What a lack of imagination it is to have official first names and surnames. No one ever remembers them, they’re so divorced from the Person, and so banal that they don’t remind us of them at all.
I believe each of us sees the other Person in our own way, so we should give them the name we consider suitable and fitting. Thus we are polyonymous. We have as many names as the number of people with whom we interact. My name for Świerszczyński is Oddball, and I think it reflects his Attributes well.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t choose a suitable name for myself. I regard the one that’s written on my identity card as scandalously wrong and unfair—Janina. I think my real name is Emilia, or Joanna. Sometimes I think it’s something like Irmtrud too. Or Bellona. Or Medea.
When you’re such close neighbors, you don’t need names to address each other. Whenever I see him weeding his small garden as I’m passing by, I don’t need his name to speak to him. It’s a special degree of familiarity.
Here the sky hangs over us dark and low, like a dirty screen, on which the clouds are fighting fierce battles. That’s what our houses are for—to protect us from the sky, otherwise it would pervade the very inside of our bodies, where, like a little ball of glass, our Soul is sitting. If such a thing exists.
But that day at dawn it was hard to demand eloquence of anyone.
For the best conversations are with yourself. At least there’s no risk of a misunderstanding.
cornice of snow had formed that might later tear off a gutter or—
They say there are plans to start it up again, at which point we shall vanish from the face of the Earth, devoured by Machines.
I can still see them. I squint, as a way of blurring their shape and making them disappear. I only do it because I cannot bear their presence. But the truth is that anyone who feels Anger, and does not take action, merely spreads the infection. So says our Blake.
I grew up in a beautiful era, now sadly in the past. In it there was great readiness for change, and a talent for creating revolutionary visions. Nowadays no one still has the courage to think up anything new. All they ever talk about, round the clock, is how things already are, they just keep rolling out the same old ideas. Reality has grown old and gone senile; after all, it is definitely subject to the same laws as every living organism—it ages. Just like the cells of the body, its tiniest components, the senses, succumb to apoptosis.
It must hurt, just as a river must flow and fire must burn. It spitefully reminds me that I consist of physical particles, which are slipping away by the second.
His mixtures had startling colors and shocking smells. Perhaps he believed that the cure for an allergic rash had to be just as spectacular as the rash itself.
I threw on two fleeces and a hat. We both had yellow rubber raincoats, making us look like dwarves.
I was angry with her, for she had died a long time ago, and that’s not how long-gone mothers should behave.
Dizzy is fragile, he has small, girlish hands, and to put it plainly, he’s a bit scatterbrained. I say this with all due love and respect for him. It’s not an imperfection on his part. There are more than enough traits and Characteristics in this world for each of us to be richly endowed, I thought to myself.
Coincidences of this kind are astonishing. I have enough empirical material to write an entire book about it. But for the time being I made do with a short essay, which I sent to several weeklies. I don’t think anyone will publish it, but perhaps someone will Reflect on it.
Winter mornings are made of steel; they have a metallic taste and sharp edges. On a Wednesday in January, at seven in the morning, it’s plain to see that the world was not made for Man, and definitely not for his comfort or pleasure.
So I didn’t say a word. Other people’s life stories are not a topic for debate. One should hear them out, and reciprocate in the same coin.
“A man’s free to do what he wants with his life, until he falls foul of the banks,” Dizzy sermonized with contagious certainty. I think he’d make a superb press spokesman for the Police.
In a sense, houses are living creatures that coexist with Man in exemplary symbiosis.
ventured onto the field boundaries. They went on a daily postprandial
“One has to tell people what to think. There’s no alternative. Otherwise someone else will do it.”
He counted and cataloged the larvae, and wrote down the results in a notebook entitled: “Distribution in the Kłodzko County Forests of selected species of saproxylic beetle, as featured on the lists of annexes II and IV of the European Union Habitat Directive, and proposals for their protection. A project.” I read the title very carefully, which saved me from having to look inside.
Boros’s presence reminded me what it’s like to live with someone. And how very awkward it is. How much it diverts you from your own thoughts and distracts you. How another Person starts to irritate you without actually doing anything annoying, but simply by being there.
How can they possibly sleep in the same bed together, breathing on and jostling each other accidentally in their sleep? I’m not saying it hasn’t happened to me too. For some time I shared my bed with a Catholic, and nothing good came of it.
For people of my age, the places that they truly loved and to which they once belonged are no longer there. The places of their childhood and youth have ceased to exist, the villages where they went on holiday, the parks with uncomfortable benches where their first loves blossomed, the cities, cafés and houses of their past.
It occurred to me that he was a very good Person, this Boros. And it was a good thing he had his Ailments. Being healthy is an insecure state and does not bode well. It’s better to be ill in a quiet way, then at least we know what we’re going to die of.
three years ago I set about repeating Mendel’s experiment with sweet peas; I am now in the middle of it. I notched the petals of the flowers, through five generations in a row (two a year), and then checked to see if the seeds would produce flowers with damaged petals.
“You can’t tell,” said Boros, “if it was mold or adipocere,
The most famous trial took place in France, in 1521. It was the trial of some Rats, which had been causing a lot of destruction. They were summoned to court by the townsfolk and were appointed a public defense counsel, a quick-witted lawyer named Bartolomeo Chassenée.
Such People are bright and intelligent, but don’t apply themselves to their studies, and use their intelligence to play card games or patience instead. They have beautiful bodies, but they destroy them through neglect, poison themselves with harmful substances, and ignore doctors and dentists. This Venus induces a strange kind of laziness—lifetime opportunities are missed, because you overslept, because you didn’t feel like going, because you were late, because you were neglectful.
“Naturally you’ll be at the consecration of the chapel, won’t you?” she said. “I’m not a Catholic.” “It doesn’t matter. We’re all Catholics by culture, whether we like it or not. So please come.” I wasn’t prepared for this particular argument, so I said nothing.
I had written a letter on this matter to the education board in October, but I hadn’t had an answer. I regarded this—like so many things—as scandalous.
aspergillum, dropped his gaze and recited a prayer, then quick as blinking,
“Why do you weep?” he asked in that strange, impersonal priest’s slang, in which they say “trepidation” instead of “fear,” “attend” instead of “take notice,” “enrich” instead of “learn” and so on.
It occurred to me that if there really was a Good God, he should appear now in his true shape, as a Sheep, Cow or Stag, and thunder in a mighty tone, he should roar, and if he could not appear in person, he should send his vicars, his fiery archangels, to put an end to this terrible hypocrisy for once and for all. But of course no one intervened. He never intervenes.
Between the boiler room and the garage there was a small hiding place for the water meters, cables and mops. Every house should have a hiding place like that in case of Persecution and War.
He also brings me newspapers, encouraging me to read them, but they prompt my disgust. Newspapers rely on keeping us in a constant state of anxiety, on diverting our emotions away from the things that really matter to us. Why should I yield to their power and let them tell me what to think?