photo by Σπύρος-Ίωνας Μαρκάτης
How do you tour the hole?
Mr. Query silently wondered. Do you walk with feigned indifference circling the void or does it fascinate you to walk on its burning coals sighing like a firewalker at the carnal scent that hits your nostrils from your burnt soles shortly before the Thing appears… or do you keep a supposedly safe distance?
“For security reasons mind your personal belongings!” says the voice of the metro which measures distances between human beings with the yardstick of fear… They look at one another through frightened eyes and they see something monstrous. Their own glances. Their own abyss reflected in the marshes where the abyss of the Other stagnates…
“How did she feel about books?” he suddenly asked and the startled patient under analysis started on the couch.
“You scared me! I’d never seen her read something to the last page. Halfway through the book, she’d stop reading and toss it away. The book would fall apart, its pages scatter to the floor”.
“How do you explain that?”
“Ehhh, I think she told me one day she identified with them, that’s why she tossed them. They absorbed her and sucked her in at the same time. Come to mention it, I think she was right. She often behaved odd, like a heroine from a novel… yes… why not?”
“Did any book pass the test?”
“Yes… One did, actually… but it wasn’t exactly a book. It was a dictionary”.
“What kind of dictionary?”
“Foreign… I don’t remember… She was obsessed with looking up words and translating them. She knew many languages, but she preferred Spanish. It was a game that relaxed her, but also grounded her firmly, as she said, on the bark of reality”.
What was she trying to name, I wonder? Words-screams between her and reality…
Yes… I’m already between the tree and its bark. But there’s something missing… Can leaves be feathers as well?
While Ezekiel Query was silently wondering, Augustine looked uneasily around him. He couldn’t stand pauses or long silences. They reminded him of his stammer, which seemed to sound off-key in silence. He instantly felt he inhaled oddly, like a suction sucking all his vitality and robbing his body of all forms of energy, even silence… He batted his eyelids. His vision blurred his gaze for a moment and he felt the urge to invade silence with the following phrase:
“After the funeral I went to an old movie … it was called: A great love affair. I cried at the cinema and everyone stared at me. Not because the story was melodramatic… which it was, of course… the lovers never encountered each other… but because I got stuck on a phrase…”
“What phrase?”
“Nothing heavy; it was rather romantic and mushy, but I was deeply moved. The leading actress said:
”‘I’m alone with my memories…’
”I’m also alone, but without memories, memories that tell a story, that constitute the picture of a lifetime. I remember only bits and pieces… like scenes from ‘up fronts’… but without me in them. Apparently I’ve been a viewer only … one of those who watch themselves from the comfort of their armchair moving across reality’s screen. Totally ludicrous and with a silent pain like in the silent movies. I’m scared… I’m scared that, if I drink deeply from the fountain of pleasure, instead of quenching my thirst, I’ll quickly turn into a wolf, a panther or a tiger now that…”
Mr. Query silently wondered. Do you walk with feigned indifference circling the void or does it fascinate you to walk on its burning coals sighing like a firewalker at the carnal scent that hits your nostrils from your burnt soles shortly before the Thing appears… or do you keep a supposedly safe distance?
“For security reasons mind your personal belongings!” says the voice of the metro which measures distances between human beings with the yardstick of fear… They look at one another through frightened eyes and they see something monstrous. Their own glances. Their own abyss reflected in the marshes where the abyss of the Other stagnates…
“How did she feel about books?” he suddenly asked and the startled patient under analysis started on the couch.
“You scared me! I’d never seen her read something to the last page. Halfway through the book, she’d stop reading and toss it away. The book would fall apart, its pages scatter to the floor”.
“How do you explain that?”
“Ehhh, I think she told me one day she identified with them, that’s why she tossed them. They absorbed her and sucked her in at the same time. Come to mention it, I think she was right. She often behaved odd, like a heroine from a novel… yes… why not?”
“Did any book pass the test?”
“Yes… One did, actually… but it wasn’t exactly a book. It was a dictionary”.
“What kind of dictionary?”
“Foreign… I don’t remember… She was obsessed with looking up words and translating them. She knew many languages, but she preferred Spanish. It was a game that relaxed her, but also grounded her firmly, as she said, on the bark of reality”.
What was she trying to name, I wonder? Words-screams between her and reality…
Yes… I’m already between the tree and its bark. But there’s something missing… Can leaves be feathers as well?
While Ezekiel Query was silently wondering, Augustine looked uneasily around him. He couldn’t stand pauses or long silences. They reminded him of his stammer, which seemed to sound off-key in silence. He instantly felt he inhaled oddly, like a suction sucking all his vitality and robbing his body of all forms of energy, even silence… He batted his eyelids. His vision blurred his gaze for a moment and he felt the urge to invade silence with the following phrase:
“After the funeral I went to an old movie … it was called: A great love affair. I cried at the cinema and everyone stared at me. Not because the story was melodramatic… which it was, of course… the lovers never encountered each other… but because I got stuck on a phrase…”
“What phrase?”
“Nothing heavy; it was rather romantic and mushy, but I was deeply moved. The leading actress said:
”‘I’m alone with my memories…’
”I’m also alone, but without memories, memories that tell a story, that constitute the picture of a lifetime. I remember only bits and pieces… like scenes from ‘up fronts’… but without me in them. Apparently I’ve been a viewer only … one of those who watch themselves from the comfort of their armchair moving across reality’s screen. Totally ludicrous and with a silent pain like in the silent movies. I’m scared… I’m scared that, if I drink deeply from the fountain of pleasure, instead of quenching my thirst, I’ll quickly turn into a wolf, a panther or a tiger now that…”
