Weak Point

Among the shouts of children, dinner being made, trouble at work, car being serviced, he exposes his underbelly, tells us of his weakness, the blind spot of his eye, a place where he'd rather not but is left with no choice.

"I live within the narrow confines of two extremes, being fully conscious of the contradiction. I am bound by them to the extent of not being able to move at all, of having to stand. These two extremes are well known to all men - they are defined by the presence and absence of sense. For me the world is either nothing but sense (purpose, for the want of a better word), or it is completely senseless. There is either nothing but reason or there is no reason at all. God is everything or there is none. These things seem absolutely clear to me, in my walk, in my sleep, in my love of all things or utter disregard for them. I can switch from one to another, I have to, so as to maintain soundness of mind. It is neither new, nor original, and yet most people choose the shade of one or the other rather than the scorching light. They claim umbrellas to be the sun, they hide under roofs, calling them rain. They choose half-God and half-matter. Half-people. There can be nothing more blasphemous than the deeply held believe in "something", which today's opinion polls testify to so clearly. We have lost God in exchange for something ("Do you believe in God?" "No, I do not believe in God, but there must be something, I do believe in something."). In the name of something we have even compromised nothingness. Our actions, our love affairs, our cooking shows, our entire civilisation is based on a  firmly based believe in... something. And I (I alone) believe in everything or nothing. Do I stand accused of relativism? There is nothing relative in my mind, everything is absolute. I am an absolutist, an absolutist of the  mind. I don't need four eyes to see two different landscapes at once, as two is more easily divisible by two."

He concluded on an obscure note. He is not a drunk but his speech pattern is strangely disrrupted.

Anonymous Text Retrieved from the Now Defunct 'Poetry & Advertising'

What Is That Supposed to Mean?

This "project" is born out of consternation and greed. I am fascinated by the possibilities of poetry, but I stand aghast when confronted with the uncompromising insanity of advertising. This is a place of confrontation, where sparks fly from the clash between the merciless machine of advertising and the fragile flower of poetry (how could the encounter of these two cause "sparks to fly"? there are more ways of looking at both I am sure and the "fragile flower of poetry" at least is a deliberate caricature). At the bottom of both lies the craving for information, both can be motored by lust. Advertising in its simplest form is merely a piece of information about the existence of just about anything. Poetry in its simplest form is merely a piece of information about the existence of just about anything. Both use words and images, both have gotten out of hand, both serve to satisfy individual need. One has become a way of making money by poisoning the world we live in, the other has become a way of losing money by poisoning the world we live in (I remind myself there are more ways of looking at both). They seem a perfect match, a perfect couple. Let us see how they get on if they move in together. I hate advertising to the point of fascination. I love poetry to the point of disgust. I admire the idea that you can make money by adding advertising to your blog - it is amazingly absurd, it is disrespectful, it is (I know) impossible. It destroys that by which it is carried. And yet it creates space for poetry of kind, so out of place it is. If we shift attention from the text itself, which should be at the centre of the reader's focus, to the advertising it attracts, we are likely to catch the creature unawares. It may prove a monster, but we might be in for a surprise. And will the other one be the beauty or the beast? Poetry will not so easily be disrobed and will lead us by the hand, as ever, into the dark woods. But we will observe her carefully too. Poetry in advertising, advertising in poetry. We superimose the two and get a new image. Every word is an advertisement for something. Poetry in advertising, advertising in poetry. Let us make the labyrinth thick enough to sigh with relief when we find the exit.

S N U F F

"It is crucial to sing, knowing what, how people communicate, why Salsa." Snuff That is why you have the name of a specific community, which has managed to understand, because we have respect and commitment. He is the voice of the people interpret the process, their experiences, their daily tasks. For this reason, its inspiration, humiliation. When inspiration demonstrate the ability to value, you will address their thoughts, desires, and also in their rejection. He hides nothing and feelings that I'm sorry if you download and drums, his voice rises when mixed with rhythm and no right to encourage the spirit, if I understand the dancer creates relief Heart, live cadence, Sonera demonstrate their skills. He created his own style, and it was set. Now a new chewing tobacco more maturity and seniority structure, which is currently a special Prestige: Ray Santos. Ray commitment to what was originally supposed Snuff is a challenge for Ray Santos had to wonder how they say that the number of people poured into snuff, which was a better time to address the melody. Ray laid down rules for mergers, which has never been able to understand and know Snuff commitment to meet. Ray confessed to be Snuff is the reason why we need the most work. the first time, Snuff is a super group, with different instrumentation, and had to be done, the time demanded, his voice has the right winds, it is time that the best (snus) to interpret arrived in the Caribbean, and height. tigers and tiger, this LP is mainly music, its quality, its design, we take into account not only the way we just enjoy life. producers were well aware of the purpose, Ray Santos, Snuff knew his style would remain unchanged, or money that could be transferred to your personality as an interpreter, which is focused mainly perfection instrumentation, Magic Touch, which has more freedom of expression, which should be recorded in Puerto Rico. best that could happen snuff this year, she was to meet with Ray Santos, and us, this unit is the most courageous and exciting yet occurred. I believe, although explicitly prohibit the advertising of cigarettes, snuff, it's pure and inimitable taste of Venezuela, and most of the real Caribbean. What are you waiting for?

Special Effects

It is overwhelming, inside, reaching the surface through the eyes, maybe in the extremities of teeth. The sorceres in special effects departments are performing their evil magic, bringing the world to its knees through obscene images of The End. Shall we go to the cinema on the eve of your greatgrandmother's funeral? It's a film about the end of the world. I'll bring a sweater, the evening might be cold. The power within stirs and surfaces, this time as indigestion. "Did you want something from the buffet?" she asks annoyedly with the key still in the door. "No, I'm just waiting for my wife." There is no point to the conversation from either side. "Will the old lady be burried in the ground?" "Yes, yes, I believe so." "I have never seen anything like it before." Have you never wondered where dead people go? I ask the child within. I know, answers he or whoever, grandma has grandpa in a little plastic container on her desk. That is correct, you get an A for that. It is probably a writing desk - you would have gotten an A+ for that answer. But then again, grandma never writes anything. The last postcard she sent us said: "I am sending you kisses. If you don't want them, send them back." It was both nice and cruel, don't you think? The film starts with perfect images of the flood, the last big flood. Black magic, methinks, and I get this idea (it comes from the power and the power of the child): all cinematography should be returned to its original role as mere entertainment. And entertinament, weapon against time, are all graphic novels and rock'n'roll and literary and other magazines, don't let anyone tell you differently, says I aloud to the dark and presumably empty auditorium, with images of civilisation's end on the screen. Mere knick-knacks, fandangles and whimsy-whamsies! They have fooled us into believing they deserve our undivided attention. Let us push all literature back to where it belongs - to pre-Gutenberg hiding holes, to monasteries high up in the mountains. Only then can all words and images be free again, receive back their original meaning, the meaning that is given to them through life, the life the remnants of which still cause power to shoot up in diminishing intervals as hiccups. Let us silence the banal, there is only one Book (how will this sound to the learned ear? how will this sound to you, little fella writing these words?). One Film (now, that's better). Taste the screen, lick it, tear it up, touch the material, the canvass, the paper. The cinema has nice and cosy and new blue seats, I cuddle up to the person sitting next to me in the dark but forget to check whether it is still M. and for the rest of the end of the world am afraid to look again. In the car on the way back I study her carefully. It is her. In a new release - The Dream - words and images break free again. Coming soon to a cinema near you.

Slow Train

Flowers need no watering when it looks like rain. When it looks like rain for too long, flowers need watering. I can always step into the swimming pool with cold chemical water waist-high. When I fall into it backwards, my underpants blow up with air. It is dark, the neighbours cannot see me, I can play at farting. The water is shallow and clean, for once there seem to be no monsters there. Comfort has no need for courage, however absurd. I walk to meet them, I walk barefoot to the neareby woods with sandy paths. I feel nature sucking on my blood as a mosquito, I hear it in the bushes as a bird cry, I see it climbing up my leg as an ant, bent over backwards in an attempt to inflict damage on me by squirting microspopic amounts of its acid. I listen or speak aloud when there is M. walking next to me, I try to follow my own thoughts and supress the urge for defecation when I walk by myself. When I meet someone, I say hello, but my voice doesn't sound right. I hear a little boy saying: "But he will cut his feet! I saw him, his feet are bare!" His mother laughs and whispers something. I can cut my feet but I don't, not even further up the forest, where sand mixed with tree cones and stones changes into grass and whatever else below.
"I know the rules like everybody else and was intent to keep them until I realised that nobody else does. Since then we are on a mission to discover the very source of rules. It is our experience that makes us free, therefore we can never all live in freedom, other than the freedom of gaining experience. "
I scream with frightened surprise when something pricks the skin on my ankle. I am afraid of the huge scaly monster even here. I did see a dead snake on the path and it did transform into a dead thought. The little boy was right and will make a good adult. When the small hand car with the children approached the place where I was hiding, I put on the hat, sat on the bike and set off toward the rails. M. saw me and pointed. The children turned their heads with question in their eyes. The grass was so high I could not go on and fell off the bike. My sister laughed when I apppeared again, fixing my sunglasses and straw hat, looking around, not being able to see them. The hair dryer that was to serve as a gun was lost in the tumble. I stole their caps and bags and warned them of my brother, an even more infamous thief, living further down the rails. As I rode fast to be there first, I found the hair dryer lying in the grass, next to a glove. Its fingers were green with moss. When I came back, I watered the vegetables in the greenhous and stepped into the swimming pool with a beer bottle and an opener.
"When you call to the other players, you are in danger of receiving the ball. It is difficult to pretend there is no game, when you hear the referee's whistle."
The hand car is not really a handcar, it moves like a bike.

We saw her approaching us as soon as we entered the ward. It was the hospital for old people, long-term illnesses. She had her walking apparatus she could lean on, but even with the twisted metal tubes she was quickly right in front of us. In her elegant laced dressing gown she sat down and said: "No music for me, please." She preferred classical music, she said, but eventually succumbed to a folk song I had trained for all morning with the ukulele. "I'm an artist," she said with little pride, "that is I was before I fell and broke my hip. Now I'm here and do nothing. But I have to walk!" She stood up again. "What kind of artist?" "Oil painting, aquarels..." We walked with her, red noses dangling around our necks." She was born in 1911," the ward psychologist and our guide whispers to us. That would make her... "Jiří Trnka was my schoolmate. Our professor was Max Švabinský." That would make her 98. These are legendary, almost forgotten names. "Tichý, he was a painter of clowns. He was also my professor," she sits down again, her breathing normal, our eyes staring. "He wasn't there long though. When the youth communist student organisation leader came to his cabinet and addressed him in the familiar comrade tone, Tichý said 'Out you go!' and threw him out! But in a week's time it was him who had to go." She gets up again and we enter the first room.
A sturdy Romany attendant is involved in conversation with an old man, whose hair looks like a clown's wig, except that of all the colours it has turned white. "Of course, professor," the attendant says to the lying man and pats him on the cheek like a little child. "Don't you worry... and quit the crying!" he adds when he sees a tear running down old professor's cheek. "Look who's here. Clowns have come to cheer you up!" I attempt not to feel embarassed, approach the man, hold his hand, introduce myself and continue: "So you are a professor..." "Every human being has a heart," he responds, his chin starts shaking and another tear gets stuck in his wrinkled cheek. "Indeed," say I. "A professor of what?" "Biochemistry." I feel a distinct shaky rythm in his hand that still rests in mine - every second or so he presses me with more urgency, and releases again. "I was very lucky, professor Palát taught me at school and he was one of the greatest. A friend in later years." His eyes wondering, every once in a while fixed upon mine with a stare. "I once went to a conference in Sweden, must have been the fifties, and met a Nobel Prize winner there." The name of the laureate is lost in the bumps of his voice . "I asked him whether he could spare two copies of his major work, which I would bring back home with me and use to spread his theories. He refused at first and said to me: In all honesty, these books are only half mine. All that is groundbreaking in them is based on the work of professor Palát." The old professor's eyes open widely at the memory and stare at the ceiling in disbelief, yet again recalling and savouring the triumphant moment. I also feel that the tremor of his hand has most unexpectedly ceased. His body is quiet. After five seconds or so, he resumes: "Professor Palát! My dearest teacher!" Another tear and his body returns to its rambling rhythm.
My colleauge sings songs with an accordeon. She is loud and original and very good. I have to do very little. The Romany man comes in and out again. "Do you also visit children?" he asks upon leaving and is happy to hear that we will go to children's oncology tomorrow. "My little friend is there," he shrugs his muscular shoulders with a shy smile and closes the door behind him.
When it is time to say good bye, I go and again shake the professor's hand. "Good bye, professor." Tears seem to be running from his eyes continuously now. There is no attendant here to tell him not to cry and I neither want nor dare. "Professor?" I have his attention now. "Call me... (look how his chin is shaking again) ... call me... human being." I look at the paper bracelet every patient wears on his arm. "Good bye, Čestmír," I say. He nods his head in acknowledgement. As we walk down the stairs we hear a loud male voice from some storyes below ask the following question: "What sound does a goat make?" The "moo" we hear in response is clearly uttered in a very old person's voice. Call me human being, for once I would not mind.

Now, that the Monday Club has virtually vanished, nothing stands in the way of my ambition of transforming it into a political organisation. I am open to all discussion regarding its programme and have a couple of ideas myself. One of them is: all candidates elligible for election must come from a special school, where politicians are brought up from childhood, not unlike the monarchs, who were educated for their future rule. These special schools would educate future politicians not only in languages, biology or geography, but also in philosophy, literature and art. Utmost care would be taken for the best teachers of various opinions to be employed. Not all the graduates of such school would have to serve as politicians - this would be left to their own free will and their extensive education would enable them to earn a living in any walk of life. Those who WOULD stand for election would define the opinions they came to hold as clearly as possible in a book of statement and would be free to associate in political parties. This combination of monarchist and democratic principles would ensure etc.

The James Joyce Tower (Pornographic) / The Discovered Manuscript

In the reflection of the balcony door I look like a monkey, a gorilla, with my unusually elongated penis juxtaposed with the crane in the valley, erecting yet another building to corrupt height. Around it a jungle of newborn tree-leafs. When we were leaving ten days ago there was nothing but bare tree trunks that have now outgrown themselves into a constrained wilderness. I made love to you in ways, but before that I had to do my job. I put on a clown costume and went to the old people’s home. “Questions, questions, questions,” P. wrote in his text message. An answer. “Stop it, don’t you see she’s crying?” the old lady’s elderly daughter snapped and ordered us out of the room. “For fifty years I lived in Smíchov,” another lady said. A neighbour. Does she now that and that bar? Yes, she does. I am going there tonight. Questions. Would she ever again. Fresh-green. The impenetrable urban desert. My foliage. Things so easy to imitate. Would I wage war? I have my own sacred things. Made love to you in ways. Know centimetres of your body. Do you love my armpits? You can have them after I die. But now I am making love to you. Futile. Animals. There were four of them, with beards, one drank non-alcoholic beer. So what, I smoked. They knew how to say nothing, their faces covered with bark masks, faces that walked around but said nothing, could I make a living out of this? Don’t you see she’s crying? He that winks at me (I wink back) played a drunk sailor in the disused factory. His performance was appreciated by the audience. He played a man with no teeth. I made love to you with my teeth (is that at all possible?). The three wise men. “Why is beer so popular here?” “I don’t know… I really don’t know.” Just three days ago I was sliding along the concrete wall in Sandycove as though it had been covered with ice. The sea can do wonders. Looks a bit like “wounds”, but only on paper. It is nearly lunch break. Bought a book, quick. When we lie on our backs I can touch the chandelier with my feet. More like a lamp. The show was a success but not a crowd-pleaser, you know the way. Glad I am not driving. A bypass is enough to make him nervous despite his lung surgery. You know you have limited time of course. Had to finish my exam in three hours, my last beer in fifteen minutes. The barman got a call from his fiancé. Ain’t he sweet? Got some Fins here, love, can’t go yet. Made love to you laboriously, must have taken half an hour. Is that of interest? A. owes us both money, but his rich mama… B.’s on drugs again, but hey… I stood there naked. What are the polka steps? But you understand me, don’t you? I’ll fight for it if I have to. Not all clowns are funny, you know, but I will fight. Have you read the reviews? Love ‘m.