(fragments)
I'm having tea in an unfinished house, in the midst of scraps
and chips of wood. My mind is easy now, and empty as a Tao teapot.
Monk Kenko wrote: "Whatever you take, it's wrong to fit parts together
into a whole. Interestingly, when something incomplete has been left uncompleted,
it gives you the feeling that your life flows freely and unhurriedly".
My dear friend, we've read so many books. So many! We are almost buried under them. We start writing, and Heidegger's ear peeps though the line, or someone else's eyes, ears, shoulders… Either of us opens his mouth and wants to say something for himself, but just repeats Plato's words.
When asked, why his writings are so good, Gouer Tse would answer: "I'm mortal, and the notion of it makes me write as if the next line were the last one".
- Oleg, boy!
- What's up, Tolik? No answer.
Our entire life is woven from snatches of conversation and things half done.
Then life will slip away, and death will come. What is our death? A pure potentiality,
a sum of possibilities never used, a garden with diverging paths.
Birds are flying away. I feel so sad and alone, sitting like the colonel with his goldfish, waiting for my death to come. Occasionally my recollections become sweeter…
Tomatoes for treating varicose veins. I've just heard of it. Where is a piece of paper? Can't find any. Thank goodness, here it is.
I saw a small boy who was playing hide-and-seek with his mother. He was hiding
and then calling from his cover: "Mom, find me!"
I thought the boy, without knowing it, played life-and-death, be-and-not-to-be
with his mother. We know all about these games. Each of us grows up and then
grows old, only to realize that he played hide-and-seek with himself his whole
life. No one was there to shout: "Find me!"
I'm sure we won't be together anymore. I doubt you ever come to see me again. You said I had been but an "instant" of your life, but I still keep your toothbrush. Who knows?
First of all, rice, peas, millet, buckwheat, and also kidney beans if I can find some, which would be especially good. Secondly, butter for sandwiches, oatmeal, or potatoes, and I also need some vegetable oil. Thirdly, salt and sugar. Fourthly, I have to buy some tea, it helps me get through penniless time; other products if possible. The main thing is to be very patient. It'll be even harder without endurance than without anything else.
All this is garbage under our feet. Someone passes by without paying any attention to it. I come to pick it up, and now it is in my hands. Garbage is simply a misplaced thing.
I thought of a nickname for myself: God. It is certainly not quite humble, but it sort of makes sense.
I fell asleep and dreamt that I was dead. To be precise, it was not death itself,
but a clear perception of it. I woke up and couldn't remember what exactly my
dream was. The main thing is that I am not afraid of it anymore. I don't know
why. Some things are hard to put into words.
Maybe I died in my sleep, but managed somehow to come back to this world and
woke. Woke dead.
"It's not that you don't see something," - I explain to a girl who doesn't quite understand. - "Things are simply a bit blurred: water-colored and in a slow motion. A near-sighted person is always an impressionist to some extent" .
Science knows 400,000 scents and only 73 types of the sensation of pain. Our nose is five and a half thousand times more sensitive than our skin. Doesn't it mean that we are meant for taking pleasure in scent, not suffering from pain? Doesn't it?
You are reading as though you count small and pleasant things. They are fidgeting and squabbling. You are throwing them into your mouth as sunflower seeds, more you crack them, less you are able to stop…
It isn't frightening to dive with one's eyes open… Sea water is just like
tears, salty and warm. One's courage is always rewarded by an unexpected find.
I am on the sea shore, with a shell in my hands. Only in winter, long after
I'd gone back to our frozen place, I pressed the shell against my ear, and heard
a whisper of the sea. I'll be back!
You kiss the waves of the solitary, eternal sea. You look for a long time every morning at the tops of trees turned pink. You bury yourself in warm pebble as in leaves. You dance in the evenings, and all things on earth respond to the rhythm of your movements. You've been brought here with the wind of chance encounters, and I don't know how many nights was allotted to us?
An overripe plum is always sweeter. It is raining ever since the morning, gladioli are all wet in the garden. The overripe summer falls to the rich, muddy soil. The cold weather will be here soon.
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