Note no. 33

        I don’t want you to feel sorry for me. I’m healthy, my eyes are still working quite well, and I live more in my own, imaginary world than in your reality. But there is something destroying me on the outside, as well as on the deep, dark inside. Insomnia it is.

        A long time ago, my doctor told me that each evening, about seven – eight o’clock, I should go out for a walk. To breath with fresh air and to get rid of all the stresses, nerves and thoughts. If I want to, I can reflect whilst I’m walking, to avoid thinking when I try to sleep. Because possibly this is my problem – imagining. Haruki Murakami wrote: “Everything is an issue of imagination. Our responsibility starts with imagination. Yeats wrote: In dreams begin the responsibility – he was right indeed. But on the other hand where there is no imagination, the responsibility will never be born.” And I fully agree with him.

        This night I was sitting in my room. I can now imagine myself sitting there. It seems to me that everything around me is peaceful and quiet. I hear this knocking of the cogs of life all the time and it became imperceptible like the clatter of the clock hands. The Earth is not moving, at least metaphorically. The laws of day and night are contingent on each other. But I’m afraid.

        As usual, I was sitting in my bed trying to write something. But my thoughts were spinning around the images and ideas which were completely new to me. Somehow they were independent – their liberation had never happened to me before.        I told myself that this phase is just a natural reaction of my brain – reaction to this unknown feeling, which was filling every single little cell of my flesh. It’s not the case but someone told me that was love – but love cannot be so painful! This feeling was ripping me on the inside – but on the other hand I felt claustrophobic in my own room (it wasn’t the first time). The walls were too close. Everything seemed useless, as it was brought here against my will. I did not want anything, but the state of my physical stabilization was growing in fear and impatience. I realized that I’m dependent on emotions. But it was a desert of loneliness, deeper then before, deeper than ever.

        In the next scene I stood outside the door, facing the night. I immediately realized that day is disgusting. Daytimes are not worth mentioning. All of those early birds, waking up in the morning to enjoy the sunrise, they are lamentable and nothing more than that, fools that trade the black diamond of the night for the gold of the day. They make my skin crawl. The lack of light terrifies them; when they wake up in the darkness, immediately they turn the light on hoping to see something different than during the day. I know it very well, and in some cases understand, that a lot of people are afraid of late night hours. You never know what is hiding in the darkest backstreet you have to pass. Those red-eyed monsters are your worst fears. You cannot identify them. Creepy faces crawling right beneath your skin, when you hear an unknown sound. Maybe your sense of hearing is not able to transfer it when your mind tells it to be as frozen as a homeless person, who is probably dying in that backstreet. However my worries are different; I know their reasons. Do not let me mislead you; I do fear lots of things and this feeling is particularly familiar for me. I started moving forward.

        I remember myself standing on the crossroads of the two slightly lightened, dirty streets, not far away for my home – maybe two minutes. More or less somewhere between the train station and the Police station in this bloody Bognor. I didn’t know where I was going – I just wanted to go. So I started walking. I passed so many streetlamps that I couldn’t be bothered to count them; electric bowls, lonely eyes watching my every step, the dead, pathetic imitation of the even more pathetic sun. They couldn’t stop the sad paralysis of night. He was still in my memory.

        This night was foggy, covered with the breeze which could come from over a mountain lake, blue and silver as a Kingdom of restless souls. Actually every night is like that - the space for anxiety, the unconscious looks of murderers, strange, wonderful dreams, figures drawn out with the pencil of darkness. But this time it was hitting me in the face. Every little action reminds me of him. And even if that phrase wasn’t made up by me, myself, I want to name it a ‘Hard-Boiled Wonderland’, a place, no, the place to wonder!

        I suddenly stopped when I was passing a butcher’s. No, it was its window-shop that stopped me there. All the meat and other edible animal parts were sleeping quietly in the dark. I said to myself:

        “Just a dash of effort, a dash of imagination and this window-shop can show you the real miracles. Sheep and pigs, lamb and pork or – more precisely – their corpses, don’t they remind you of their nationality, their own fairy tale, own Wonderland? And these vulgarly chopped off calf’s legs? Veal? The farmers, the greenness of fields when you are jealous of the cows’ freedom, forgetting about tomorrow’s dinner.”

        A spasm of pain twisted my face. I was trembling with laughter. Maybe I was thinking about death, who knows? Every single part of a creature which is or should be alive gives me this feeling.

        Trying to forget those thoughts I hear that familiar sound of the resting ground. The pavement echoes with the quick rhythm of the footsteps. I’m gradually leaving the dead bodies behind my back, taking a cigarette out of my pocket. A few seconds later I’m freeing the light, white, dirty cigarette’s smoke out of my mouth. I saw a man crossing the road in front of me; we are in Bognor Regis so possibly we have the same nationality. But I know that we are not the same. I despise him; I am not certain why but I’m sure that he is worth my despising. Maybe he doesn’t have this abyss and depth, which I possess. But please, don’t misunderstand me – I still think that I’m deeply, deeply hollow. I despise myself, as I am a part of the mankind. I’m just a little human filth.

        I’m not walking along the streets anymore in the remembrance of my doctor – now I know where I am going. With a wide, wild smile on my face I’m emphasizing this mental need to differ. I know where I’m going.