Pigeons
Pigeons:
And the Phoenix Rose, as the Rubble Stayed
A short story by
J.B.B. Czarnecki
Woosh! they go, soaring above our heads, rats of the sky. Do people still say that? Beastly, gnarly, little clumps of disease. FU-CKING DIS-GUS-TING, I enunciated severely in a half-mutter shout. I shivered uncontrollably, when a pigeon flew straight into my hair making me virtually sprint home to take a shower. No one noticed what had happened, which contributed heavily to making me look like a raging lunatic in the eyes of the people surrounding me. People judging my foolish, distraught behavior. Typical urban ignorance. Behave just slightly out of line and you’ll be deemed a revolutionary. Stand on the left side of the escalator and you’ll be beheaded before you get to the top. We ain’t one bit different from our rural cousins. Overeducated apes looking down on whatever it is that is not congruent with our beliefs, as a matter of fact, anything that is not in accordance with what we deem to be true at the very moment, even something that we might find perfectly acceptable in a different context, in a contrasting state of mind. Luckily, not being far from my crammy apartment, I entered and felt like I was infesting the whole building with some sort of incurable super-AIDS type of virus. Not that I cared much for the well-being of my neighbors, but spreading lethal viri was still not something I would’ve chosen to make my signature move. Super-AIDS-pigeon-disease-boy people would call me. Flattering title. At least I’d be someone.
The shower was cranked up to a dangerously steaming temperature, but it seemed like the only viable option in the light of this herpes-inducing event. My fingernails dug deep into my scalp. Perverse are we in our cleanliness. The heat was now almost unbearable, yet I decided to proceed with this orgy of shampooing, scrubbing, and rinsing. An endless cycle of getting rid of an unidentified issue, which might or might not’ve been real. Whatever we gotta do to make the nervous men in our minds shut up.
After I’d stepped out of the shower, I grabbed the only towel hanging in reachable distance on the door hook. It stank of moisture. The hot water and skin particles of two weeks worth of showers procreated and were forming new civilizations in between the individual cotton fibers of the towel. I didn’t care, though, and rubbed myself dry half-assedly. I grabbed my generously-sized cock, as it was in a relaxed state after the shower head had genially coated it with a layer of liquid life, and shuddered. Just imaging that the same part of my anatomy got in contact with both my infested pigeon hair and my crotch, caused it to shrivel up instantly to a misshapen flesh worm. I bent and looked it straight in the eye - meaning the small, now tightly sealed, slit of the urethra - and shouted FUCK YOU. I am them. And they are me. How I like to blame myself. How the pigeon likes to feast on the worm. I am me. And they are them. How I like to blame them.
I couldn’t shake the feeling that the disease had been spread, that it had sunk into the pores of my scalp, that it’d seeped through it directly into my brain, like gunk scrubbed from the edges of the kitchen sink, penetrating the wide absorbent pores of a sponge. I set up a can of lemon balm tea and rolled a cigarette. The flavor of the tea seemed colorless. Maybe the water was too hot. The smoke on the other hand tasted citrusy. The flimsy sunshine breaking through the window glass turned my kitchen into a stew of sweat, spilled tea, ashes, and honey. I enjoyed it, on the account and the faintest of hopes that this stew would boil the pigeon disease right from my follicles. Distractions were much needed, so I opened my computer, navigated the mouse mindlessly to the internet browser icon, tapped F, and finalized my acquired zombie-like motoric pattern by pressing ENTER.
Pictures of people foreign to me. All smiles, all vibrant grey to me. All highs, all silent dead to me. I shuddered again. Shut the computer with a bang. Straightened up, my elbows on the kitchen table, and my neck bent with my head in my hands. I sighed and then ran.
Walking down the parking lot just outside my apartment, I looked at my car. Its black door handles and side mirror were complemented by three fat pigeon shits; black and white went hand in hand on the little ball of joy I called my own, no racial tension detected in this German piece of engineering ingenuity. For a while I plainly stood there in awe to gaze upon the curiously wowing precision of the pigeons’ usually splattering faeces. During my studies I had learned that pigeons were extraordinarily smart and were supposed to be used in World War II for guided missiles due to their impeccable visual processing and ease of conditioning. Thanks to the combined forces of B.F. Skinner and Daimler and Mercedes-Benz, now, they were seemingly bombing my SMART car intentionally. Jesus fucking Christ. Unable to react in any meaningful way to this ironic display of the nonsense the universe likes to chuck in our direction once in a while, I walked to my local discount store to bombard my senses with something other than pigeon shit.
Open Sesame. Foot in the sliding door. Greeted by an acquaintance I hadn’t seen in some time. Our eyes slashes that posed as question marks. Neither of us was truly sure whether or not he knew the other. Both talking smoothly about nothing at all, our words fluttered in the indifferent breeze of the air conditioning system. He informed me of a mutual friend’s recent escapades at a party down by the river. One ear a radar picking up subtle judging jabs to the mutual friend’s chest. The other an impenetrable fortress in my dusky mind. He poked me verbally, if I had heard anything about person XY. I asked myself, if he thought I was a McDonald’s drive thru speaker. Did I look like I served him garbage in a paper bag? I answered truthfully, negating any knowledge I might have had in the back of my mind, but at that moment I honestly didn’t remember, being hazy from the quarter cigarette I’d had before. He finished with a decisive uppercut to our mutual friend’s jaw. I excused myself politely and went about my non-existing business. My appetite for stimulation of the consuming kind was gone, so I thought, yet I roamed around between the shelves in no particular pursuit of anything. Walnuts and jelly worms seemed appetizing. Bitter, savoury sweetness, cracking the shells like skulls to suck out the grey matter on the inside, slurping worms like chirping birds. I am them. They are me. How I like to consume myself. But I don’t want to. I left the store having purchased nothing.
I returned to the parking lot, passed my pride and joy without dignifying it with a single look, for it was blemished. A few meters ahead, the gargantuan arch that was the entrance to the inner courtyard of my apartment complex. I walked through its imposing greyness, down the stairway to the right, and descended into the underground to take the subway to the riverside.
On the subway, I sat down in one of the few empty seats and observed the excited cooing of girls, as well as the stirred grunting of boys, randomly interspersed throughout the subway compartments. The mating process of a usual Saturday. Short shorts and sneakers melt into jeans and sneakers melt into T-shirts with print melt into spaghetti strap tops. Grey clumps of pheromones and booze, an explosive mixture. Every particle in this clump being ready to spread their ill-fabricated genes. Nobody had thought of opening the windows to let in some air, but I guessed the pheromones wouldn’t be as intensely intoxicating otherwise. At that point I had seen such scenes a countless number of times before and had been part of them for about ten years. Time is such a goddamn bitch, I thought. Oh, you goddamn bitch. Twenty-five years of age and not a single drop of spunk left in me. It was odd to be on the outside looking at the cooing and grunting of someone else’s enjoyment. What brewed inside me wasn’t jealousy, though. I was, in a way, glad to be free of the constant excited pecking of my own pecker.
As I arrived at my stop, I left the underground just to emerge from the depths of our city, the grey colossus, that was home to all sorts of worm-tailed scum, spiralling up and down through the air. Their soaring was dizzying, was a sickening maze. They danced a contemporary feathered dance. No rhyme or reason seemed to tie their swirls together. Bind their individual motions into a cohesive work of art. No boundaries. Boundless until they descend.
This precious late summer afternoon had attracted the masses and encouraged them to come down to the river. People were walking leisurely down the boulevard along the river. I smoked another quarter of my cigarette, extinguished it and put it in my pocket. Sitting on the set of concrete steps leading down to the murky water, which flowed direction north with pleasant urgency, I realized how tired I was. Why, I didn’t know. But no doubt I was. I had been tired for some time. Nonetheless, I wanted to swim against the current. I wanted to go South. I needed to go South. It was the only way to get away from those goddamn pigeons, I thought. Surround myself with more exotic birds, until they too would leave me a lonely bucket of rotten fish.
Steady as she goes, or rather, as they went, I kept watching people pass me by. Families, three generations strolling hand in hand down the boulevard. A few of them even let me speculate about a fourth generation being present. My own grandfather, whom I’ve barely known fought for this city, for its people, and died having set foot in it only once after World War II. I like to think of him as a war hero. But I know better than that. There were no heroes. Only squirrels in the treetops on the run from the black eagle terrorizing the air they breathed. They climbed as fast as they could to the ground to seek shelter in the fields and meadows, only to fall victims to the sickle on the ground. But the people I saw, walking and breathing the same air they had breathed almost eighty years ago, were still testament to the survival of millions. An endearing, yet bitter-sweet thought. They were walking here and watching their offspring’s offspring, respectively their offspring’s offspring’s offspring grow into shit birds. A young girl of maybe five or six years flailed and flapped her arms helplessly. The mother tried to console her apparently, gesticulating in a way, as if to say her demands would be met if she just waited. The little blond terrorist of a princess declined the peace treaty by stomping the ground furiously with her little pink sandals. I was honestly surprised to see she didn’t have claws, the way she was bobbing her head back and forth like a retarded pigeon. Her equally aggressively blond brother just stood there swiping his phone screen apathetically. I thought to myself, if he had no concern for his poor mother, no eagerness to try and be a role model, and show his sister the ways of behavioral aesthetics. However, I swiftly corrected my thought process, having spotted another, this time more dark, blond head of hair about two meters behind the rest of the group, who was having a conversation over the phone, evidently of more value than the appreciation of, or at least the concern with, what he’d created, what he’d splooged into the world.
How lost am I in my rants on younger generations? Laughable. As if it ever made a difference. And yet I saw a profound kind of disappointment in the eyes of the two elderly ladies, who appeared to be in search of a last bit of meaning in this chaotic whirlwind of entitlement, indifference, and preoccupation; to see whether all their sacrifices had had any impact, were even worth a dime. I kept staring at them, hopeful not to seem too weird. I felt my mouth was agape. I put my fingers to my lips to check. It wasn’t. A notch calmer, I put on my sunglasses to keep watching the scenario in a subtler fashion. My head was turned to the right from them at a small angle, my eyes still fixed on the family. Bound by the flapping and the yapping, the boredom in the boy’s expression, and how torn and forlorn the ladies were, I remained stagnant, staring, eyes glaring, but also glowing red with compassion. I questioned why I was hiding all that I was feeling behind a pair of overly expensive dark shades. I swung them off my nose and as I had done so, the two elderly ladies looked at me. The six of our eyes met, and so did the three of our minds. I squeezed out the most earnest and happiest smile I could muster, considering what pity I felt for them. They reciprocated, perhaps I would go as far as saying, they copied mine. I felt it wasn’t because they didn’t know how else to respond, but that it was out of genuine mutual understanding. I believed my reasoning, anyways. What else could I have done? Doubt myself boundlessly, like the pigeons danced till I’m as grey as they are, till I’m dead?
I promised myself I want to believe more. Believe in something, any reason would do. Even the mere idea of procreation in and of itself being the reason for civilization. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t believe that what I saw before my eyes was worthwhile. That what would be the makings of me, what was flailing or standing passively before me at that moment, would be my shit-stained future. They demand the sky, but all they offer is big fat sploodges of creamy white shit, and we are to stand still, gazing upwards with our mouths wide open. I saw myself in the shadows they cast. I was not much older in the grander scheme of things. Nothing but a toddler crawling up the couch of my parents’ living room, pretending I’d conquered the world.
My mouth was all cotton, so I decided to grab a beer at one of the many bars, which spread as quickly as the plague across the boulevard during summer. I ordered and paid at the bar, then walked over to the corner table for two, overlooking the sunbathed river, and occupied it. I sat down on the chair with the superior view on the river and put down my big cliche of a tote bag on the empty chair to my left. The drinking establishment I decided to make my place of libation that day was quite different from the usually dingy, cheap-smelling dive bars of the city center. And although, to some, it might seem like a cool, kind of counterculture place to be, it was just the inexpensiveness of the drinks that caused me to be a common visitor. This place, on the other hand, was different in the sense that it was quite high brow for my liking and wallet. A place where socialites and social knights pursue the same goals. Recognition and admiration. The former pursue the vanities of consumption, the latter the vanities of their own egos. One group consumed to grow in the eyes of the rest, the other did too. Which of the groups was more sickening to me, I didn’t know.
I took a big gulp of beer. It wasn’t very good. Perhaps, it was the sour aftertaste of my savings slowly serpenting down my esophagus. I read The Gambler, instead.
Three young men, about my age or just barely scratching the big thirty, were drinking beer, and loads of it, as they were able to build a tower, stacking the cups, admittedly quite skillfully, on top of each other. All of them were very tall. Their angular faces like beaks, accentuated by pairs of light beady eyes. One was totally bald, not a single hair on the crown of his head with a cleanly shaven face, but with freckles sprinkled all around his nose and cheekbones. The others were ginger with sort of blond streaks of hair here and there. As much as I was appreciative of their creativity and architectural aspirations, I could hardly see, how this was the place to stack cups up to the ceiling. Their loud, croaking voices were not necessarily auditory balm to calm my nerves either. And as I kept watching them behave in a way that was disagreeable to me, I noticed the people around showing their dissatisfaction, too. Not a single person uttered a word. They just murmured, dissatisfied. Maybe, it was a certain type of feeling of inadequacy, a feeling of inferiority to the group of tall Westerners, of whom I knew they were Dutch. Their words rang like the glucking of ducks shoving whole slices of bread down their throats at once. No wonder van Gogh cut off his ear. Hearing half of their shit would’ve sufficed and I sure couldn’t stand their yapping having two fully functional hearing apparati. Or maybe it wasn’t a feeling of inferiority at all. There is a saying in our country that goes ‘When guests are home, God is home‘. The unconditional respect towards a visitor, no matter how rudely he might behave. Or maybe it was the conditioning of centuries of whiplashes that caused them to not speak up. To stay put like a scared mutt. Afraid to bark a phrase in their own land, in their own language. Take the word away from men and they will become dogs.
Finally, when their obnoxious cooing and pecking had reached the pinnacle of annoyance for all people present, the manager, a very short, slim-figured man in a light blue button-down shirt asked them politely to cease their actions, as they were undoubtedly distracting to the rest of the guests. He looked comically short next to the three lumberjack-sized gingers. He knew it, we knew it. They knew it. Their smirks, I will not forget, not ever will I forget these sharp mischievous smirks, overflowing with unwarranted superiority. And although, physical strength should not and is not a measure of power in our times, as the power of the law overruled men’s natural instincts to bash the weaker one’s head in, they were instinctively not threatened. I was appalled to see the arrogance in those three pale pairs of eyes. I was appalled watching my fellow men and women being immobile, paralyzed, chained to their chairs as if on death row. And mostly, I was appalled watching myself from the outside, letting it all happen, showing no solidarity with a man, who, against all odds, stood his ground, who didn’t fear confrontation. I am them. They are me. How I like to feel different. I am me. They are them. What a farce I’m playing.
I couldn’t stand sitting in my self-created puddle of disappointment. My, figuratively speaking, piss-stained chair I wetted on sight of their smirks didn’t really provide me with the comfort my pampered ass needed anymore. I chugged the rest of my beer, stood up and left the bar. The sun was still shining, so I put my sunglasses back on, regardless of the pending sunset. I needed to cease the daylight, as long as I had the chance. Moving South was the safest bet. The river would at some point make a turn westward. Perhaps, I could see the sun for a while longer that way.
Charged with the totally illogical promise of spending a few more steps in the gentle embrace of the last sunrays of this year, I strolled down the boulevard with nothing on my mind, yet completely lost in nonsensical thoughts my brain chose to eject at random. More and more young people came swarming to the river banks. I sat down again on the concrete steps by the river, at the very bottom, my feet hanging loosely above the filthy water. While I made use of the last bit of reading time, before the sun would finally and entirely vanish, my surroundings made use of the peak of their mating season. The excited cooing and stirred grunting continued with ever increasing pressure in the air. An hour had passed and it was almost time to shut my book. I decided to close it early, lighted the remaining half of my cigarette, and smoked it. I was tired, but the all-encompassing need for excitement in this vibrant air was untameable. I wanted to feel the exuberant thrill of the known, the things that have suited my need for excitement so perfectly in the past. Still, something got lost in the process. To get lost in a dream which always ended in more slumber, so I could dream forever. Why can I not make myself my personal Alexey Ivanovitch? I turned to have a look at all the frivolous mademoiselle Blanches.
The paling evening sky made them shimmer ever so slightly, but mostly encrusted them in a gross tone, lost somewhere in the green-purplish darkness of a bruise. When the sun had eventually put itself to sleep, our city birds awoke with a big bang, which became a mere background buzzing as the night progressed. That night I wouldn’t stay too long to experience it, but I knew. It would always be that way, as our ancestors’ will to survive, and as our will to deteriorate.
The DJ kept feeding them drops like our grandmas feed pigeons in the park. And they gobbled it up, their insatiable hunger growing, in the long run, immobilizing them to care for themselves, to find nourishment of value. Leaving them to live off the intellectual scraps of others. Barely legal teens fluttered uncertainly on the dance floor striving to imitate its veterans. Whereas the veterans danced freely, the youngsters were pressed closely together in their search for safety. The furious stomping and swaying of a hundred to the beat of one, to the beat of the one, two, three, four, to the rattling and the romping of the beat.
I smoked the roach dead and took a last glance at the night sky before walking home.
What has civilization done to you? Petty excuse for a bird. There is no grace left in you. The once majestic white eagle that you were. See, you are not filigreed like the lark, sweet and innocent. Sometimes you fool some, but you’re not. You are not bombastically colorful like the golden pheasant, as you wish you were, as you make yourself out to be. I am sure in your self-satisfied state of your dancing slumber you truly believe you are, but you’re mistaken. You are not proud and graceful like the peacock. You do not have the voice of the nightingale. Truthfully, you are not even useful like a chicken.
I am them. And they are me. And so soar we will. And so splash we will. Not into the river, but into the sewage from where we came.
. . .
The night smelled like thick layers of chicken and lamb stacked on a Kebab spit. The air was also carrying a distinctly sacrilegious smell of pork. It was spinning in slow motion for me. I bet my friends were somewhere out there, swinging in double-time. Probably on their way to the river, mortally loaded. I had fled the conglomeration of party people and was on my way home. The concrete facades and bricks of the apartment complexes seemed to sweat profusely. My legs were barely carrying me. I felt I was zooming on the ground, my feet afloat. It must’ve been around midnight, then. I wasn’t wearing a watch, there was no clock tower in sight, and as for my phone, I hated the sight of it, its stupid epileptic blinking. However, I was fairly confident of the hour. When the last six years of one’s life pass one’s field of vision mostly during the night, one develops a peculiar familiarity with darkness. Like a farmer knows it’s time to wake when he hears the cry of his rooster, knows when to dine by the position of the sun, and is utterly accustomed to retreating to bed once the sun sets beyond the horizon. He does not question the cycle. It’s funny how urbanites have completely abandoned their natural circadian rhythm. And what’s even funnier and far more impressive, is that our bodies in turn have grown accustomed to a different cycle. Our brains seem to have developed an odd familiarity with the dark. And in a way it’s beautiful in its ingenuity. Every time I think of how adaptive we are as a species, I am flabbergasted, and disgustingly proud to be human. The feeling of superiority creeps up on me sometimes, then. Morally wrong, but so sensationally satisfying.
I had taken the passageway under the closest bridge to cross to the other side of a busy street along Wybrzeże Kościuszkowskie. I walked up the concrete steps of a flight of stairs, which led me safely to the opposite side of the street, and started towards a dark alleyway overgrown with shrubs and the buildings overcast with dreary, listless strings of ivy. Regardless of the fact that I was in the middle of the city on a Saturday, the alley sprang with loneliness. I felt at home, being a good 45-minute-walk away from the coziness of my down-filled duvet. Another couple of flights going up and down, I reached a peak. It was one of my favorite spots in the city. An elevated plateau with a bench, from which the national stadium on the other side of the river was made visible to anyone, who would give in to its allure, red and white splendor shining in all its glory. And as I was watching it illuminate the night sky with its red and white plumpness, I was made witness to the roaring of 50.000 football fans. They’d scored. The psyche of the common football fan had always had a soothing effect on me. There was a certain kind of predictability in their reactions. Winning is relative calm and composure, losing is mayhem. That way you know when to be outside and when not. Like children, experiencing a minor backlash in their lives as a major tragedy - and the win or loss of your favorite team should be understood as rather the former than the latter by the mind of an adult. Their self-esteem dependent on the jolts and kicks of eleven men, who do not give two shits about their fans, and mostly distance themselves overtly and officially from so called hooligans, who in turn are utterly obsessed with those men. I always felt their behavior towards football players exhibited strongly homo-erotic tendencies, as the excitement these players produced in them was reminiscent of the excited cooing of school girls, flushed cheeks, increased activity of the autonomic nervous system, overly enthusiastic about the smallest successes of their adorées. The obsession with another man’s physical fitness. How ironic that most of them are self-declared homophobes.
Curiosity had, by then, taken the best of me and I decided to stay out for the time being and wait for the streets to be flooded with hooligans. Whether I stayed because I was curious, or for reasons of passing judgment on them, I honestly don’t know. A lack of honesty with oneself, may sometimes be what upholds self-identity, guards us from losing all faith in our own goodness.
A final roaring and the tooting of many hundreds of horns, as well as the smoke rising from the flares inside the stadium, communicated the end of the game. The overpaid gladiators in the pit, which is our national treasure, were at that moment probably walking off the field victoriously, the crowds still chanting, receiving some lazy waves goodbye from the players. What has our civilization come to? Glorifying groups of imbeciles, who chase balls for a living. There was never glory in fighting in pits. It was a position the unfortunate were thrown in. Life was the only prize they ever won. Treating our gladiators with exaggerated profundity just seems like a collective apology for centuries of mistreatment within the confines of a very one-sided entertainment-based relationship. I wonder when our time’s gonna come. Will we be compensated for the centuries of occupation and the systemic cultural marginalization and the attempts to eradicate our culture. I wonder when we’ll be back in possession of the art stolen from our forefathers. I wonder if our time’s gonna come. Jesus. Fuck. Almighty. None of it matters.
Stagnantly solid I sat on the bench, thoughts coming and going like the people one used to know, endlessly, interchangeably. One only remembers the few that stood out. We all want to be that person. ‘Remember me’, we cry. But dismembered we are in the end. Only limbs loosely attached to the ravaged torso of the synaptic connections of the few we once knew. Become a member. Become a follower. Become a leader. Become the beckoning. Become an independent agent and your place in the annals of our collective memory becomes vacant. You will be replaced.
I am afraid of death. In fact, I’m terrified of my demise. I am inspired by the immortal city, where I strive to find a contorted face that resembles mine. I wonder, if there is a need to be part of anything. Does the land beneath our soles define who we are and what we become? And if so, what is the fate of all the people, who never set foot in any land for long enough for their feet to sink into the soil, really, and to be truly rooted. Ghostly creatures, roaming through the continents, seeking shelter, seeking acceptance, seeking a home. We have the funds to see the world travelling, but no place to return to. We hang on the strains of wine grapes, on the verge of tumbling downhill. We consume the sour fruits prematurely. We wait for too long and ingest the fermented poison they’ve become. We are the hungry children. Feed us, boomies! We are your abandoned children! Self-pity is what we consume. We are the thirsty children. We want to drink from the udder of our own mother cow. Yet we gaze at her in bewilderment when we are faced with her. Which of you is mine? WHICH? We know so much of everything, yet we fail to know our forefathers. We believe in progress, in a world, which has been in a constant pursuit to get rid of us. We are the leftovers of a soup kitchen’s rancid poultry, sprinkled grey into the air, our feathers melt into the filthy sky.
Hungry for a late night snack, I decided to get some Phở. On my way to the 24/7 Vietnamese place, I encountered an enormous group of our city’s football team’s supporters. Some looking more militant than others, some less overtly aggressive. Tracksuits, white, red, and green splatterings. Pigeon shit. Short haircuts, some men entirely bald. Chants and signs. The invincible city, the undefeated club/thousands of your fans/victory is what I crave tonight/so let us sing again. 88’s, swastikas, white pride badges.
Disgust built in me way into my throat with their moronic bald heads and their cheap ass tracksuits being the cause for this very physical reaction. I could taste the vomit tickling my uvula. But what made my blood boil inside my veins, what in some way made me feel as if my veins would burst from the bubbling and rumbling of clotted blood inside them, was their audacity to wear the sign of my grandfather and his contemporaries. PW. The sign of Polish resistance during World War II. I felt my follicles being flooded with disease again. An anger that resided and spread in me from my hair tips to my glowed up chest. The unfathomable perversity in wearing both the signs of the perpetrator and the victim. Complete and utter disrespect for the martyrdom of our forefathers. But, in a way, I was happy to see them. Because it was them that restored my belief in a just world. A world, in which trash is dropped off on the dump. One, in which one gets what one deserves, where hostility is met with hostility. Perhaps, life was fair after all, was true and just. And perhaps we didn’t deserve to regain any of our artefacts, our artwork, our capital. And maybe, just maybe, we shouldn’t feel all this entitlement and hold onto old grudges that’ve been growing and thriving in us for these past decades. Maybe it is time to begin anew.
I started walking faster towards the Vietnamese joint, as my curiosity turned into a nauseating emptiness in my stomach. The thought of food sliding down my esophagus, now, was unpalatable. Even when taking the enticing smell of chicken and beef Phở into consideration, I couldn’t stop walking. Sitting down and consuming food was unthinkable. I was walking faster and faster, not being sure why, but I suppose I wanted to escape the dreadful feeling that’d been haunting me since I saw those buffoons. I decided to walk straight home. On the way I picked up a 200 ml flask of vodka and four beers. I unscrewed the vodka cap and downed about half in one gulp. I cracked open a beer to wash the filthy taste from my mouth. Gulped down about half of that, too. I felt calmer, but my pace didn’t slow down, as if it was acting as an independent agent. My feet carried me over the broad sidewalk from the city center to the north of central Warsaw, where I’d lived for the past six years. The center was buzzing like every weekend, but my precious Muranów was an enclave of peace and quiet that night. In fact, most nights were that way. I assume the bricks were tired, they didn’t sweat profusely anymore. They were dead cold. I shuddered, having reminded myself of the horrors which once took place here. Imprisoned in their own home. Fear of hunger, of the occupant. Fists and teeth clenched in helplessness. Teeth falling out of mouths, like marbles they rolled on the dusty ground. Fists still clenched in death. Their bodies as rigid as their minds.
Everything was different, now. I was standing in the midst of Bank Square, underneath the Juliusz Słowacki statue - one of the great bards - with cars seldomly passing by, and with great sadness realized that I had never read any of his work, not even one single fucking poem. And in total frankness, I must admit I have barely read any Polish literature. It’s fascinating to think one was told, throughout one’s whole life, that one was a certain way, but then figured one wasn’t, a quarter of a century into the godly experience. In putting too much meaning into things people say, we tend to forget that the deepest depths of our conscience are too complex to be understood by a handful of people, which over the course of our lives spend the most time with us. Hell, it is too complex to be understood, in its entirety, by neuroscientists. What in God’s name can a couple of average people say? Alas, all this time is never enough to answer questions on matters concerning identity. Two cultures. Two languages. Four more languages studied. But what is speech amidst deaf ears, it’s a buzzing at best. What is the magnitude and beauty of Earth, if one doesn’t have a piece of land which one resonates with, which one can truly call their own. There is no certainty in the life of a wanderer. Tragic is the life of the homeless.
All the while, I was sitting beneath the monument, drinking. I was down to my last beer. I took a good look at it, shifted my gaze towards the ministry of finance, and came back to the beer, my gaze shifting into it. The sour aftertaste came back into my oral cavity. I stood up and chugged the rest of it. I folded the empty can and put it back into my stupid tote bag, when the chants of hooligans were drawing closer once more. I saw flares, smoke rising, like common sense evaporating from their cretin cue ball heads. Apparently it was a night of much commotion for everyone except me. Their chants grew ever louder. My streets grew so much quieter than they had ever before. They felt, as if everything that has ever existed here died in 1940. The concrete and asphalt below me were ashes and rubble. My feet heavy and my mind thick from ethanol. I gazed upwards intending to find a way out. My apartment was north. I wanted to go south. Far away. Tropical. If I would’ve gone south, then, I would’ve met them. I moved north. Passed the Ministry of Finance, Warsaw City Hall, crossed the street on a red light, as it seemed utterly abandoned, and walked up the big stairs above the Muranów movie theater to the plateau from which I could see the tip of the Palace of Culture and Science. Fireworks shot into the night. A glare so brilliantly crimson and gold, white and red, rising and descending. But is rebirth worth the ashes? Is the brilliant glare worth tolerating the greyness?
…
The following two weeks, were marked by cruel sobriety. A day is painfully long, when you remember all of it. Boredom. An endless cycle of occupying yourself with petty activities just to return to the default state, labelled boredom. Whoever started that whole healthy living trend, obviously did not consider, how boring the clear-minded view of the world is. Things are just what they are, ordinary and plain, the drywall of our consciousness. There was something very endearing about the ignorance of our grandfathers and grandmothers, for whom smoking and drinking were a sign of le bon ton.
I was working out every day. Copious amounts of sweets were consumed in the meantime. I was the turkey I put in the oven. Stuffed to the brim with myself. Eating for my life, as if I were a goddamn bear preparing for hibernation. I spent my days mulling over such Styronesque choices as whether or not to shower. One more day of uncleanliness surely wouldn’t kill me. Especially because I wasn’t intending to meet anyone all the while. I made several attempts to read Naked Lunch again. All failed, as expected. The ramblings of the junkie mind are fascinating, to say the least from an academic perspective, but not necessarily very entertaining from the personal view of the sober reader. Instead, another set of abs and core exercises followed. I am not in the least surprised that athletes usually accommodate an air of blissful bareness around them, a sense of a great empty cavernous space that spreads colorless idleness. Their faces speak boundaries in their simple calm. Beautiful like the overwhelmingly open breadth and depth of a canyon. Idle or perhaps idyllic? More often than not it’s not about the either-or-relations we are so dear of holding on to. More often than not, the objects of our perception are multi-faceted, are subject to the makings of us. In any case, all this exercise had an insufferably calming effect on me. Not being able to be bothered by anything or anyone, is truly a crime against humanity. It is absolutely exhilarating to let the fury inside you built and then release upon anyone, who is willing to poke the hibernating bear with a stick. The way the anger inside you rises and explodes in a volcanic eruption has an almost orgasmic quality to it. The fluids that bubble inside you with scorching passion, which then bring sweet relief once uncorked like a bottle of Dom Pérignon. Unintelligible whether the sweetness on our taste buds is a result of the care, the diligent work, and longevity of a noble house, or if it is a matter of suggestive qualities, like anticipation and prestige. The same counts for the other side of the coin. I felt calm, yet not content. Light as in outer space, yet not free - as the astronaut, who swings and flips around the celestial bodies of our galaxy, being perfectly aware of his or her confinement. I craved the thrill of excitement, the wild cooing, the grunting. The sheer little bit of ecstasy, dwelling somewhere lost in the cavernous hall, must erupt, must surface. Spontaneously combusting for the benefit of physiological recalibration, for better or for worse, for others or yourself.
As the two weeks had passed, I decided to conclude my, for my standards, ascetic existence. Saturday morning all over again. I hoped for no kamikaze flights into my hair and no air-enforced defecation this time around. I rolled a cigarette, made myself a cup of coffee. I smoked a quarter of it. Put it back in the ashtray. The coffee was divine. I am usually not keen on using ‘divine’ to describe food and drink. I find it a tad blasphemous towards the things that give way to life, or at least make life more enjoyable for a view moments. I looked out of the kitchen window. The scenery was as dreary as Warsaw gets. The ground was still moist from the night rain. King grey had spoken. The clouds were hanging low above the city. I imagined they were white. Honestly, who could even tell what color they were with a thick layer of smog separating us earthly beings from the heavenly realms beyond the greyness. Perfect conditions for those shit birds to hide.
I was determined to not fall back into the pointless scheme of actions that usually involved me bitching about God and the world. So, I went to my record player, the pretentious shit stain I am, and started looking for a record that’d do the trick and lift my weary mind onto its feet, like Bambi, still rickety on his hooves, was lifted by his mother. And then it occurred to me. I plugged in my tablet into my stereo system, opened insert generic music streaming service, and put on ‘Snowbird’ by Anne Murray. Worked like a charm, with almost mathematical precision. The skipping drum beat, the flakey little guitar picking, and her innocently chiming voice, reminiscent of little red riding hood’s jolly skipping before the tragedy. But I knew, regardless of how this Saturday would end, I was happy in that very moment. Slightly blazed, a cup of perfected bean brew, and the joyfully lucid voice of Anne Murray.
I wonder, if the people living here seventy-eight years ago were just as happy as I am now. Yesterday was September 1st. They didn’t know their lives would change diametrically, that some of their lives would cease to be lives, would be buried underneath a carpet of bombs ejected from a squadron of Luftwaffe planes, would coldly sink into oblivion. Looking for fairness in any historical tragedy is a fruitless endeavor. But a tremendous amount of willpower is necessary for one to not resort to such easy coping mechanisms, such as quibbling about fairness, or divine intervention, or even holding grudges against the people that swore to protect you from German invasion. A man, who does not come to terms with his past, no matter how sick and vile it might had been, cannot expect to soar through his future. He will sit in the vomit of his own doing. The stench making him sicker and sicker, so he pukes more than ever. Until he drowns. This man will never again rise, will never penetrate the sky with a white eagle’s screech. As for now, we are grey. Our feathers melt into the filthy sky. Droppings from the heavens taste like icing. Feed us, boomies! Feed us something nutritious! We are sick of sugary goo that glues our mouths into an inflexible position. Fuck, I hate those goddamn pigeons.
I guess determination isn’t everything.
…
The day passed just like it had started, emotionally incongruent, indecisive. Blobs of grey changing levels of saturation. I wanted to be satiated. I wanted to be whole. Not larger than life, not smaller. Just it. That’s it. It’s all. That I wanted.
The evening sky wasn’t quite as dark as I had expected and instead presented itself in an apathetic sepia tone. Of course, the lilac tree outside my window was given more of a poetic tint, in turn. I enjoyed watching it whenever I was in a rather disinhibited mood. Disinhibited in laughter or despair. No matter. Simply unconfined. I like myself best when in such a state. Raging lunacy. When I go through the roof without a moment’s notice. When I boom of joy in loud obnoxiousness. These moments are so few, though, are tiny boisterous bits of real life, I have the tendency to undermine the importance of subtler, more refined feelings that inhabit my consciousness day in and out. But that night was not going to be subtle or refined. It was meant to be the shit taken on Zeus’s marble toilet seat on Mt. Olympus. It was supposed to be the piss stain on Tom Waits’s denim. Destined to be Rick James’s last rail of blow before he croaked. It was meant to be David Hasselhoff’s floor burger and Gordon Ramsay’s yelling.
My girlfriend, two of our best friends, and I met up at my girlfriend’s apartment around 9pm. We were wasted by 11pm. Two games of King’s Cup and loads of side drinks had done what they did. We made our way down to the river. As usual, the music was bursting eardrums and inducing buttocks to jiggle and bounce uncontrollably. The sepia tint had vanished and was replaced by the same green-purplish darkness of a bruise that I had witnessed two weeks prior. We perpetuated the drinking heavily, beer and 4cl glasses of vodka in alternation. Our minds and feet wandered along the boulevard, setting themselves on every dance floor on our way, roamed in agitation with blinding strobe lights as our only guides. Stinging fire. Blast off in the porta potty. Sharpened senses to be dulled once more. Every square meter was ridden with rustling feathers, greys of all shades, but nonetheless all grey and all disease-ridden. I felt like taking a shower. Since that was impossible I poured beer all over my face and shook myself dry with my tongue flicking around disjointedly like a dog. I looked at myself, but I wasn’t a dog. There was no fur. I felt like one. As excited and disinhibited as one. Pure-heartedly enjoying myself, disinfected by 101 proof liquor. As I kept shaking it all off, the remaining droplets of beer and the thought of disease, I heard more rustling, closer, much more immediate, now. I knew I had to be flapping and rustling myself. Strings of crimson and golden light flickered within and without the confines of our atmosphere. Disco lights and a shooting star. But as one was a sign of good fortune, a chance to wish for something greater than oneself, the other only served the purpose of self-indulgence. I saw I could ascend into the filthy sky. I knew I would. Just to dive kamikaze-like into the sewage. My feathers melt into the filthy sky. They are leaden with scum, submerged in fecal matter. Another 80-proof to cleanse myself. Stinging. Sizzling in my esophagus. I enjoyed the burning sensation. The heat beat me in the chest. The beats were pummeling like a herd of bison in the Białowieża backwoods, leaving micro eruptions on my skull. Ravaged by a searing bass. Lips juicy and pouty, perfectly ripe to be bitten into. Pear bottoms percolating. Blood lips, full, thoughts jerking. Two pairs picked, went and found another pair in the rustling. And another. Asses in motion. Hypnotic gyration. The slapping and sighing of will, or the lack thereof. Touches indifferent and yet arousingly genuine. A stranger’s touch is coy when feared. A familiar touch sits comfortably. The excitement of novelty and the comfort of certainty.
Another beer aided me in my need for hydration and made me snap out of my trance. I didn’t see myself, but my face felt blank. I was in the middle of the crowd on the dancefloor, surrounded by eager faces with rosy red cheeks and golden disco-lit streaks in their hair, framing their fiery cheeks and black moon eyes. There was still fire in this city. I knew it. There was reason for our resistance to perishment. I was sure of it. Times shall be bleak again, and again we shall rise. It seemed the inevitable progression of time. Inevitable as the expansion of the universe. Ingrained in the tiniest building blocks of matter. I turned around to find a familiar face - WOOSH - they soared past me again, causing me to spill beer on my shirt. Grey and disgusting. Ghastly little creatures. Cooing the atonal tune they always cooed. Their beady eyes unconcerned. Their moronic pecking continued.
Is the phoenix really worth all that pigeon shit?
. . .
I awoke around noon in bed next to my girlfriend. My eyes felt puffy, sleep deprivation was evident in those red droopy eyes. She was wrapped in her duvet. I was laying there, uncovered, only wearing yesterday’s boxers and a wifebeater. She looked like a happy burrito. I got up and walked into the living room, opened the door to the spacious balcony to my right, and stepped outside. 14th floor view of south Warsaw. The clouds above the immortal city were hanging low and grey, still. Everything seemed static. As if the thicket of unappetizing cotton candy were pressing on the life beneath. This being a far less impressive metaphor considering that it was Sunday. People were either at church or were spending their day curing the hangovers they had brought upon themselves. Of course, there would not be a single soul stupid enough to walk the surprisingly cold late summer streets. I still had the feeling that the clouds were on their best way to squishing the remaining bit of life out of the city’s citizens. I wanted a drink. I didn’t have one. I wanted a smoke. I chose not to. I wanted a promise. I couldn’t imagine that. I went back inside, into the kitchen. I emptied a half liter bottle of water, practically in one gulp. Refreshing and sickening. It seemed to be all the same.
I brushed my teeth. Looking in the bathroom mirror I fancied myself. I didn’t look half as fucked up as I thought I would. But my eyes were, just the way I felt they were in bed, droopy and red. I was tired. Astoundingly tired. A blank expression cutting through my gaze. I thought of the rest of the day and what to do with it. Nothing came to mind. I washed and cooled my face and eyes. Another blank stare in the mirror. My wavy hair, starting to get greasy, hung feebly in front of my eye balls. I brushed it back carelessly with my wet fingers.
Taking a chair with me, I moved back outside and sat down, imagining what it’d feel like, if I just broke right through the bottom of the balcony and the 13 following bottoms, like a cartoon character, leaving cut-outs in the shape of my descending body in each of the 14 floors. I promised myself I’d be gone. I couldn’t imagine that. I stared into the distance, along the street right underneath the apartment building. Wiśniowa str. Far down the road, my grandfather used to live on this very street in pre-war Warsaw. Cherry str. I cherished the sweet hissing sound of the Polish word for ‘cherry’ and vocalized it softly a few times. My parents and I tried to find his house several times, all in vain, as expected. There was nothing left of it. I’ve barely met him, but I miss him. I used to fantasize about his life quite often, putting on old records with Warsavian music from the 1920’s and 1930’s. Imagining, how he celebrated his youth, how he gavotted around downtown and Mokotów, looking for trouble, how he used to swim in the Vistula river, when it used to be not fully contaminated with mutations and filth of all kinds, how he made excursions to the Bielany beaches along the river. Now, I don’t anymore. Haven’t played any of the old records in months. I fear getting stuck. Stagnation ain’t an option, I figured. We move forward, we progress, we develop. That’s the only option that’ll have any positive lasting effect on our culture. I promised myself I would uphold my heritage. I couldn’t imagine that. Where is my family? Where the fuck is everyone? Dead. Pulverized. No traces left behind. Burned in German ovens. Exiled to Siberia. Germanized and sovietized after the war. That’s what wars do. Especially the kinds that industrialized the genocide of several peoples. I was the only grandchild they’d ever had. There is no one else whose procreation might result in the prolongation of this line of ancestry. Funny to think that, although Poland’s population was eventually restored and actually exceeded the prewar numbers slightly, I could be the end of the line for my ancestry. A great success for the Third Reich. The worst is that there’s still people out there, who would genuinely skip of joy to hear that the root, the stem, and branches of a slavic family tree died, leaving no buds to blossom and sprout into leaves. And when I think of the right-wing movements blooming in our country at the moment, I am not sure if they’re entirely wrong. What am I to do, when there’s barely anything left of me? I am the last crumb of DNA left in a world full of hungry pigeons.
I am grey. I am feathered and afraid. I am the disease. Greasy, gnarly, self-indulgent, self-pitying produce of that which boomed. I consume myself. I am afraid. In fact, I’m terrified of my demise. I am them. They are me. The farce I’s playing must end. I guarded my baying till the end. Now I weep and hate, in spite of knowing better, I sink into a somber late summer slumber.
“What’s up, baby? Why you sitting out here?”, a little voice from behind me appeared. My girlfriend’s hand lay soothingly on my shoulder. She smiled at me.
“Nothing. Let’s have coffee and a smoke.”, I smiled back.
