Apologies to Putin and @pussyrrriot

I am sorry for using the name of Pussy Riot in my blog posts. My intentions were good, mostly. The question is, what is good in my case?

I write for the same reasons that Slavoj Žižek does. I'm positive about it. Is Slavoj good?


I thought I could cleanse myself of my past through writing.

I spoke to my Muse the same way Pussy Riot had addressed Saint 

Mary:

Virgin Mary, Mother of God

Chase Putin out.

Alas, it didn't work. There was nothing to tell. Which brings us to the real scheming behind my decision to involve Pussy Riot as a topic in my posts.

I wanted to highlight the difference between activists, say, in Russia and my home country. Pussy Riot had focus, their subject matter was burning hot. In Finland, the so-called intellectual debate reminds you of a night at the morgue. And I'm not talking about the scene in Requiem for a Dream (the novel), either.

Tomorrow we are heading for our funeral. A quick stop by the furnace, and then, we shall receive such a beautiful ceremony, a solemn celebration of our death. It will be arranged by the very same guy Virgin Mary should have driven out of the temple. Should have lashed him. He's a stubborn guy; he won't believe you otherwise.

Bury me at sea where no murdered ghost

can haunt me

If I rock upon the waves no corpse can lie upon me 

House of the Lord is no currency exchange. Well, nobody wants to change currency with him anyway any more. So that problem solves itself, kind of.

It is not fair. Not fair to hit my fellow native activists on the head with Pussy Riot. The competition is just too brutal for us, globally, aesthetically, in every way. Finns weren't made to last.

So, my apologies to everyone involved, or not.

Apologies to Mr Putin as well, for not stating clearly enough what I meant by the dedication of my book to him.

The dedication goes, Comrade P - VVP.

VVP means, in addition to the president himself, vedä vittu päähäs. This translates into English, clumsily, as "pull a pussy over your head."

And he might just have done that.

https://kirja.elisa.fi/ekirja/eramaan-hutsu-eli-t-chomsudovsky

You can read the first part of the apology here.

Apologies to @pussyrrriot

An apology is a tool. You can mind-fuck people with it. Manipulate them with it, as long as you need to, or until your credit runs out. That's when you need another tool, my friend. You need a whole box of tools, and have to master every one of them, if you want to make it to the top in the Himalayas of psychopathy.

That's what I thought last night, as I watched A Fragile Trust on TV. Jayson Blair, possibly the most notorious compulsive liar in the universe - even Vladimir Putin might have picked up a trick or two from him - yes, poor Jason squirmed and trashed like a giant python, shedding skin after skin after skin: I was an alcoholic. Also a cocaine addict. Oh, and bipolar. And I tried to kill myself! But I didn't! Because I was thinking about you, my dear reader, how you'd feel if I offed myself because of such a tiny offense as lying to you... deliberately... repeatedly... over and over again. So I thought I had to make amends. And live! Had to make it up to you.... My dear reader: You have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to attend a seminar on life management and hear everything I've learned during my trial by fire! I'm sure you're in? No? What the.... Well, you have to buy my memoir at least!

In the end of the movie Jayson drove away in his convertible, without as much a scratch to his skin. The psychos always do....

I've learned everything I need to know about psychos - and tons of other things as well - from one book: Columbine by Dave Cullen. If you haven't read it yet, you'll have to start tomorrow. Hurry up! Time is running out... maybe the greenhouse effect or some lowlife of a dictator will draw the curtain on Earth by Thursday... or sooner. We may never know. So read, find out, study. Don't swallow what you see on TV without biting first. The biting, in this case, is called thinking. It is a kind of a demo version of DIY, but with less action, is all. Activism for couch potatoes.

Ah shit, I'm too tired to try my Jayson routine tonight. I'll have to get back to you tomorrow....

Anyway, I'm sorry. Alright?

I don't like Slavoj Žižek, though I've never read him. No one in my shoes would.

The apology goes on and on here.

Speak, @carlbildt

A barren field. An actor appears. He/she is in the role of Heath Ledger portraying the Joker pretending to be Carl Bildt

BILDT    How was it that the Balkan wars began? Let me tell you. In '85, a farmer in Kosovo stood on his field and cried that he had been deprived for long enough. He was a Serb, naturally, which should be clear to y’all by now. Right? He took a bottle of beer, stuck it on top of a stick; he shoved the other end of the stick firmly into the ground. Then he dropped his pants and sat on the bottle. That hurt. The farmer dragged himself to a hospital and told everyone that two Albanians had tied him up and stuck a bottle up his rear, bottom first.

Later on, the poor bastard confessed what had really happened to anyone who would listen. But the powder keg was already smoldering. The Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences immortalized this incident in a memo published in '86, stating that the Serbs had been oppressed for long enough. They felt that they had been constantly kicked in the head, but not lately in the rear. The case of the bottled farmer dredged up some of the darkest memories from a time when the Turks impaled locals, that is, the Serbs, willy-nilly. Of course, the Albanians were the descendants of the Turks… just like the Bosnian Muslims, but the Serbs remembered them a little later on.

That was how it happened. It is a true story; go and ask the RT news channel if you don't believe me. In my opinion, this touching incident captures the national character of the Serbs, in so far as it has reared its head during the 1990s and since. I know that “national character” is a dirty word, but perhaps I’ll be allowed to use it this once. Or perhaps national pride. Yes, that's better.

Speaking of stakes, the Europeans made a stab at that too back in the day, especially the Romanian reigning champion Vlad the Impaler, or the artist formerly known as Dracula. The notorious Turk Mehmet the Conqueror intended for his army to ride to Wallachia, Vlad's home digs, like he was taking a stroll to the bazaar, but in the end he turned back. He was faced with an extraordinary forest: 20 000 bodies dangling from stakes. Can’t recall now whether the bodies were Vlad's own people or Turks - probably both - but in any case the publicity stunt paid off.

I have been around the game of politics long enough. I have learned to appreciate men of action with some sense of humor. But hold on, there’s a message now from studio… WHAT? No, it can’t be… They are saying that the Norwegian mass murderer also had a thing for the Impaler. Shit! Just forget what I said. Forget everything. You can't like anything any longer – these motherfucking cockroaches will ruin it in any case, just because they can.

Above all, you must not forget that all the nations involved - or not involved, which is the most pathetic way of being smacked in the middle of it - yes, all the nations tangled up in the Yugoslavian conflict were equally guilty, and only Christ in His infinite mercy can save us.

Now think of the farmer, being dragged around what used to be Yugoslavia, from one medical inspection to another. The results are widely publicized: his wounds may or may not be self-inflicted. The farmer wants to disappear from the face of the earth, to wake up from this nightmare and find himself at home in Kosovo.

The first victim of the war was the truth, and the second was the farmer, poor Djordje. Poems were written about him.

Don't laugh. Djordre was the first one to be shot.

The Arab Spring dawned when one Tunisian trader had had enough. And in precisely the same way, the dream of a Greater Serbia was dusted off from where it had lain in winter storage to wait out the long dry season.

The vessel broke, the gut burst.

All I’m asking for is the opportunity to save face. My own, and that of my fellow Europeans. Is that too much? We’ve been humiliated enough. Fuck the EU. Yes, I heard that.

Come on, I'm on your side. Show a little faith.

No need for the ICTY to send their bloodhounds on my trail any more. The trail has gone cold. I walked upon the water and - lo, behold - am the foreign minister now, of that tiny microscopic country of mine. Where we mind our own microscopic business. So please, all I’m asking: show us some respect. Or else stick a bottle up your ass and beg for mercy. There won’t be any, if you abandon me now. Did I make myself clear? All right now, scram.

Translated from Finnish by Arttu Ahava… and the author, who is to blame for all the errors and mistakes.

Soccer Blues Funeral

All periods of time have ends to them, and these fatal endings we anticipate. A period of time – a day, an hour… and this will end, we say; all this will end, the season will turn, and all will be over. We look in vain for some eternal moment, for happiness, felicity, that state of bliss that will go on for ever and ever. Is not happiness defined only when no term to its extent is imagined? So Rimbaud thought, it seems to me. His seasons are those stretches of time that open unawares and close painfully on our lives.

Wow. What a fine specimen of Many-Worlds Propaganda... and yet it hit a nerve in me.

Those words of Paul Schmidt's, from his Translator's Introduction (1973) to the complete works of Arthur Rimbaud, sum up my feelings at the moment like an epitaph on my tombstone on the grave that is today.

In the evening, I played a game of soccer with some forgotten filmmakers, plus a riffraff of hangaround members like myself. After the game I felt depressed. This is very rare, without a precedent, almost. I felt something lacking. I felt empty.

During the wannabe directors' game, one of the laziest players ever, a mostly harmless guy whose appearance was half Jacques Tati, half Woody Allen, suddenly started bossing me around. He told me to take a turn as the goalkeeper. After recovering from my astonishment, I said, "In a minute." And after the minute, I did as I was told.

During the game, I shrugged it off. Afterwards, it started gnawing at me. Who the hell Woody thought he was? The captain, or something? Lionel fucking Messi the Second?

Had it been nearly anyone else who gave me orders, it would have been fine. But being bullied by Woody was more than an insult. It was humiliating. What Woody lacked in technique, which was a lot, was emphasized by the absence, by the inhuman void of spirit which had consumed his performance on the field – before, after and during the games.

And yet. Yet it would have been okay, if he had just said please.

I needed another game. A real game, this time, where no neurotic would tell me what to do. I wouldn't let 'em. I would tell them to go fuck themselves, something they should practice.

I needed more.

I came home, gave Miina (Mine) something to eat, grabbed my bag and set off again. I headed to the green pastures by the river, the Rotten River, hoping that there would be at least one game going on, like a house party that I could crash.

Here's what I encountered.

There was nobody.

I learned an important lesson today. Or thought I learned. Whatever.

Don't let the idiots get an upper hand.

You may regret it later.

You might not get a second chance.

Get back, get back, get.

The moron might be Vladimir Fucking Putin II for all you know.

And soon the season will be over.

Boxer: The Real Jean-Michel Basquiat and Fake (Street Art, Recap)

We never went to Paris, Magyar, P and I. That was fiction. But the part about Magyar's publishing outfit moving from putting out books to printing cans, that was true. I heard Magyar was moving from the field of literature into the visual arts.

He wanted to be an artist, as had countless others before him. Good for him! Good luck on the path you've chosen. I had lost my appetite for art ages ago, while I was trying to preserve my brain in alcohol. But lately, I've been reading some books. And I can feel someone rattling the cage, ever so lightly...

We took a trip to Paris, my daughter and I, last July. Here are some of my notes from the three-day journey.

*

My daughter wanted to do some shopping, and somehow we drifted into Clichy. She wanted to see the Moulin Rouge anyway, and I knew exactly how to get there... thanks to Jean Rhys.

From the balcony Marya could see one side of the Place Blanche. Opposite, the Rue Lepic mounted upwards to the rustic heights of Montmartre. It was astonishing how significant, coherent and understandable it all became after a glass of wine on an empty stomach.

We took the obligatory pictures, then continued climbing Rue Lepic. I showed my daughter the building the main character in Jean Rhys's Quartet had lived in. Always in trouble with the landlady. Always the cause of one scandal or another, without knowing why, what she'd done. Until Ford Madox Ford came to the rescue with his squeeze, and the scandal erupted for real. I didn't tell my daughter that. I told her van Gogh had lived on Rue Lepic as well, I just didn't know where.

We bought some brie and crackers and a jug of ice cream (a touch of genius, that ice cream was, not my idea, of course), and sat to eat on a bench where I thought Rue Lepic terminated. We ate most of the cheese, some crackers and all of the ice cream, sitting on a bench in a clearing, and eavesdropped an American hipster making fun of the local hipsters. He called them bonbons or something, describing how cool they thought they were, living in Paris, throwing the weight of their parents' bank account around.

The guy was a tour guide for a group of his compatriots. The guy was in his twenties or thirties. He was slim, had a short-cropped beard of gold and copper; he wore the usual hipster-attire of jeans and shirt. He let his listeners in on a secret: just around the corner, right over there, you found an excellent restaurant with quite reasonable prices, big portions, huge salads, and so on. The business side being taken care of, he then came down heavy with the artsy.

He told a story of a female artist who had started painting her self-portraits everywhere to get back to an ex-boyfriend. "I don't wanna see you ever again," he had said. Now, of course, he had to. His ex-girl got incredibly rich and famous. There was a work of hers on the outside wall of a gallery:

To cut a long story short, she had realized the American Dream.

As street artists go, she was the perfect target for guided tours.

Then the guide said, "Well, other artists have lived here as well, and next we are going to see where one the most famous of them all, ever, lived."

The group ran away. I watched them go. They disappeared from view. I shot up from the bench, spoon in hand, and into the middle of the street to see. There. I saw the Americans, all right.

"There's got to be a plaque or something," I told my daughter. "I have to go and see, once they're gone."

While we were waiting for the first group to get out of the way, another group stopped in the same spot their predecessors had occupied, and another guide recounted the same stories, in another language, as far as I bothered to listen. I wondered out loud, why to tell the same stuff to everyone. Didn't they have any imagination? Didn't they ever get bored? Am I the only one who is always getting bored, besides King Arthur?

After a beat, we followed the tracks of the first group. There was no sign on the wall where they had stood, watching the van Gogh wannabe, the guide, waving his arms. There was a Asian café downstairs, that was all. It must have been here anyway, I thought, staring at the derelict building.

My daughter tapped me on the shoulder. She pointed to the other side of the street. And indeed, there were our friends from Group #2, standing in front of a carefully preserved white house, under that great, liberating plaque which said,

All I will hear is a drunken shout

When they are done and all worn out.

I will throw up and then pass out...*

We climbed on. And Jean Rhys wrote:

The lights winking up at a pallid moon, the slender painted ladies, the wings of the Moulin Rouge, the smell of petrol and perfume and cooking.

The Place Blanche, Paris, Life itself. One realized all sorts of things. The value of an illusion, for instance, and that the shadow can be more important than the substance. All sorts of things.

On the road to Sacré-Coeur, to the steps of Sacré-Coeur, we take another break. My daughter asks me if I would like to live in Paris. I don't think so. It would be like living in a museum. This substantial remark is preceded or followed by a sermon of mine on the subject of writers and artists and hangers-on and yes-men and tourists who swarm the place as soon as somebody has achieved anything, something of their own. Something original. It's the same as with the rock stars. People are just out to exploit them! Rock stars have nothing to do with it, my daughter insists. I insist that they do.

"But you have followed those stars here," my daughter says, "haven't you?"

Yeah. It is nice to visit those places, I explain. I'm not staying, feeding on dead people like a hyena.

Because I cannot stay. That is the real reason, the only reason why not. I didn't have the money. It was at this point that my daughter asked if I wouldn't like to live in Paris. She gave me an opportunity to safe face. She must have seen that the old man's logic "was incorrect even before it reached its 'ergo'":

It is wrong to say, 'I think'. One ought to say, 'I am thought'.

Coming down the stairs, the vendors pass us, running away from the cops or the soldiers with their Kevlar vests and machine guns. They almost fall to their faces, the vendors do, they are laughing so hard. The audacity of hope? Once again I know nothing. I don't even know that. We take a metro to the hotel in silence.

"Lady Gaga," one of the vendors called to my daughter earlier, as he was trying to close a deal. "No need to be afraid."

He offered his hand, we hurried past.

"Where are you from?"

"Finland," I shot back, stumbling into safety. And after that, the vendors stumbled past us. After that...

Who the hell is Haussmann?
Doesn't matter, really:
we want to be his protégés!

___

http://www.wikiart.org/en/jean-michel-basquiat/boxer
__

*) The quotes in red are from Arthur Rimbaud. I highly recommend an iconoclastic biography of the boy wonder, written by Graham Robb: Rimbaud. Picador, London 2000.

I had Rimbaud with me in Paris, sat reading it on the sidewalk of Boulevard Haussmann while my daughter did her shopping inside. Without a hint of irony, that was bliss.

The story... if there is one... goes on here.

GRU and the Theory of Many Worlds

It is easy for a present-day man or woman to fall for the theory of many worlds. The song of the siren is heard everywhere from Korengal Valley to Ramblas, Barcelona and in every nook and corner in between, nonstop, around the clock. The allure, the bite of the song lies in nostalgia for a time that never was. There's no time for regrets; there is, in effect, nothing to regret!

Whatever it was, it didn't happen.

The mantra of Radio Cloud 9 is transmitted through a whole industry of romantic comedies, sentimental novels, cry-in-your-beer ballads and whatnot. They are all about love affairs. And they all preach the same line about "going back" to the one true love that was lost. They play with the illusion that it's possible. Dear Reader, it is not. You can never go home again. But let's not get any deeper into that, please. I have stuff to do.

Like I did yesterday. I was going to go play soccer, when I received a note that there was stuff to pick up at the post office. Components of an e-cigarette, to be precise. I had switched back to regular smokes after all the electronic alternatives had ceased to function. Yet, I had my health and my future to think about. So off to post office I was. But I didn't feel like walking.

I had a rusty old bike my sister once gave me. I had stored it in the cellar years ago and forgotten all about it. The brakes didn't work, but you could ride the thing, to the post office, at least. I took the bike out and noticed that the tires were flat.

Sometime back the management of the flophouse where I room had sent a notice: every bike in the cellar had to have the name of the owner and his/her apartment number attached to it. All the bikes with no identification would be taken to the scrapyard and shot.

My name and number were still in place on the rear rack, inside a yellow plastic folder. And that got me thinking.

Riding my bike to the huge shopping center, where the post office had recently moved, I started contemplating two things:

(i) Russians: their cunning, thieving, lying ways;

(ii) and New York in general, Jean-Michel Basquiat in particular.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/hugh-everett-biography/

I could have been an artist. Instead of Grozny, I could have been riding my bike in New York right now, just like JMB did, before he overdosed, if I hadn't pissed away my best years with P, drinking and fighting and drinking and cursing and crying. Damn! Why did I do that?

What if I could go back, and make different choices? That'd be so cool. Or better yet, maybe there was a parallel universe, where I was in fact in New York, pedaling happily towards Washington Square or someplace?

That way I could get off the hook of my own choices. And that would be awfully kind of God or Hugh Everett or whoever was responsible, what with my tires having been slashed by the GRU and all.

Suddenly I wasn't 46 years old or something. And if I was, I hadn't wasted my life. I had achieved something. Oh yeah. I was somebody!

I'm on a road to nowhere, I sang as I rode. I'm on my way to Paradise.

Country boy, you got a lot to lose

Country boy, I wish I was in your shoes 

You'll find the previous episode here.

The story goes on here.

Magyar, Interrupted

I was looking for a sensible summary of the many worlds theory, and what did I find? A cat, who does not exist. Or maybe she does. Maybe she is dead and alive at the same time...

My cat is mine. Her name is Miina, which means a mine in Finnish. You know, like a Claymore. I do not own her. Her personality, her life is hers and hers alone... and certainly not Mr Schrödinger's. I refuse to accept the outcome of that dude's thought experiment, or the paradox illuminated by it, from which (the refusal, not the experiment) follows that nothing can ever happen. The world is fixed, as it is, and will never change. Nothing will happen, period.

There, I said it. We are standing beside a road, under a tree, waiting, and shall live happily ever after. Agreed?

Let's move on to happier thoughts.

But it is the thinking that is the tricky part.

If up to a point the cat inside the box is both alive and dead, there has to be a trigger, a little something that eliminates the other outcome... for instance, the possibility that the cat will survive the experiment. A trigger that fires the bullet that drops one of the two possible outcomes.

And that trigger just might be a thought. A teeny weeny innocent little slip of the tongue, I mean, mind.

I don't think opening the box qualifies as the trigger. No, something has to happen (or not happen) before someone opens the box.

This line of thinking can drive you nuts. Especially, if you happen to be me, and try not to think about my cat. Who, again, isn't mine, but hers and hers alone...

Is it possible for something to own itself?

To own something, you have to be something other than the thing that you're supposed to own; outside of it, so to speak.

All right. Make no mistake: NOBODY owns my (pardon the expression) cat. Not even her.

Are we clear on this? Good, excellent. Can we now just move the fuck on?

He's scared. He's really, really scared now.

Who's scared? Who said that?

Who am I?

This is the kind of shit that too much reflection and introspection and contraception may lead to. The kind of shit that drove my cousin to off himself. Although I can't be positive about that.

No one can. No one is able to tell you the infinite imaginable reasons behind someone's decision to die. There are so many candidates for a reason, countless alternatives, and they only multiply the second you try to grasp them.

You can start with just one thought. The fear of doing something irredeemable. Like turning a live cat into a dead cat. Some say that both cats exist at the same time, but I don't buy that crap.

It is precisely the kind of scifi pudding that, if you eat too much of it, will lead you into believing "the theory of many worlds"... that all the opportunities you lost, the chances you missed, they are still there, preserved in a freezer next to Walt Disney's corpse (if it ain't his, then whose is it?), and all you have to do is go back in time, in your mind, and the life you didn't live will actually come to pass.

And that's the idea, the reason why I interrupted Magyar in the first place.

Now, if you'll excuse me, we have some Germans to beat up. Figuratively speaking, of course.

I'm laying my trust at the feet of Fred's. The feet aren't his, but cut me some slack, will ya? Fred is my alter ego. No, I am Fred. Fred is me. In the best of all possible worlds.

We shan't overcome, and you can count on that, baby.

Mr Schrödinger didn't take into account one thing. The cat itself, who's a ferocius little beast, and will storm out of the box the second she damn well pleases, if I don't get to her first. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is life.

That is action.

Read the next dispatch,
"GRU and the Theory of Many worlds,"
here.

Magyar

[VERSIO SUOMEKSI ALLA.]

We were talking to each other, P and I, at the time. So there were no hard feelings between Magyar and me either.

Magyar made an impression, alright, when you first met him. He had a shaved head, well-trimmed beard and mustache and, without exception, dark clothes. Later on, as I saw the photo of Anton LaVey, the prophet and founder of the Church of Satan, I couldn't help but cry, "Magyar!" That wasn't quite accurate, after all. It wasn't until I was reading the thorough portrait of Gabriele d'Annunzio, a "poet, lover and preacher of war," written by Lucy Hughes-Hallett, that I realized I had at last encountered an earlier incarnation of Magyar's, in flesh and spirit.

I was still dreaming of becoming an author. I saw Magyar as a unique opportunity to gain a footing in the publishing world, with him working there an all. Or wasn't he? What sort of books was his shop specializing in? Was it a bad idea for me to come up with a manuscript and send it to them to read?

"At the moment," Magyar said, reflecting every word, "presently. We don't publish books."

Really? What, then? What did they publish, if not books? Just give me a hint, and I can skip instruments just like that, try something new...

"Cans," he said, and rose from the easy chair.

He went into the kitchen and opened the fridge. He took a beer, single beer, and opened it. I knew that sound. He stayed in the kitchen drinking his beer. It was time for me to go.

... 

We made a trip to Paris that summer, the three of us. P wasn't 100% sure of their affair yet, and my coming along lowered the stakes some, I guess, made the journey little less a personal affair. I served as an insurance against disaster. Or maybe they just needed a chaperon, someone who'd keep them off of each other for a moment, force them out on the streets, to see the city. Otherwise they would have spent three days and nights in bed.

Magyar enjoyed his role as a tour guide. P and I played a part we were most comfortable with, one we fell back upon every time we met. We granted the foreign fools glimpses into the most exotic traits in our beloved national character.

On a street corner in Montmartre, Magyar was giving a lecture on a street artist who had rocketed to the top of the art world from these very sidewalks. I looked at P: had she heard of the artist? P shook her head. Neither had I.

Magyar beckoned us to look at something on the wall. It was a painted picture of a lady with a long, black hair and cherry red lips. She was looking at you over her shoulder. The painter must have aimed at an image of a seductress. It looked like a tattoo on somebody's upper arm. I told Magyar this. He just ignored me. Magyar wouldn't let anything interrupt his presentation.

But the universe does not work that way. Especially the universe where an alternative, parallel reality is always at hand, if you're not satisfied with the present one. So "Magyar, interrupted" will be the name of the next post, and it is going to be all about choices. 

The story begins here.
And continues here.

Olimme noihin aikoihin puheväleissä P:n kanssa. Meillä ei siis ollut Magyarin kanssa kitkaa välillämme.

Magyar oli omalla tavallaan vaikuttava ilmestys. Hänellä oli kalju päälaki, hyvin hoidetut viikset ja parta sekä poikkeuksetta tummanpuhuvat vaatteet. Kun myöhemmin näin saatananpalvojien profeetan Anton LaVeyn kuvan, en voinut kuin älähtää: "Magyar!" Se laukaus tosin meni vähän ohi. Sitten luin Lucy Hughes-Hallettin perinpohjaista muotokuvaa Gabriele d'Annunziosta, "runoilijasta, rakastajasta ja sodanlietsojasta", ja tajusin viimein löytäneeni Magyarin aiemman inkarnaation, hengessä ja lihassa.

Haaveilin yhä kirjoittelijan urasta. Näin Magyarissa ainutlaatuisen tilaisuuden luoda suhteita kustannusmaailmaan. Olihan hän käsittääkseni alalla töissä. Vai eikö ollut? Millaisiin julkaisuihin hänen firmansa keskittyi? Olisiko minun järkeä kasata kässäri ja lähettää se heille luettavaksi?

"Tällä hetkellä", Magyar sanoi ja harkitsi jokaista sanaa, "juuri nyt me ei julkaista lainkaan kirjoja."

Niinkö? Mitä sitten? Mitä he sitten julkaisivat, jos ei kirjoja? Anna vain vihje, niin voin käden käänteessä vaihtaa alaa, kokeilla jotain uutta...

"Peltipurkkeja", Magyar sanoi ja nousi nojatuolistaan.

Hän käveli keittiöön, avasi jääkaapin oven ja äänestä päätellen otti kaljan. Kyllä - kuulin kun hän avasi sen. Yhden kaljan. Hän jäi keittiöön juomaan sitä. Minun oli aika lähteä.

*

Sinä kesänä lähdimme kolmestaan Pariisiin. P ei ollut takuuvarma suhteestaan Magyariin, ja mukana oloni teki matkasta vähemmän riskialttiin, vähemmän henkilökohtaisen, luulisin. Toimin vakuutuksena katastrofia vastaan. Tai ehkä tarkoitukseni oli palvella esiliinana, pitää heidät hetki pois toistensa kimpusta, pakottaa ylös ja ulos, katsomaan kaupunkia. Muuten he olisivat viettäneet kolme vuorokautta vuoteessa.

Magyar keskittyi oppaan osaan. P ja minä löysimme tutun sävelen, kun esitimme ulkomaan eläville kansanluonteemme eksoottisimpia piirteitä. Osa sujui meiltä luonnostaan. Palasimme siihen aina, kun olimme yhdessä.

Montmartrella Magyar luennoi meille paikallisesta katutaiteilijasta, joka oli ponnistanut maailmanmaineeseen näiltä samoilta jalkakäytäviltä. Katsoin P:aa kysyvästi: oliko hän kuullut taiteilijasta? P pudisti päätään. En ollut minäkään.

Magyar viittilöi katsomaan jotain seinässä. Se oli maalaus naisesta, jolla oli pitkä musta tukka ja kirsikanpunaiset huulet. Hän tähyili katsojaa olkansa yli. Maalari oli kai ajatellut tehdä viettelijättären muotokuvan lätkäistessään värinsä seinään. Se näytti tatuoinnilta jonkun olkavarressa. Kerroin tämän Magyarille. Hän ei välittänyt puheistani. Mikään mahti maailmassa ei olisi saanut Magyaria sulkemaan suutaan.

Mutta maailma ei mene niin, varsinkaan maailma, jossa vaihtoehtoinen, rinnakkainen todellisuus on aina kätevästi saatavilla, kun nykyinen ei miellytä. Joten "Katkennut Magyar" olkoon seuraavan kirjoituksen otsikko, ja siinä käsittelemme yksinomaan valintoja.

Lue tarinan alku täältä.

Pathologies & Pussy Riot

[SAMAA PASKAA SUOMEKSI here.]

P detested two things in fiction: politics and war. She wouldn't look into a novel or sit down and watch a movie that dealt with these topics. You had to draw the line somewhere. Grrrl had to have principles.

In her youth P announced that she does not eat macaroni. In the light of available evidence, the conviction was hard to maintain. She matured and proclaimed she does not have sex when intoxicated. She campaigned for her goal. Between the idea and reality fell the shadow, she was that shadow, and saw herself at the corner of her eye, as if in a mirror in the middle of the night, but who cared, as nobody else did. See her, that is. Or care. Well, what the fuck? When a man turned into a pain in the ass, as they always did, she cut the ties and promptly slept with the next one on her assembly line of life. Usually the sequence of events was in reverse, however. First came the weekend full of fun with the upcoming candidate; then, as a consequence, she was able to burn her bridges. The method worked so well, it was amazing. She was proud of herself, true to herself.

P dreamed of becoming an author. She wrote all the time in a standard school notebook (the large variant). In her own words, she kept a diary. P never revised what she had written, but produced more. She had no notion of creating an accomplished work, something perhaps worth publishing. She didn't want her name on a cover of a book. The attention seeking syndrome of men was simply absurd on this field as well, P snorted. They wanted fame. So help me God.

To tell the truth, P wrote with her pussy. Sex was the only form of self-expression she was completely at ease with. That she trusted. Her personality was built in bed, and it was in bed that it thrived. She had yet to receive any indisputable evidence that there was life beyond banging. The Big Bang, she joked with her husband, Mammal Prilepin, the publisher, who was similarly inclined. In bed, out of it. Après le baiser, bof, Mammal said, the only words in French he knew. And P had taught them. She had probably read the sentence someplace. On a lavatory wall in Switzerland or wherever she had roamed, before.

The persons depicted above have one thing in common with the Russian revolutionaries. The pearls thrown by PR can be found in the bowels of P. Or in the mouth of the man of the house. It depends on the stage of digestion we're at. The world is a weird place, and worth fighting for.

There is something wrong with the sentence, so I can't possibly comment on that.

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I'M AFRAID THERE  EXISTS AN ALTERNATIVE ENDING TO THIS STORY. IT CAN BE FOUND IN THE BOOK 

THE ADVERSARY BY EMMANUEL CARRERE.

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TO BE CONTINUED... OVER here.