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| Igor
Rajki
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| An
Organised Visit To Private Torture Chambers
I was at the end of a comfortable nap, so the contents of my own
spirit were still unintelligible; and there was no first sentence
with which to recognise and reconstruct it.
There was no other away. I had to to accept ratio, so I snapped
out of sleeping. I found myself at the desk in the room, before
the computer?s interface, and I instantly felt better. The only
thing I could grasp from the nap was the fact that I had dreamt
the person of my life. Unclear, but enchanting dream. The only thing
I know about her for certain is her profile. She looks like: $.
But to all essay writers, pleasant dreams are of short term.
I stretched: the fog of symbols had to be overcome, to attend to
the humdrum: National Literature In Europe At The End Of The Millennium.
I let out a piercing whistle! My allegorical father, reacting to
the sound signal, quickly entered the room. With the trained routine
of the area with no democratic spirit, narrow-mindedness, quarrels
and mutual accusations, he deftly tied me before the computer. He
loved to justify the torture of those thinking differently by inherited
illusion of his own perfection, while constantly looking for reasons
for other?s shortcomings. Looking for fault is the local motto.
Ergo, he stared at me. The signifier in him was imperatively merciless:
?Confess!??flowed from him. Self-torture and breakdown of communication
was ready to begin, for the umpteenth time.
I squinted at the force of his look and thought how, once, Austrian
author P. Handke called the syntagm ?Central Europe? a metheorological
term. That was before the decade of storms, gales and disruptions.
It was meant, I suppose, in a supranational sense. But now when
the nations have their new maps and new languages, and have multiplied
so, through changes almost as fast as those you seee on weather
reports, it seems that a closer look at earthly events is required.
Staring at the sky without producing prognoses means escaping.
Still, after ?winds of change?, ther?s good news and there?s bad
news. Metaphores depend on the climate, and the good news is we
can always lok for some new ones.
Father wasn?t satisfied. I know, I squirmed in the chair, such are
message recipients with the critique instincts of the area. They
want things appropriate for their own vision; they prefer enjoying
yearnings than achievements. They have a greater tendency towards
pretentions than towards facts. They object because so much irreality
asks for entertainers only.
That made him angry. He got crazy and waved his arms around my head.
I prepared myself for the next possible blow. I had a hunch about
it: insidious, low, carthesianic.
I gritted my teeth with the thought that, since the age of enlightenment,
body and mind have been completely separated. This made their survival
possible, but at the same time narrowed them down, similar to nations.
How can one be patient enough to perceive and distinguish their
paradoxes? The example is old and simple: ?it is a sunny Summer
noon in Europe!? Take that as a thought and we?ll all feel cheered.
But it is deductive, political thinking. It is better to look into
details. On a sunny day in Europe, the Mediterraneans withdraw into
their houses, leaving the streets, and rest behind closed windows.
It?s unbearably hot, hard to breathe, circulation slows down, while,
at the same time, in that same Europe, Scandinavians fill their
parks and lie down onto still-wet grass to catch the comfortable
moments of blessful warmth.
If we have successfully grasped the differentiation example, just
like body and nation, we have remained within tradition. The real
question is whether it is capable, after allowing closeness, to
accept the interweaving of our tastes painlessly?
My father reached for me in a Frankenstein manner. I had no place
left to go. I screamed in my mind that tastes are not discussed,
adding that the antique thought must have been introduced by someone
who understood the essence of hiding the real problem.
The only thing we can discuss is taste. That?s where everything
is available. It?s a matter of spirit. Taste is our morals, taste
is music, choice or prescription of literature. Taste is the choice
of language we will use only to satisfy someone?s taste in communication.
Acceptance and refusal are matters of taste, as is the possibility
to change one?s name (once a sacred and immutable concept), then
the choice of history and of wishes.
It is up to us to find a way to control ourselves, so as to avoid
others doing it to us. Although, I feel it more and more, to control
is merely a synonim for knowing how to pretend. A matter of refined
taste.
Father had had enough. Red in the face, he turned to the computer
and reached for the Internet. Provoking through subtle torture methods,
without even looking at me.
I grew horrified. I had no alternative but to think that all that
is young in ideologies sounds attractive and tempts: early christianity,
early taoism, early communicsm, even early internet. But, personally,
I?m area-infected, so everything coming from military electronic
invention seems suspicious. Besides, I?m subjective towards words,
because I trust them doggedly. I am not attracted by notions included
in the inter-net. The net includes the notion of capture. I don?t
much care for being prey.
It surpasses space and speeds up time, so that categories defined
by our bodies cease to matter. Besides, the word globalisation in
our language includes the term globa, fine.
A project of togetherness and inter-connectedness, immanent in its
conception, has, to my mind, been completed long ago, with no electronics.
As I recall, it is called the Bible. And its wordly prothesis today
asks for no faith, but necessity.
Father leaned over me powerlessly, still all in the extasy of torture.
I blew with contempt. Not easy to break me.
I kept a look full of pride.
Besides, I didn?t want to admit to him that I?m afraid at all, or
think that the future of small nations? literature will be reduced
to that something, like dialectal prose and poetry, hidden in themselves:
an exotic rememberance of the pure sound in which we no longer feel
the content invigorating it. And that is the death of spirit. What
remains is the body producing it. Still, as comfort, in the beginning
of the world mythology, it is written that sound is the breath of
the cosmic essence.
I felt utter exhaution and gave a sign to my father to set me free.
He did it quickly and adeptly, then promptly fell to his knees and
covered his head with his arms in fear. He thought, as always, that
I would get even. Unclear conscisences are always frightened of
their own methods.
But I was too tired for revenge. I had a hidden agenda: in that
way, I left the impression of tolerance. I turned off the computer,
gave my father a sign he could withdraw and lowered my head to the
desk. Exhausted, I wanted to go back to my worldless dream. There,
I hoped, she would still be waiting: $.
The millennial mantra of om will do as a break in thoughts and a
gentle introduction into a releasing nap. Anyway, it?s not for no
reason that Om, I cheer myself napcatching, is the international
unit for electrical resistance.
I give myself over to dreaming. To the yearned-for person of my
life.
I?m lucky. I see her at the very beginning of the dream. Although
still vague, I get excited; she turns to me; and I face her: (W)!
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