Theory of beauty

It hurts me to look at you. Your beauty forces my eyes to drip with tears. I reach for my sunglasses in the glove compartment and only when your features become hidden in their dark shadow am I able to tune back into our conversation. "It's crazy that beauty must be so subjective," you're babbling idly. "For example, look at this building over there,--" and you point to this or that run down high rise we're passing, "its architect at the very least must've found it appealing once, or at least practical and not ugly... Or take the old paintings. Renaissance. The women they found beautiful in those days! It's crazy, I tell you." I nod so violently that my glasses fly into my lap and I have to readjust and secure them over my ears. "If what you're saying is that beauty is a constructed concept, I completely agree with you," I admit freely, finally reacquiring the ability to speak now that I cannot see you any longer. "It is determined in every age by certain social, economical, and political forces. As well as by the dominant ideology and the contemporary discourse of power." To be completely honest with you, I find this inability of yours to discern the beauty of the Renaissance women as comforting as the sunglasses on my nose.

Part tree, part deer

His sense of self became so diluted that he was now part cherry tree and grew a pair of antlers. Death was another state of being, reincarnation inevitable. He scooped up another forkful of wild mushrooms, sniffed the cream sauce, and then placed them in his mouth and chewed slowly, vaguely gazing at the empty seat on the other side of the table.

Pike's wish

It had been one of the worst days of Pike's life. So bad that at lunchtime he even thought of calling his mother. He reached for the phone, then remembered she was dead. In the evening, he saw his doctor. "Yes, of course," said the doctor, smiling tiredly. "This is one of the symptoms of your disease. Your memories are becoming less present." Then Pike went home and ate chicken soup for dinner. There was no lucky bone in the soup, but he made a wish anyway, and that night the wish came true. So Pike's very bad day instantly turned into a great one.

Coincidence

In a remarkable coincidence, he fell asleep the very moment his head hit the pillow. Just a few minutes before he was wide awake, sitting on the couch next to his wife and watching TV. Then she decided to go to bed, and he followed her faithfully. He didn't fall asleep in the bathroom, brushing his teeth. He didn't fall asleep in the kitchen, taking a sip of water. He was completely aware of his actions when he took off his clothes in the bedroom. He even had time to say good-night to his wife while getting into bed and fumbling with the blankets. But the moment--the very moment--his head hit the pillow, he was dead asleep. Not dead but asleep so deeply that if she didn't feel his heart beating inside the cocoon of the blanket, his wife would've convincingly believe him dead. He fell asleep so suddenly that she wasn't sure if he'd even heard that she wished him good-night back; and he certainly didn't grant her the duly expected nightly kiss. She lay next to him, staring at the single fluorescent fish remaining on their ceiling, and thought about how strange it was that he should drop off to sleep just like that, at the very moment of collision of his head with the soft, freshly washed, linen. She stayed awake the whole night through contriving to dream up the coincidentally omitted kiss.

February's old age

February, oh, February. She's grown so big now. Last time I saw her, she was still a young girl, and now I really should start referring to her as a woman. Sometimes, though, I think that we'll turn 88 years old, and I will still talk about her as if she tied her hair in braids and outfitted herself in the old brown-wool school uniform with white collar and sleeves starched weekly. My grandmother told me once that after 80 people started growing baby teeth and hair again, so I guess the braid thing is not completely out of the question. It is strangely simple to imagine February as an old girl, pudgy and wrinkly, with a bunch of tiny white braids sticking out in all directions. She would go everywhere with a heavy walking stick and use its handle indiscriminately to grab onto things and trip other girls and boys up for bad behavior or personal amusement. She would develop this really nasty habit of taking her dentures out for airings in restaurants and on boats, then accidentally misplacing them and demanding help loudly and unintelligibly. The more vividly I picture her old age, the sadder it is to think that she is slated to die in just 18 more days. She won't live past her 29th birthday.

Lucky cat

My cat is going like a clock, swinging her leaden paw ceaselessly up and down, up and down. It's amazing that I don't get a headache. In addition to the effects of a metronome, the cat is also supposed to bring me luck. Perhaps, the rhythmical quality of its battery-powered movement is luck in itself: poor poetry comes to those who lack the understanding of the meter. Yes, yes.
Cat.
Luck.
Poetry.
Headache.
Vodka.
Cat.
Lack.

Springtime

The north-easterly wind blowing, this time, from the southerly brought in its sweep welcome tidings and bits of cellophane. The warm breeze scratched confusedly against the pavements and made little bubbles in the window panes. The car alarms went off, and nobody could figure out that it was because of the wind's slight airheadedness. The last wild cat remaining in the city, a haggard black minx with white paws, woke up in her cellar and came out onto the street in the broad daylight. She was the first to notice the bursting buds on the peach tree outside my bedroom window.

Bicycle

All the love that he had in the world was three-pronged: the right flat fang for his mother, the left flat one for his sister, and the top round one for his bicycle. The third one brought him the most pleasure, especially on those days when he gave his sister a ride to the zoo. If only it were possible to place both, his mother and his sister on the sturdy frame of his bicycle! He trembled in his thoughts and was unable to realize any additional metaphors that night. It was very late, and he was finally tired enough to think about her whom he loved instead of playing with venomous sisters and treacherous bicycles. She took over his thoughts for a considerable amount of time until the alarm clock reminded him that it was a gentle Tuesday.

The broken website

The website was obviously broken. I mean, it said quite definitively "I'm broken," or "Page not found," or some such thing. I still kept checking it regularly, once a day, during my afternoon tea break. Sometimes, I checked it twice a day, at tea-time and also while getting ready for bed at night, right after washing my face but before brushing my hair. I don't sleep well unless I brush my hair seconds prior to hitting the sheets. To be completely honest, at the end, I started checking the website compulsively, five to ten times a day, every time I sat down in front of the computer or opened another browser window. Once in a while, I would check Google Cache, just to sort of be reminded of the way it looked. None of its interactive features would work, of course, but I simply liked to see it again. I lost all hope. Almost completely.

Sunday

She believes, the sun is shining today just for her. She is walking around town with a taste of raspberries in her mouth. In fact, she hasn't left her house in days. There is no inside and outside to her house, so she goes from one sunlit room to another, greeting her guests who are always there on Sundays, and treating them to fermented grape juice and finger-sandwiches. Her cheeks are freckled and her nose is slightly red. She entertains with puzzles and poetry: "To get to Sacramento? Go up and then down. You'll meet mice who are gently tailored and whiskered." Let's have music, she decides, and immediately the bells start chiming. Her guests jingle coins in their pockets and tapdance around her. Raspberry seeds are stuck between her teeth, and she has more guests that she can count.

Inconsequential

It was not the lack of air that caused difficulty of breathing. The pile of poetry books on the bed is growing. And I've lived through this afternoon with the constant awareness that one day you will die.

African violet

"You have to make sure you don't wet the leaves of this plant. Otherwise, they'll turn yellow, shrivel up, and your plant will die," she explained patiently. We were standing in the middle of the bamboo forest, and she was holding the little potted violet that I had picked out in her hands and wouldn't let it go. I reached for it, but she made a protective move with her elbow and took a step back. "Make sure to read the care instructions in the brochure I gave you," she said sizing me up from top to bottom. I think she thought I was an unreliable character. "And don't hesitate to bring it back here if something goes wrong. We can help you diagnose the problem, but we don't give refunds on dead plants." I made another move for my green pet, but she stepped deeper into the protective shade of the tall bamboo stems. "If you do everything right, it will reward you with magnificent blooming in the summer and fall. It is a spectacular little plant." I should've been wary of such lavish adjectives in reference to the tiny little 10-leaf thing in her hands, but I guess I took her words at face value. I was terribly disappointed this fall when the plant finally bloomed, and they were tiny little blue flowers. The very opposite of magnificent, I would say.

Yellow eyes

I've been spending a lot of time in my car recently, and I noticed that my eyes have completely lost their greenish hue and are now convincingly yellow. Yes, yes, I agree with you, I am bound to cause an accident staring at myself in the mirror so much, but isn't it disturbing that my eyes should be of an unmistakable yellow coloring? Have you ever known anybody with yellow eyes? You know, I read in the newspaper today that blue-eyed people are all descended from a single person and that blue-eyeness is caused by a gene mutation. So, what do you think, should I check myself into a hospital and have them run some tests on me? I wouldn't be surprised if they found several funky genes squirting around my body. Sometimes I experience extremely strange sensations in the spot where my neck is connected to my skull, my nails are sensitive to light, and I'm almost positive that my heart is on the right side of my chest. What if my hair also turned yellow? Or my nails? Or my skin? I would die if something like that should ever happen.

Airborne

She is never sick. No colds, no stomach aches, no rotten teeth, not even a headache. For years she'd lived without insurance, but even after she was forced into buying a policy by the pervasive care of her employer, she never went to a single doctor. Oh, yes, once she went to the dentist to get her teeth cleaned. The dentist was impressed: there was no sign of plaque on her molars whatsoever. It was as if she possessed some kind of a superpower. Which she did, brushing her teeth three times a day or after every meal. But also she was a witch and knew how to fly.

Opera

Nights February spends in front of a television set, watching rented opera. The next day, she posts reviews on her increasingly popular blog. She evaluates the distinguishing characteristics of the singers' voices, the costumes and stage set, the direction, even DVD production qualities. Many complex criteria are involved in each write-up. Of course, February makes it all up; she rarely makes it through more than the first five minutes of an opera with her eyes open. "It's not that I find opera boring," she explains to a close personal confidante, "not at all. I find opera fascinating. It's the rhythmic quality of this kind of music that immediately lulls me to sleep. I have such pleasant dreams with opera flashing on the background!" So all of February's well-received reviews are based on the first five minutes of music and the rest is made up of dreams. Usually she dreams of snow-covered mountain slopes somewhere in the Swiss Alps and a lonely skier in an orange jumpsuit.