PAR-T(ea)S
(îðèãèíàë çäåñü: http://www.proza.ru/2010/05/03/1338)
Riddle me this: Why is a raven like a writing desk? (ñ)
Part 1
NONFORMAT
I have small candles. You know, such tiny tin jars, filled with paraffin. Every evening when I open the cover of my laptop, seedy in long journeys, I take one of these candles out of the small box which is on the piano, set fire and with the abrupt movement put it down in a house-lantern with holes cut through its sides. I like to type, drooping my head towards the flaming candle, looking from time to time at the lively fire, because it has the natural riot of thoughts and images essence, which the pale flicker of the computer’s screen is totally deprived of. At least, this is my opinion and there’s no need to be agree with.
It has been almost the circadian since there is no Internet in our district. Just think – twenty times of sixty minutes, but I am aching all over, tighting and curling up owing to the impossibility to escape from this uncivilized city, virtually at least. This is an illusion but I like millions of users stretch hands for it every morning, pressing on the start-bottom of the comp. I want it, I eager for it because I desire to receive, to be with it, to be it self…what is IT?
WHAT is it? What IS it, if loosing it I don’t find any place for myself, dashing between rooms and kitchen, poking bottoms of the TV set remote control; either rarely trying to drop off to sleep, wrapped up in a rug or diving into the near-empty fridge.
Books become arid and tedious, they simple turns my stomach. When it all comes down, everything is read. Everything of there’s at home is read off. Actually, I ought to visit library but I can’t be bothered, and to buy in the shop is costly. True, something could be printed at home but then the sense of the book disappears and its content transmutes into the text, into composition of A4 size. But I don’t like this size. It is truly to say I hate it sufficiently. Apparently there is an effect of the endless educational process, in which I was involved by the system. Every year you do write, invent heaps of ideas, endeavor to fix your thoughts on paper, defend all these essays and projects, degree works and research thesis of every sort and kind – and what for? For some years somebody will discard them sluggishly as useless sorting dusty folders? But in this dust – your dust – my thoughts are! My ideas, my expectations, for your please, as you like. Eventually my soul! But tutors need proper format, distance from sign to sign, punctuation, and violation could be always a very good reason to cut down pass marks, to trample an individual; to humble for execution, for format or more precisely for non-format.
The day before defence of graduation project I was taken the hint that there is no place for my name in graduation list. Oh, what a night I went through then! New-unrestricted, in a grayish hanging haze above the trembling lake…the water fragrance…Then slow-to-grasp morning and the bustling-dazzling day…but full of joy and the boundless scope… For the first time in my life I refused to fight, to overcome, to prove and to strive; to achieve to be fit. To fit other standards, but not my own. Non-Format. You are not the form. Form-no-t... No time and no form…Thank goddess, hallowed be!...
Part 2
Buddha
There’s just one trouble – the absence of Internet. Even tea doesn’t cure for situation. The story goes Buddha was fond of tea, or his followers were – that guys that preached his teaching. As a matter, as we all are Buddhas per se and we like tea thus it tells its own tale – Buddha did like tea too. If I like tea it means I am Buddha too. Surely one should be a complete idiot imagining oneself as the Prince Siddhartha who is reborn nowadays next time in turn for the sake of all the living beings are well and happy. Because a prince isn’t Buddha, but Buddha is the Prince. As for me, I am nither the prince or even the princess. I am a Buddha because I like tea too (or that’s why). We are united by this fact which means, I am Buddha too barely do not make aware of it. And Gipsy women in the market – they are Buddhas too because they like tea as well. Yet…to be honest I don’t know what Gypsies like. I don’t know who they are – at all, because since childhood we have been taught to be afraid of them. But I think that if there is a strong probability of they may like tea as well, there is no need to be afraid of them, because they are Buddhas too, and as well as we they are do not assume it (neither everyone does). Somebody may suppose; may guess.
I also like the cold retreats when candles burn. February cold beyond the window of the flat and the electrical cold of the screen window, which is opened into some other mock-bright reality, draws back facing alive fire. The reality, sure, is not bright in generally; nor that nor this, even online, i.e. on line. On thread, thin linen thread like silk that I will never wear – I am not the prince or even the princess. I am Buddha. And Buddhas don’t wear silk. Buddhas wear garments of virtue and enlightenment. Indeed, I wear jeans gifted by good soul, long-sleeves T-shirt-wingspan, a sweater on the point of warming bad and shaggy-soft socks. There is, surely underclothing but there’s not necessary to mention, because it is quite clear: Prince Siddhartha didn’t wear such an attire but silk and become the Buddha. But is this a reason? Would I get a Buddha state if I do not have garbs which Siddhartha was wearing? True, it was told that Buddha was living like a hermit and only after that became a Buddha. But I am not a hermit nevertheless but want to be Buddha. Still I only don’t see why, but the wish exists.
If that prince had Internet, would he become a Buddha, I wonder?
Part 3
I like…
I like Johnny Depp
I like milk
I like when doves coo
I like blue color
I like the fragrance of spring
I like mum
I like to live
I like to suffer (I should to admit it whenever)
I like to love
I like to love (yes, once more)
I like myself
Part 4
I don’t like…
I don’t like Quentin Tarantino’s movies
I don’t like blood
I don’t like when somebody is warming-up the car under my window
I don’t like loneliness
I don’t like the fume from the factory
I don’t like those who I don’t know, but if I don’t like those who I know, it is their fault
I don’t like to not-live
I don’t like to suffer
I don’t like to be mistaken
I don’t like to make mistakes with people (am I not a human?)
I don’t like my own reflections
Part 5
It doesn’t matter to me…
…
*
qwerty ui op [] as df
ghjk l;’z x cvb nm , .1234567890987654321=-+=
=……………………..
No,
It is a matter to me
YES!
IT IS A MATTER TO ME!!!
Part 6
To sleep
Internet has not been connected yet.
***turn off***
Part 7
***turn on***
THE SOVEREIGN OF THE TIME
Morning begins as spaceman’s – with recognition myself in the room. Only the cellphone alarm-clock can remind me of the time, but it keeps silence, it means time could be here extremely numerous – even if in theory. Till that very moment when alarm rings, there is some gap in the space-time continuum, and it could be stretched out – to break every minute into seconds, flashes…and if to wake up once and for all and press some bottoms, the moment that starts to measure my life, never comes. No alarm – no subjective time but the time-space where I am lying now. All of my space now is a room occupied by the body. My time doesn’t exist until the alarm rings. Being as ordinary as other people I do not want time, I want space. But what a bad luck! Imagine – it is found that it is impossible to separate them both! Space plus time – here is a formula of death. If I occupy room, therefore I occupy time as well. But until when alarm sounds, my “I” is immortal. I am an ordinary person. This fact makes me happy.
Part 9
BASS
I know one bass-guitar player, a very good person.
…
Actually, that’s all.
…
And what’s more, actually?
Yes, he is a grand bass player. I can not even think as virtuosic and genius as he plays. I say out words tardy then his fingers figure out. We exchange of Internet messages. But it must confess I wait for his mails. As well as from other people though. Wait and am afraid – suppose a spam goes from me and people begin to tell me about that. But the spam goes out not from me but from my page, that is managed in some moment of eternity by somebody else but not me. Thus the spam is not from me even if from my page. How can people think that it’s me who distribute spam?! It’s stupid to guess that my pages at social networking websites and me are the same (how can they call themselves as my friends?). I am not a page, none of them! I cannot be closed or turn over. As a matter of fact I can tell a pack of lies there about everything – one another’s illusion more, one less – what’s the difference for me? But for some reason I care of myself and you, that’s why I do not let in to admit the friend-list single-shots and unauthorized persons. Matching of letters and numbers combination is not access code to me at all, if even to crack the page. Because I am the foundation of my page, I am writing it as well as a lot of hundreds million billions other pages-flashes. I am writing my book, and others are creating their own. And we open for each other only one page. It reminds me of music score.
I am a bass part of my own score. I am a binding edge, ink intenseness and monitor color rendering. I am screen blinking and the screen itself. As for my web page – it is illusion. Bass is not an illusion. Come on, *** write to me! I want our pages imprint each other. But would you like the same?
…It is the second day, but it’s not here yet…
…I mean Internet…
Part 8
About the infinity…
If to put sidewise eight, we’ll get infinity. If to lie sidewise the infinity…
Infinity couldn’t be put sidewise.
Otherwise an absurd gets on. An absurd couldn’t be infinity – same as infinity couldn’t be an absurd. Here my tooth begins to ache. The tooth is a part of nature and of the whole universe too. The Universe is endless. Is the toothache finite? In the moment when the tooth aches it is infinite (or hadn’t you anytime a toothache?). Thereby we become aware of infinity through the ache. Is it an absurd? If it is, then infinity could be laid down sidewise. If it is not, then the tooth ache isn’t infinite and an absurdity doesn’t exist. Then who is Albert Camus? What is he in the Infinity?
Part 10
MUSIC
Music divides into two types. No, not to classical or underground, old-fashioned or modern, elite or popular, nothing of the kind. Music, likewise every other type of arts divides into suitable for the interval of space-time and inappropriate. Music exists right along. Indeed, they don’t want permanently for one of its embodiments was heard. It’s like to communicate with any person. I’d like now to have a definite particular, tangible human being nearby, who has been familiar to me a long time already before. Whereas to meet another one, arose a will to get away from here. It happens not because we are not acquainted with each other, rather inversely. That’s the reason why there’s no wish. Sometimes we may meet somebody strange, just the world to become more variegated, perhaps. For the interest appears – to somebody else or to yourself.
To get a wish to tell another one about your self – it occurs, evidently, in different ways. Some, the more aged become, the less want to confide in. Other yell like in a Eastern bazaar: “Look! Stare! Here I am! Come to me! Get to know me! Please!” Not always with “please”, alas? Not because they are egoists but they are lonely. Everyone experiences the loneliness in their own way.
So the music is – it is for communication. It is either appropriate for the moment, or not. But it could be turned off at any time, in contrast to humans; to stop pushing the button. People do not have such buttons. We deal with each other, or we don’t. We can not turn on and off the presence of each other, summoning interlocutors to chat, materializing them from the one point of the Planet to another, from the one age to another. We live in a constant, continuous stream of time, moving around space just to meet each other, hug and have a talk. To be with another one is the best music at all.
It applies equally to rub shoulders yourself, by the way. Provided that discs in player or the circle of acquaintance could be changed, nobody avoid meeting yourself as yet. That’s why I don’t like my own reflections – they lie.
The connection to the world still wouldn’t get right.
What should I do?
Part 11
DIALOGUE
– How are you?
– …
– Busy?
– …
– Hm…I see. Let’s go for a walk?
– …
– Aha… well, why not. Ok. When?
– …
– Ok. Deal.
– …
– Well, I will come.
– …
– Ok. See you soon.
– …
I wish the phrasal order changed. Unreal…
We are living using stock tricks, dying using stock tricks…meeting people – using stock tricks which are the standard. Stand-Art. The Art of: stand by, stand for; stand in, stand on; stand high, stand alone; stand up, stand down; stand here, stand out; stand straight, stand curved; stand bright, stand made of what, for what?…by golly! Real good word! And the excellent art (and part) – the art of “to be”.
To be what?
And above all – the High Contracting Parties.
Part 12
GUESTS
We are doomed. Not to the extinction but to the survival. Because this is not the home. For the holders of million fortunes this land isn’t the home. The hotel – it’s more correct.
But otherwise, they are pitiful. Generally people are wanderers by their nature – come in incomprehensibly from where and leave out incomprehensibly for where. It happens that some of them come back. But this doesn’t change the main thing.
Thus not to value those who do not let you to slit into the scary whirls of loneliness, to destroy the nature which fills with beauty; and to kill the thought, thanks to which we are blessed with refuge, – it is the true insanity.
Mad are not those who drink tea. Mad are those who have taken a sit down at the table just now. Completely deranged are those who even don’t know about the tea.
– No room! No room!
Is there any room for you? Or probably you reject an invitation by yourself? Then why to sit down the table without being invited? What? Were invited? By whom?
– There’s plenty of room!
…Tea stops the stream of time …
What’s the reason for destruction the room where you live in? Million for poverty, million for mud, million for violence; million to the left, million to the right…Plus million – and you are on the top, minus million – and you are at the bottom. But the top and the bottom exist in a mad head only. Knock-knock…are you still here?
– I am still here. Who are you?
– Your Death. And who are you?
– Me?...
I do not know who you are, who you are and who you are. But I know that we having tea and the hat is on my head.
So why is a raven like a writing desk?
Part 13
SPECTACLES
Staggering! It has appeared nevertheless! I watch the world again through the magic glasses, through the blinking window. Oh, Internet! – an International net, which enrolls in its cells new swimmers yet, new fishermen. And they are happy. Oh, the new religion! Long live! Credo! Wasn’t it a dream of our ancestors – the world without borders and estates? Oh, the great sun of the new time! New time, new…you…ooh…
…is that all? ... Five messages in two days? ...
« * * *»
…
When you watch reality without glasses, you see it without any make-up. One can strike a human, but the important at this moment – not to look in the person’s face. One can touch gently and also – not to look. A touch and a look. One can touch differently but a look will be the same: you are like asking all the time, and there is the Eternity.
One can look but not see. One can touch but not feel. The green became a violin and the grass turns to snow. Snakes will cease to bite their tails, birds will drop to the ground and cold winter crops will heads for the South, where faceless dogs sleep behind the boundary Moon craters and laugh and laugh… but you do sing, sing…
Wouldn’t you lapse into silence – so what’s up now? Who sees you dreaming, when you hug a tree and kiss a couch? That is I’m keeping silence! “First, first, where is the second?” It was when hammer and sickle have been studied Straits chart and led destroyers on the morrow.
Isn’t it a pleasure? But who likes it?
Isn’t it sweet? Then what can make bread salty again?
Why didn’t the wine turn to water but clot into a blood and now flows and flows, running out of itself? And ships go and go under sails…step by step…
Snakes shed their skins and deliver to hunters. A winter comes in Paris again. Partridges get back to our Riverside from the faraway marshes, and now they have encomium season – they make up a register of silkworms. Line will ripen in August; it will be mixed with thin threads of worm industry and the yarn will be left under the windows. And the three will have tea and knit socks and mittens for hammer and sickle.
There are three of us, there are three of you. Why do we need a boat?
Part 14
WAKE UP!
It’s time, it’s time…the spring will come soon all the same, and it’s time to unplug oneself off this den-up-dealing. Put some sandwiches in pocket and out, passing by boutiques, in the very genuine wooden forest, with aromas of fragrances and blossoms of flowers. For everything should be natural – both around, and within; both a river, and soil, and ocean of seas, which are known as heavens, which are called and call out and respond…unlike that three-D animation. Yet “three L rule” – Let Lunatic Lift – is the very faithful and true for our road. Where the road will take to? Is this a question? Who is on the road? Àààh… Let him go. As he knows, he is been waiting – there, on the hills…
And let the wind blow in the/ir sails: Northern or from the South quarter, as it is. ‘Cause to wait – is not the solution. If you want to go anywhere, you should go! Even this “anywhere” turns out not so far, and even not so beautiful, but just seemed so them.
But aromas of flowers and blossoms of fragrances are mixing in your head, in your forest. And a grapevine is blooming…
Part 15
PATHO-LOGY
– …
– No, do not drink. Nether smoke.
– …
– Nope.
– …
– No. Actually not.
– …
– From time to … Time.
– …
– Well, ok.
– …
– Thank you. Goodbye.
If you do like to meet me, surely I can drop in here again. But, doctor, am I sick indeed? I am not ill that’s why I am not sick at least no more than others. Just look: there comes a woman wearing Scythian tress; long plait, gorgeous. She’d be back with the scythe to the country, to the hayfield but she is here, in urban streets. Didn’t any people remain in the country? So she has come here, joined our area, seeking here anything, roaming about the streets from home to house. There’s no happiness in her eyes, and her dress is baggy. Should a woman, with a scythe even, looks like this?
Or here: a man. Or rather, here a male body went by but there is no man within.
Here a kid is running. Have you seen children’s eyes? Run, my heart, run, there – to the hills, there, where you are awaited! Don’t stay here, and don’t stop there!
* * *
We make no headway, have fun with games, trying to think logically, elevating such kind of thinking to the level of official wisdom. To think logically is a norm, thereby trying to follow the logic is right and the only true. But who is able to think illogically? Who still doesn’t forget how to act likewise?
The paradox is: “check” and “mate” are always signs of defeat. The rules of this game must be changed: the winner is that one, who leads the game up a blind alley of “stalemate”. Let’s be the “stalemate”, let’s the game be drawn, and you’ll see that it is good.
What do we do? We rise up walls of shrines, where is no room for tea-leaves. We intoxicate ourselves by glory but never by ignominy; celebrate the fame and success but never – obscurity and acceptance the way things are. We look at the blue but see the red, say “yes” but imply “no”. Our words miss deeds, and thoughts miss words. We let illusion in our world and later we wonder where it comes from. Delusion is the diagnosis of all the players, who are placing chessmen on the board. Play but not fight; choose the “stalemate”, stop the time. Where is your logic? Run, my mind, run, far away from the pathologies, from the diseases of this world, run to the “stalemate” logos.
I say a word, and it is good.
Part 16
10/6
What strange dreams come sometimes…Tonight I dreamed a small lorry of Uncle Joseph. Have no idea who he is. Just there was a small lorry and there was Uncle Joseph – sleepy horse stealer from Oregon. We were carting on the country road washed away by rains – some people, slumbering of monotonous song of our coachman:
…one flew east, one flew west,
One flew over the winter rest...
The uncle’s voice jumped up with its owner at every big bump and the man, set his faded beaver hat straight, went on singing from the syllable which he stumbled over the tree root or boulder, washed out of the ground.
The time overflowed into space and imperceptibly carried us out to the ashes lands of Blue Mountains. There was a Water Clock Festival in Japan the day before and we danced at the celebration. My fellow travelers are sleeping now and I am listening to Joseph’s singing through their dream. The spring in this neighborhood is glad about me. I feel joy and calm too. So it’s time to awake.
Part 17
Meanwhile
Meanwhile mitre & myrrh
Mega-meters & megatons.
Meanwhile measure & meanings
Mega-easiness & microns.
Meteor’s masses messing,
mesh me mingle. Million mentors
mirk & merry, mighty mildew –
mirth & miry, mislay mislead.
My mate morrow,
mildly mildness…
Meanwhile mother,
Minus, minus...
Minute, mirage,
mire, mirror,
mark & marker,
metro, market,
moss & miss,
& mice’s mantel...
More
minds makes machines monkey.
Î, Ì!
Part 18
I.F.
Yes, news stimulates mental health breach nevertheless.
If the State strives for prosperity, it begins with its citizens’ well-being. But the way how our state starts does not always correspond to the goal set, for all the wish of the Celestial Federation rulers boils down to the word “if”, that is not specific to history.
Our state doesn’t want. Or rather, just pretend to. But even in movies in category “under 18” the “wanting” imitates more truly then it is done by functionaries in its perverted common sense actions towards people. A functionary is a live-in lover of Authority; meantime nation is the mother’s beloved child. The problem is that the people know the mother but not the father. Nowadays Queen Authority and its retinue mount the throne. They subsist in thousands of guises that hatch out of the grubs of underdeveloped individuals and occupy the living space of King Nation.
Mother Earth, Father Heaven. If the people get to know their father, what will become of grubs? Not the creepy extraterrestrial bugs-n-beetles but the lost or not found heaven within themselves, rejected the Way – here is the reason for all disasters of the Empire.
… The child that was born at the previous night on the very end of the galaxy should be given the propitious name…
The idea how to overcome functionaries grubs, how to turn them into individuals or rather more or less deprive them image-less is hardly new. But let’s give utterance to it, since good is good. Well let them study textbooks from the Realm Zhou library, sit for Master Kong’s law code examination and every Friday compete in the display reluctance to be first in the world.
We saw a child yesterday. Isn’t he a dragon tomorrow?
Part 19
TRANSMSSION BOX
A Bedtime Story
– Darkness has fallen somehow. Pass me the luminaire…
Once upon a time in a faraway kingdom, under the canopy of stars the sea laps, on the sea the island moves, on the island the oak tree with cats sways. On that oak there is a stony chest hovers, that three magic birds name between themselves “transmission box”. When the time comes (but when – that amazing birds do not tell about), Great Tritons appear from the water-deeps of heaven seas. Their quantity couldn’t be count, for they appear in turn, for at call. They are para-great sorcerers: they are able to dive into lakes, fly up to impossible locations in caves and take objects out of solid rock. One is remembered to be called as The Bear.
Tritons live like humans but weird: look at themselves in their own mirrors only, because there are no any reflections in. If the ordinary human look in at that mirror, he will be out of the mind couldn’t be able to see himself.
Tritons are excellent warriors. Their weapons are the lightning, clothes are the rainbow, their voices are like a bluebells in the field, and the field itself hasn’t been plowed for a long time, for there’s nothing to sow.
Tritons play sage games. The most favorite of them is “Oh, padishah!” The rules are simple: the Triton, whose turn into our world to go is, sits down as padishah under the tree, the oak tree that is. The voluble cats lower for him the “transmission box” from the golden chains. The Triton opens it, takes out the silver sphere and throws it to the sea. And everyone watches over. If the sphere falls faraway – the road would be distant, if it lies down on the seabed –Triton comes back empty, as he hadn’t gone at all, and if fishes begin to play the ball, so Tritons start the great feast, wishing a good hunt to comrade.
If anyone wants to gain Triton’s favour, then that one should stock up the tea – of that quality that is burning like the Sun. It is purchased in a land of the East, at Ch;n imperators. And the price of it is one reflection in Triton’s mirrors.
Thereon the fairytale is gone. Who perceived – clear head is.
Part 20
<no title>
Violet plum dragon
Has brought pearls in drinking bowl
The Moon is shining
Part 21
TWE-n-tea
or
Ten words of SALVATOR
One should not switch on electric light by night – then the night disappears. To strike a match – is ok because the darkness will vanish away. Night isn’t darkness. Night is good – it brings repose and inspiration. Therewith if to click a switch, a bright flash wakes up dwellers of your flat and neighbors in the opposite house; anxiety and disarray burst into their dreams through limpid walls. So it would be better to manage the old good fire – there is a candle in the tin lantern right here. That very silent shining illuminates universe, where our mind plays astonishing games. Never keep an eye on its every artifice.
I keep on thinking on the riddle of our last tea party. What’s the common, in other words what is the difference between them, after all? But, the words might to be really different?
So, what’s here in the original text? Oh, it’s becoming interesting: the question begins not with “what is…” but the first word is “why?” H’m… Here’s another fun too: «riddle» means both “to ask riddles” and “to answer”. Therefore everything here sounds differently: “Why one is similar to another?” Something strange turns out here: it is necessary not only to find out the answer of the riddle but ask it too. “Riddle me this” – who must do this on-its-own-account-action? “Me” – inside-my-self. But how is it possible to ask and answers riddles at the same time, to be in and out of myself?
Yeah, now it’s the right time to stand up and measure the room by steps, putting hands behind. Oh, to what extend I do not like my own reflections at times, even if they are in the polish of the piano, humbly occupied honorary place at the wall. They lie: where am I and where am not-I. If just to find a mirror without reflections, where the image is closing up itself without distortion, then the riddle-question became the riddle-answer…
May be that’s right – the one contains another? If everything is everything, if I am I, then a raven is a writing desk and therefore there’s no difference between them likewise there’s no likeness. Similitude and diversity exist only in the consciousness of those who look at and search them, who’s get accustomed to think logically. But the voluble cats live in the world, where there is no our logic, but the logic of the word, logos of the word exists. And Heraclites is right.