of eyes, with thoughts to shower the site with. It wasn’t exciting and I
liked it. I thought I unlearned how to associate the thoughts from previous walks to the known
streets of new walks. I did and I didn’t. I liked it and I liked it.
The streets I knew reasonably well looked different, of course. Not because I wanted to see them
differently, but because I walked differently. I liked it and I didn’t. The streets were flowing into
each other like a film creates an impression of indiscrete moments merged into a flow. One of
the streets like a hall leading into a room adjacent to another room with no particular logic
overarching the connectivity. Like hastily thrown pieces of space, scattered to form a place or
something. The last in the sequence of the rooms—a bathroom. Before it a room. A door in each
wall. Questionable windows. Not much light. They say it’s a bedroom. Looks like a degagement.
Who cares if its rentable.
Into the other hazy flow of space separated by walls. Small windows, scarce daylight, dependent
on how much of it the other rooms allow. Rich in its multiangular layout. Walls know no
acoustics. Architecture knows no architects. A long vestibule tired of its wretchedness. Mold
flourishes from the threshold. Piles of paper pour out from the corners. Years layered in an
unknown manner over the everlasting desire to rent, rent, rent.
Trains are full of wrinkled clothes, wet hair, make up being applied while negotiating
movements, adjusting to the dynamic of the vehicle, sockless feet indifferent to moisture,
indifferent to cold, indifferent to warmth. Flip-flops against climate variants. Eating out against
tradition. Rented rooms against mortgage. Against the idea of the nest. Like fuck!
I like my walk, but I don’t know how to like it. My walk is restrained partly because I make it so,
partly because it just is. I complain about it and I don’t. I wish I could like it differently, but I
can’t. Because I like what the steps do to my thoughts. The steps that make me dry my hair and
not apply make up on the train, wear my shoes, and feel cold when it’s cold, warm when it’s
warm. Hypersensitized to stimuli, they say. Perhaps hypersensitivity is a way of resisting them.
Not in a strictly causal way these are related to each other. I don’t know exactly how they are
related. But I know I didn’t unlearn how not to like romanticized versions of what a walk is, and
yet, also not to be averse to tired, insecure micromovements. I don’t think I will ever be able to
understand how I can be sensitized to such a mystery. I don’t even think I want to. My only wish
is to learn how to like my walk.
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8. Our Walks
As we walk, we sometimes feel as if the valleys were corridors. Through such corridors we walk
cautiously. Our steps are indecisive. Because we don’t know how to read the walls of the
corridors. Our insecure movements are also conditioned by what we were told about the legacy
of the grooviologist stories being distributed in the fashion much like how we sometimes
imagine conversation between and amongst some people: as murky whirlwinds. But then, we
remember that the air moves in mysterious ways: there is a current that no smog can obscure;
there is a temperature immeasurable in terms of the hot/cold dichotomy.
Ah, epistemology…
As we walk, we sometimes feel as if the unknown territories were a reflection of what we were
taught bonding was. We know the legacy of conjuring up countersymbolics and we know that
postcoital-depressive-manic-phobia is nothing but a distorted version of the stigmatized,
blasphemous inclination towards an unstoppable impetus to the affinities for certain individuals,
contrary to the demand imposed by common wisdom “revealing” the facts behind such
behavioral patterns to be: sustaining liking of the kind is limiting, causes the state of dependency,
and is deceptive since it disables free choices, free communication, and free persons. But then,
we remember that the key word within the rule #1 is fuckin cuddling: thus, we persistently
behave contrary to the ruling rhetoric of morality whose exemplary epitomes of successful
adoption of ethical patterns are streets that we won’t recognize!
Then you told me something. And I didn’t know it was you.
As we walk, sometimes we feel as if the murky whirlwinds were buildings, squares, viaducts.
Such urban spaces are like channels through which city scenes flow: they feature tons of smoke
being evaporated from denizens’ mouths, as if the whole city were a postindustrialist dream;
muscles and tendons melting with the smell of the dripping glass from the windows while the
summer nights are devouring scorching days, as if the city didn’t know seasons; mucus, vomit,
and feces pouring out from gutters and are used instead of butter, jam, and/or marmalade
available at gutter stations on every corner providing the denizens in need; as if the whole city
didn’t know what spread proper was. But then, we remember that once, when what is now was
what will have been, rain equaled sweet fruit and freedom from everything, but not for anything:
just as it equals now, when what once was the future became the present.
As I was walking, my cap was a reminder of how my steps were reintegrating me good self. Mist
on my face, like the stories I never told you.
We experience scarcity of greenery and we realize that the very scarcity is the reason the valleys
feel like corridors. As if the communication murky whirlwinds cannot feel like oxy-factories. As
if the whole city cannot reduce the production of paper and other office supplies. The production
of paper seems to be a priority on the agenda of many. Many, however, find it being a priority on
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the agenda of many not to be of particular relevance for their own. What is more, they don’t
think there is anything erroneous with the fact that it concerns them not much more than the
cookie/biscuit nexus would affect one’s granny’s syntax, whose unshakable rule for the
composition of a valid sentence is that it must contain the word dodgy, whose meaning oscillates
depending on the words combined with it. Vøila! But then, one knows that just because some
don’t think certain things are significant, it does not mean they should be credited for having the
clearest of understandings of the notion of importance. Or paper. / Or syntax. / Or no-lo-gy-pho. /
Or notebook. / Or buying. / Or lace . / Or semi-sec-brut-semi-sweet.
One is prone to think that the reason for stories both being told and not being told is that one
knows no synonym for the word dapoltri! Manufactured confusion does not mean that one does
not know one’s interlocutors and what genuine exchange is. Ill-managed desires by no means
require vehement measures for their melioration; they only require more thinking.
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