Ариведерчи

to protect Her from herself against Her will, to the detriment of myself. this is what I want to do, but I don't know how.
I curse the world's energy, somebody's got to help Her. please.

life without poetry

what I can learn from Peter Handke as a poet, being a writing person, which I consider myself to be, after all, is using everyday life as a material for work; a fabric for artistic processing. he's not the kind of guy who will go to the fields at night-time with a butterfly net, he won't wait for the rising tide or the southern wind. he just looks at things, observes them carefully, considering the structure of simple events, common constellations, and then highlights their nature with the help of cautiously selected words.
I was always interested rather in the Schulzean parallel narration, the elusive beyond any measurement. the elements of natural world as events, subtle emotions as determinants of human fate. but when I was reading Handke's poems, it occurred to me that if energy focused so efficiently around the core of a given phenomenon that it actually came to being in the real, literal world, it might deserve my attention juat as well. things I call mine; groups I identify myself with; how my identity is expressed in my language code – in the end this is the subject of my studies, of my B.A. thesis in particular. and Handke makes poetry out of it.
Leben ohne Poesie, that's the name of the collection. and at times I get frightened by the austerity, rigid analytical character of the poems. conveying a childhood memory with the use of a mathematical formula makes me want to cuddle in The Street of Crocodiles like in an old blanket, that is, to run away to my homeland.
but at the same time I get a sense of the poet's moral courage to accept life's rough surface and to face it. I'm not sayng that Schulzean gardens are easy. there is a quality to them, for which you have to turn aside from the main road, turn time and space upside down; this is the new, the other one. reality super plus. and Handke is like moving deeply, but always on one level only, the cognition level zero. I bet it takes a lot of effort to see the worn out everyday life anew and to describe it with such an awful attention and accuracy.
at the same time I have an overwhelming feeling that what I'm reading was written by a very, very sad man.

and I think to myself

when I drink my first coffee around 2 p.m., I open my eyes and I see August in its bloom. I see how it settles low, already slightly tired, swollen, more and more quiet. what is disappointment and grief inside of me, hides in deep shadow, only single sad reflections remain on the surface of consciousness. and I'm puzzled by the quality of this world, or maybe life: austerity combined with abundance. yin yang. mystery.
I think about the beautiful face of my mother. and I think about how I've easily fallen in love with women recently. how I suddenly felt the need to have lasting relationships, how I've grown out of my deep eternal family home and am quite desperately looking for a new micro-world. how naïve I can get when I let myself fall for women only because there's a shade of hope for the settlement. even if the lack of chances gives me in my face.
for a while, I manage to think about it all without bitterness or blown up sentiments. I stick to it because serenity is fine and it is advisable.
on the soundproof screens along the highway there is a gigantic sun painted with a blue word WIR underneath. a most desired word, everybody wants to be a part of it. at least I do.

change your evil ways

Italy. Warm August sun. Overblown trees send pollen fly. People with their tendency to turn each other's emotions into some fuckery seem totally inappropriate in the esthetics.

"I clasp your hand and everything fades away"

It's all because I always wanted things to happen on a grand scale. I don't like moderation, I feel with it like She did when she woke up in the middle of the night, unable to lie or sit still, with a distinct need to walk, jump or run. To act. The average doesn't satisfy me. It's boring and it only highlights what distinguishes what the extreme is about.
That's why I wanted Her so much.* She knows no limits, it's not even that She lives on the very border, She simply jumps over it and rushes ahead. Aren't you afraid of anything? Her immediate response was a no. Then She added some sensible exception in fine print, but in principle, no, She's not afraid. After all, there's nothing larger than life that could happen to Her. Her body already has so many scars that there's probably nothing that could be of a surprise to Her.
The way I live is following the path given. I'm set up, living off my daddy. And She excites me, tantalizes me. She was born free and that's how She's gonna be ever after. Even behind bars.
In fact, She might be the first really free human being I've ever met.

Meanwhile, it's raining down here and we don't go hiking. I'm kind of happy with it as I still feel somewhat damaged and I don't really aspire to fight with my urban ass up there in the mountains. Instead, we went for a walk in the town of Oetz today. I felt a relief when I saw that behind the first ring of bulky Tirol landhauses there are some jaunty modern houses inspired by the Italian style taken from right behind the border. Noncommittal, that's how the buildings are, light, momentary. Why fuck about the values when it hurts and you don't know what's gonna come next, because people I wanted and people who caused pain to me are the very same persons. I don't see the point of making a stand against that shit. Sex and wine seem a much brighter philosophy to me.

I listen to Zemfira, whose music is finally mine, I mean, it's objectively zemifra-esque, not: magda-esque. And it's gorgeous.

O. has the revelations of her own, she writes to me a lot. It seems like she's feeding herself with some bad energy, but that's probably the dark side of intelligence – how should I know. Whenever I, quite honestly, assure her I'm always ready to help, I forget I'm not really able to help her. Her standards are just too high for me. Not that she has a whole lot of troubles, because she probably doesn't. She just seems so complete that it's hard to believe I could ever get inside her in an expert's uniform even to change a stupid bulb. She's cute and I can't resist her magic, but I know there's nothing sensible I could do for her.
It's Tuesday today and if She wants it, I'll be in Warsaw exactly in a week. I'll see Her in a week. Thinking of it is like looking into pitch darkness.

*I still do.

can you read me

If it was the Alps, not the Himalaya, what they call the roof of the world, I would go on the top of it and scream to her that she's HURTING ME, till she'd realize it, till something would change.
because I won't be in Poland until next Sunday and I have no idea what to do with the pain and insecurity all this time.
it's O.'s birthday today, but since O. is O., she spends it on the phone, boosting my self-esteem. yet I need evidence to believe in things. and facts contradict O.'s words.

I had a feeling She might do it all. I knew She's done it before to other women. funny how you always believe a miracle to happen exactly when you need it. it didn't happen. I feel like I'm dragging some broken part of me along. I still don't understand how She could do it to me.

zamykam oczy

to escape to some other space-time I watch my photos. seaside from two years ago. Germany from autumn and winter. I'm finishing off with today's shots: glaciers and waterfalls. the author of the photos always remembers not only what's in the frame, but also the aura of the particular day. and today hurts. so it was good to see this day right next to the past. it's like taking a three meter distance from it. taking a breath.

that women should deceive me and hurt me in their immature uncertainty has almost become tradition in my life. I'm fighting for it, but it might be that it's against her. maybe I'll get back only to discover that I've become past to her. O. is on alert, like she's always been. on the phone night and day. yet there's nothing that can be done. my ass is being kicked masterfully once again. it's a fact.
sleep deprivation, obsession, a lot of tears. I met her exactly three months ago for the first time.
why does it all keep on happening when I close my eyes?

Take Me

there's a thin woman sitting on a swing, selling sad stories. she is chain smoking, her eyebrows at an acute angle. poor colors saturation, deep gloom. things have long fallen behind their own gigantic shadows. we want to fly to the outer space and break through the wall, but our city is sinking. our spectacular Venice, desperate fireworks, a great parade, a crowd of people with malformed masks on carries their tiny terrified hearts in their hands. each person hides some heartbreaking secret deep inside them and it is what renders them humans. the only thing.
slow hours measured by the rusted swing. the woman has stopped in mid-air between immense possibilities of childhood and adulthood that ends on this estate forever. you need a lot of bottles everyday to force your calendar through the next quarter. somehow.
in her one-room apartment the woman keeps a lot of tapes with music. she takes them off the spools, stretches them under the ceiling like a washing string and hangs on them photographs of dirty wall plaster and pieces of sun on the pavement. there are also cats' tales, butt-ends and chimneys that pump all the shit from beneath the roofs into the world.
the swing is a perpetual motion machine, the women puts no effort in moving it, in fact she could be dead and the squeaking wouldn't lose its rhythm. yet she's still alive, her knees are bruised after the funny fights she had with her mates. she tells her stories in a monotonous nasal voice, she doesn't care and it's women like her that you want most, because once she starts to care, it's already like eternity to you.

we've grown older, we don't dream about the outer space anymore and we protect the walls against erosion. we go to the woman who sells her stories and we go to women who sell love, and we drink even more than we used to, and it's still the crossbar we hardly manage to touch with the tips of our stretched fingers.
the woman on the swing will get old and she will stretch thyme and lavender under the ceiling, and she will know that our sense of fatal last resort is going to be repeated many times, not only in this city, not only in our lifetime.
but before this comes, I drink as if it was the last time and I make love to you as if it was the first time.
maybe it's the only way, although you'll eventually leave me, too, and I'm gonna lie in my own puke and keep ringing my mother.
a thin woman on a swing, cigarette smoke, rising tide, low tide. red, hot blood. the outer space is no longer among things we believe in. I make love to you as if it was the last time.
squeaking pendulum, deep gloom, there’s no outer space, I make love to you, you'll leave me, too.
chain smoking, there and back, bruised knees, I make love to you.
the outer space is long gone.

.

Sun and beer have made me lose my mind.

"there's no heaven"

so Austria is marked with loneliness. I spend so much time thinking with fear about the time that will dispel everything I cherish between us that I guess it will eventually have to come true. I try to ward the bad predictions off, but her silence only bolts the door, I can't go back, it's all grown quiet and empty. it's been only four days without her and I'm already confused, because my senses have forgotten everything they had experienced before.
so Austria is like an open-air museum. now I know I like Germany better. it has more guts, which makes it more real. I can't think clearly in a town of dolls' houses. elaborate grooves in the facades of every building and cafés perfect in every detail bear some insincerity, this is not life. what about life? – what life? it's only a broken line on the hand. – and God? – there is no God. there are only crosses by the roads. I'm from Poland.

the forest is humid and deep, the rhythm of my feet puts me easily in trance. yet I get annoyed just as quickly, somewhere deep inside me I keep on waiting for a word from her that would calm me down and give me hope.

since poetry is like a cup of espresso which invigorates mind, I grabbed Handke, but it's, well, Leben ohne Poesie. bitter chaos. so hard to believe he's Austrian.
Austria, what kind of word is that at all? Russia is a tempting severity (not to use the austerity word...), like in the Moscow letters from B.; a country that makes you apprehensive and yet fascinates you. Slovakia, graceful Slavism. Czech Republic, bawdy, likeable. it's all in every word. even Greece is pure dust and thick-leafed olive trees. but Austria? there's totally nothing behind the word. it discloses nothing. it's transparent.
these perfect indoors, the streets like taken from a dream of a conservative urban visual artist... it's impressive with its unearthliness for the first thirty minutes you see it. but sooner or later you'll get troubled by the lack of human nature which is not perfect – and the dream, well, it's not even close to it. these sweet decorations, these blissful corners are soulless.
so I felt somewhat satisfied when I heard the restaurant chansonnier singing about some tender romance for the guests and their Wiener Schnitzel. it was like kitsch and junk sticking from beneath traditional Tirol outfit, the Austrian kind of disco dance.
poor pale Austria, I take my sudden loneliness out on this sweet little country. O. writes I should pull myself together and stop blaming those who rode all the 1,200 km to get here with me and try to make use of what I have instead. so I tried today in the morning. I managed to make it half way through my breakfast.

I wanted her so much not to lose me.
I wanted to continue with what we had so much, in spite of how absurd the idea was.
our five days together were five gigantic steps forward. and now she's not there for me.

Handke won't help tonight. maybe only a few pages from Katharina Hagena and a long night sleep.
Heaven? there's no heaven! there's a gap between the skyscrapers. what about heart? it's not heart, it's only a piece of flesh.

"only this water..."

and I'm only begging for it not to end. and each time I'm gonna ask for one step further, I'm gonna promise this time my hunger will be satisfied, though it's so not true, not true.
the truth is that I fear there won't be enough speed and patience. that routine will eat away all the bliss. that lack and absence will once again sit back with their whale bodies, taking all our time and thought.
and you seem so distant, it makes me feel there's no point walking or talking at all. I choose the hibernation mode. perception kept at a minimum. I keep my hands down, but with my fingers crossed. for us.