One-off Summertime

 She would be telling this story to George Noskov, surrounded by empy coca-cola cans. To George, the one she used to call a misogynist, a lunatic, sometimes a dreamer. She will regret all that she said after his death, or rather all the other things that she didn't say. Especially that she would never tell that story to anybody else, because who would like to listen to so ordinary a story, so sad, so elusive that it seems to be untrue. But she doesn't care whether anyone believes it or not, for there is no way to tell it the way it was, with all the smells, the colours, the music it brought, the wind it brings when it comes back. Anyway, it doesn't matter if someone understands it, as there is no more such summer, and it never will be. That one was the only one, a one-off summer in the world, and it has already passed away, not leaving anything which could be picked up by someone else. It was only her who could understand, her and somebody else, another her in another part in the world. You see, once a time, one summer, two girls simultaneously had fallen in love. A blonde and a brunette, born only few weeks apart, only few miles away. For neither of them it was the first time, but all the loves are the only ones in the world for their own summertimes. Years later, only one of them will remember. 

 The feeling which will come along with it will be like a memory of a time loop. She won't be talking about it, as it is not a memory which might fit into today's reality. Only sometimes she will be wondering if it still exists, that bench outside the old bus station in Bristol, if any trace of her memory still sits there, awaiting. 

 The other girl will be getting married. She will change the spelling of her name- it used to sound Russian, now it's just a name. On a picture she will stay just as beautiful and untouched, like experiences had gone past her, not leaving a mark on her shoulder, no trace on her face. She will look happy. 

 Or maybe it is because they have lived so many miles apart for so many years, they both appear to each other just as images, faces from the past, and they cannot relate to each other anymore. Or perhaps for both of them, the summer wind has never stopped, and there will always be parts of them, paused within a loop of one-off summertime. Perhaps.

 The memory will bring them together on one evening, seven years and hundreds miles away. It would be one of them looking for the other, and the second one answering within seconds. Through all these years they have not grown indifferent or unaware of each other, like their souls were right there, waiting outside the loop. In their paused smiles on old photographs, for a moment, they will find a way to resume their one-off summertime, and to be drawn back, like it was all they've been ever waiting for.

 The story is a piece from my new short story, not yet completed, but just a sketch as I am trying to get back on track with writing. Soon I am to start an online creative writing course. Join me in this journey!

A simple ode to my face

 To all those concerned about my recent disappearance, do not worry, I haven't grown narcissist. It's just that I realized that with my online disappearance, there was something else that had disappeared a long time ago, something I have been trying to erase with premeditation. My face. 

 It  came to me as sudden awakening one usual day on the train, after many dazy nights dedicated to study and busy days committed to my both equally important jobs. 

 We have abandoned our faces, let them leave us embarrassed, and we've grown apart from them, like estranged family members. We don't look at them, we don't study them, although they are more ours than anything else, aand they are the last images able to remind us who we are. Our plain selves are not something we want to cultivate, as in comparison with beautiful images surrounding us, we want them to fade, to leave us alone, and stop reminding us of our imperfection. Our faces every morning remind us how unfit we are for the modern market. How do they not comply with the internationally accepted definition of 'the desired', so wanted and so to be chased.

Spookhall

 I have been seeing Spookhall for most of my life. Sometimes, if I get lost in my dream, I suddenly find myself in front of the entrance, and despite the immediate resentment I always end up in there. The Spookhall is not a place like any other. It is actually, a storage for an excess, an exceeding of utility, a gathering of objects imprisoning the sad fatality of material being. It is a storage, in fact, for medical and chemical goods, wastebags, washing liquids and first aid kits, cleaning towels and syntetic powders, hygiene products, sanitary pads, mops, brushes, buckets, shits, suffocating stocks of granola. It makes me feel sick. I want to grab the very first paper roll and stuff myself through my throat. Like I would do everything not to soak through mould of walls of the Spookhall, and what they are bearing for me in my nightmares. 

 There are always the same frosted windows with a blurry vision on disgusting plastic boxes filled with chemistry, and a clock which always stops at five. There is a sound coming from the inside, a monotone, overwhelming tune of a wind lost in a dark. In the town I grew up I heard once a sound like that, coming out of the old meat factory, bringing a choking smell of a slaughtered pig. This is how Spookhall is like.

The Soul in the Rain

Or maybe we should forget it all. Is it worth it? That is the question which is going to be left on us, with all of the heaviness which it bears. It will hold on to our necks in a manner of trying to bring us down, but we will be smiling, however, smiling, like it could never happen, like we were more than just rugs, meaningless frames for the hanging questions.

 I am not depressed. I just forgot to pick up a part of my soul from the doctor’s waiting room. No one noticed. It keeps hanging there as a coat, or a used umbrella, too old, too scarved for anyone to be tempted to take it with them. It stays still, an anonymous passenger of an eternal carriage, a silent witness of your tears, your dreams, your bruises. I am not getting it back anymore. Let me leave it there, without a trace, with its’ mouth shut in a silent protest. Let me leave it next to you. To listen to your breathe.

 Just like I didn’t notice the piece of the moon, on my way back home. If there is any home, for a soul such fragmented. Sometimes I can see the pieces of souls of others. They pass me on the street, trying to hold my shoulder, desperately glaring for more than just an elusive attention. I walk away. I need to follow the steps of the crowd. Such treading does not allow you to stop, neither to move forward. You can only keep treading, path by path, step by step. Behind the crowd. I always recognized these lost bits of human souls, with the rest of a rope on their necks. Seemingly invisible, they stuck their nails in your chest, hungry for life. I often think about my forgotten piece of soul. What is one day it gets bored of sitting there, in a waiting room, and just like all of these pathetic beings desires to walk out on the street. Maybe it will miss something, and decide to give it a chase. Without a head, my poor piece of soul, will be chasing the forgotten, the forgiven, the buried. Miserable creature of mine, will never find what it is looking for, since it has no eyes to see, no heart to lead it. It will pursue the echoes of my past desires, the tears which has already fallen, the dreams which never dared to be dreamed. Maybe one day it will come to you. But you will never know if it is here, a piece of invisible fabric left in the waiting room to never be reclaimed.

 Sometimes I think about this poor piece of soul of mine. But I shall not engage in a search. I need to keep treading the path, path to path, step to step. I need to move forward with the crowd and carry the unanswered question on my neck. There is nothing left on me, but keep treading. 

Endless hours

 Long time ago when I was younger, and I was somewhere else, I liked to sit near by the window. I liked it especially when it was rainy, watching people passing by in a hurry. It was a place like a coffee shop, but not the one you can imagine. It was a tramway of our time, holding you up to stop your time for a while. And if you ever ask me what is the perfect place and the perfect time for me I will draw you this place: a table by the window, next to the front door, with a high seat and a view to the street. Sometimes I think I could just leave my life, only to come back there, with no looking back.

 It was a part of a discussion during a creative writing course I attended, positively surprised afterall, describing the perfect place to write and create. For some reasons, most of the people claimed they needed silence. The absolute one, like early morning in their bed. ''Worst place- one guy wrote- probably a busy coffee shop during peak hours''. And then, my mind took me there. It took my heart back in time. 

 There is this specific kind of people in this world who like to stay near by the window. You can meet us in restaurants and bars as the ones who never go up neither downstairs, no matter how nice is there. We never seek silence. We enjoy the counter with a whole business of it's work and a company of random passengers. We breathe the noise of the street in and feed on it. Until we need it to live. 

 I used to come there often. That is why I see this place so clearly when I close my eyes. It was located in an old city centre about which you can read in the guides that is nowadays almost forgotten. It remains passed by and unnoticed, just like a cat on a courtyard. The entrance to the coffee shop was just a large glass wall and there were two tables located just next to the doorway, with high chairs. There were places for smokers, a bit away from the rest of those inside. Just around the corner there was a bakery run by two older ladies who were making fresh rolls with chocolate or mushrooms inside and a queue outside was long enough to mix up with the people on a bus stop by the next street. Apart from that, nothing. An old library, a second hand bookshop and a silly round building which used to be a symbol of the city- at that time empty, a home for the pigeons. 

The golden nights of the radio

This story has a beginning in the rain. One of my friends recently told me that rain has a special meaning for our senses. Because in the rain, we listen. We don't want to feel neither smell and we rather close our eyes. There is just a calm coming down to our eyelids and the tone in a background, the sound of the rain. This is the moment when time stops, and the radio begins. 

 This exact moment all of a sudden broke the reality on one usual day on a usual gas station somewhere in between nowhere and East Berlin. I was sitting in a car with Pattie, and she had just released her seatbelts to go out. 

- I'll be back in a minute- said she, hastily jumping out of a car. I remained alone, in a cozy box of sedan. The rain was falling above my head, stopping and rumbling on my metal protection of a roof. Then I noticed the radio. It was there waiting for me to allow my mind to sink in muffled tones once I get a chance to stop the time. There were some adverts recommending various medicines for cough and fever, as usually in winter and supplements of a diet for those who continously endure in their personal improvement. Sometimes the adverts were stopping to take a breath and get replaced for a moment by cheesy songs from eighties, so-called 'greates hits'. I was always wondering who is responsible for this choice and who the heck gets paid for composing a 'greatest hits' playlist for a radio. In the age of persistent unemployment, that person is certainly born on Sunday. But then the adverts came back, and back again, and I thought about Mia Farrow, recording a radio advert in Woody Allen's movie. In 'Radio Days' the radio is not really a window to the world. It's a companion. It's a witness of a general activity called life, with all its' upside-downs, all what changes and all what remains, still there, waiting for a moment. You can laugh but there, in the car, I thought that there used to be a time when adverts about cough medicines meant something. Such a thought can change a perspective of miles, and how about a simple reality of a locked car?

 In 'Some Like It Hot' Tony Curtis tells Marylin Monroe that radio is like taking a deaf man to a concert. It took me years to understand what he means, coming back to this scene on and on, even though it was just a cinical line without any deeper conclusions. Today I would say that listening to the radio is like watching only one side of your hand. And so on, watching only one side while forgetting about the second one can be much more exciting.

Confessions from Ines' hairdressing salon

 If you walk for around two minutes from the junction, you will see a printing shop. The next road turns down to a train station. Behind it, there is a park, and literally two turns after my cousin Ines runs her hairdressing salon. Everyone in the town knows this way, even though Ines' salon is not the best, nor the most expensive salon in the neighbourhood. 

 It was just a week ago, when I was passing the junction towards her shop as I used to do often just a couple of years ago. Now, I don't see Ines that often. Not even because I live in another country, but specifically because the reality had grown a wall between us, making our conversations just a shallow weather news exchange. Nevertheless, I was heading to her salon, hoping that Ines will understand how tired I am after a long journey back home and how I don't feel very talkative. Once I pushed the door, I got hit by a sweet smell of hair conditioners, bringing back a relaxing memory of my teenage times. The place was tiny and cozy, with yellow and green walls and posters presenting skinny models with modern and courageous hairstyles no one in the town would never dare to wear. Inside there were only two young students, both around fifteen years old, greeting me with a half respectful, half reserved gaze you can give only to somebody you see for the first time in your life. 

- Good morning- said both of them at the same time, concentrating both pair of eyes on my face. 

- Hey- Ines appeared all of a sudden in the doorway from a back room with a big, welcoming smile. This big smile as well as her plump shape, widening slightly at the level of her belly was a significant feauture of our whole family. -Welcome back home- said she with a tone like we'd just have met a day before. 

- You lost a lot of weight- I smiled back knowing well that this was exactly what she wanted to hear. 

- Oh no!- protested Ines the way she always did.- I am trying so much and nothing works! I joined a gym, tried every diet and still nothing. Well, probably because I don't cycle much these days. The weather is terrible and all paths are frozen, impossible to cycle to work, plus I have to watch over this place all the time! Not much time left for myself- she smiled but she couldn't hide a shadow of sadness in her eyes.- Look, these are only two of my students, I have three, but one of them just got pregnant. Believe me, it's a madness to look after all this!

There was no need for me to reply as after that Ines got straight to my hair.

The Ride -Rollercoaster of our time

Over that weekend you had a chance to meet a couple of homeless people hanging out in East London. Maybe you passed them on the street, not paying attention, maybe you didn't even notice them. So actually they were not exactly homeless. It was me and A., having a real time of our lives.

This idea of a total freedom, without being put under any limitation neither stuck between boundaries, to the extend of not accepting even the limits put by ourselves out of our own choice, has been alive in my mind as an unreachable perfection since I was grown enough to understand it. Moreover, I never liked school. I didn't like structures in general, remaining rather reluctant to any sort of organizations, institutions from church and government to student clubs and youth association. I always considered myself somehow antisocial, never feeling a need of belonging. When I grew up, graduated, got a job and learnt how to follow up all kinds of society's trends, from time to time all of a sudden I got an idea of quitting everything and just leaving. Still (I hope my bosses don't read it) I carry the picture of my mind- to go out of my office without a notice, leaving my desk, my purse, computer and mobile, to just leave. No matter where. When I was younger though, some of these thoughts could easily made me depressed, ensuring me that I am not really suitable for any place neither job and don't really belong to nowhere.

Almost two years ago, when we had an exceptionally severe winter and I created Monkey Seduction, A. and I liked to spend late evenings drinking cider and talking about, as A. always defined, 'people and their lives', which meant for us something we dettached from entirely. Once, taken by an impulse, he took his guitar and played a song. It was about being a cat, wandering and everywhere where you can be yourself. I referred to this as to his exclamation how imprisoned had he felt in London for all this time, but then he looked back at me with confusion.

- I wrote this song before- said he avoiding my gaze. I understood that belonging to everywhere means belonging to nowhere. I realized that my total freedom is not really an issue of belonging. My total freedom was indifferent: it didn't have a definition. And definition is a limitation, too.

Paul Portier's Ordinary State of Mind

- I've found a contact number to an exorcist- said Paolo O. Martin aka Paul Portier crawling into the corridor like a tank wearing a long black coat in the middle of mysterious night. Mr Charming interrupted his usual deal of a chicken curry gazing with an expectation. Paolo O. Martin, also well known as Paul Portier (especially to the very best friends but sometimes the lady at the vegetable stand said so as well)released himself from the coat and slowly reached inside his pocket to show us a small piece of paper a little bit torn on the corners.
- An absolute genius in his profession, doctor exorcist will help you out to get rid of all of your demons forever- read solemnly, putting his voice onto the highest level of celebration. The wink of a light was flashing in the darkness like a candle.- His magnificent abilities will help you deal with a large field of problems such as the follwoing. Paolo O. Martin also known as Paul Portier (as I just remembered also one nurse in the hospital where he landed with a broken leg last year used to call him this name) sought gently and continued reading.
- Reemition, resurrection, possession, seduction, drug addiction, convolution, convulsion, eruption, misleading, misunderstanding, mistreatmend, demention, dimension, abbreviation, emmigration, reviving, deciding, depression, direction, self safety, car insurance, wordiness, meaningfulness, readiness, literacy, automacy, disconnection, detection, self pity, serendipity, masochism, sarcasm, trinity, duality, multiplication, personality, diversity, variation, masturbation, waste collection, self disposal, suicidal thoughts, marriage problems, violation, degradation, evanescence, willingness, performance, transition, transcription, translation, transportation, rejection, self motivation, confidence, question, unemployment, bank loan, credit cards, sim cards, eternity, toxity, bruxism, eventualism, society...

I got irritated, mr Frank.

 I'm not even sure if that's the most proper way of expression. But I bet you agree that the word 'irritate' has a power none of it's synonyms is able to posess. 

- I posted something on my blog- said my literary one of best friends Paolo O. Martin also known as Paul Portier taking a huge bite of salmon and chewing it thoroughly- afer so many weeks. Which means, I've finally overcome my depression.

 - Wasn't blogging supposed to be a medicin for your depression?- I was confused.

 - Well, yes, but after a while I got too depressed to run a blog.

 So I got into the moment, when I really didn't feel like posting anything. First, naturally, I thought I was depressed. But after all I understood I was just annoyed. No, exactly, bad word. I was irritated. 

The Tortoise

 Giant Tortoises of Galapagos don't die just like all of the other creatures.

My Dad

 This post will be simply about an amazing man. My dad.

 Amongst all of the things I ever owed Marilyn Monroe, I can't not to recall today the song "My heart belongs to daddy'. My dad's portrait is the ultimate thing which will never work for me. Because it's too much left to say.

 In my memories my dad is standing in his workshop, surrounded by hard smell of vernix, which never bothered me, smoking a cigarette even though he had quit already two years ago.It always has to be summer, with a sunshine lighting the workshop through the window, and softly melting in cigarette fumes in wooden walls, so home. My dad's face in mind in winter seems to be incomplete like most of his sketches. There has to be summer, with fresh tomatoes for a salad, and an empty beach with a lake to go to with your bike. The picture is staying incomplete, because there is so much to say, just like he always says, in arts like in life, some things are better incomplete.

 My dad believes that visual arts should create emotions like music. That there is a level of perception to be necessarily reached, beyond everything which could be obvious. Arts should never give you a ready image. Just like in life, when everything is clear, there is just no fun. 

 My dad is... how old? There was supposed to be a happy birthday, but maybe we should leave this post incomplete. How do you think, dad?

Love Letters part II

 I am puting my hand to the glass. I am watching it for a while til it stops to have any shape for me. I am trying to feel the landscape behind the window, but after a moment I stop to feel any cold under my fingers. Behing my hand, there is only darkness. 

 I do this every evening, when I start to feel the undeniable lack of you. I wait by the table in the kitchen, despite the fact that I know you are not going to come. When it gets dark I get up and I go out for a walk. Because I know you are not meant to come. Then I come back home, knowing it well that you are not meant to come and I put my hand to the glass. After that I close my eyes. And I think about the letter I will write to you today once again, the one you will never read. I do this every evening. 

'Esperanza'

Love Letters

It's probably one of the most forgotten fine arts in the world. Not because people almost don't write letters anymore at all, but rather becuase people don't express their feelings the way they used to anymore. That makes IT even sadder reminding the fact that love letters used to have their own, special place in the history. Despite it, nobody reads love letters anymore even if they are written by Guillaume Apolinaire. Somehow, love letters writing became an inconvenient substitute of an in-depth intimacy we're all ashamed about and don't want to let into our awareness. To be truth, I'm including a love letter written by me, as a part of 'Esperanza'. Although I've written some of my own too. 

Esperanza- middle piece.

 The main character of 'Esperanza' is a man who's fiancee disappeared several years ago. One day, convinced that he saw her walking on the street, he decides to take a desperate journey through his past to find the truth. 

 Since that time I knew, that never again, I just can't lose anything anymore. So I spent my life surrounded by material things, things which couldn't leave or fade away and which always remain a one captured moment. I was collecting articles from newspapers about daily events and flyers advertising temporary discounts. I was taking pictures of decorated shops' windows and I was writing down overheard in the tram sounds of strangers' talks. It was all to believe, that it's possible to capture the moment. And even to keep it forever.

Esperanza- a romance adventure

 (...) Sometimes I feel like I was there. Walking on these streets. However, I know these streets are not real, this city is an illusion, these worlds in front of me are world of my immagination. In this daydream I feel very light, in kind of weird way, like I was light as a wind. So I'm haunting these dreamy streets as a fog, able to make every heart cold, make every thought blown away.

 It took me actually ages. 'Esperanza' was supposed to be my first novel, but a composition of the story required a more specific form. So there is my short story. Placed in Poznań, Poland, Esperanza is a story about searching answers of a past before living home. But the main character is a city, a magic city, to be enjoyed by those who had an honour spend a time there. This is a last sentence of Esperanza, finishing this adventure for me, and beginning it for readers- translation in progress.