Kratke priče i pouke...

[dare...]

***- Odakle si došao?- Niotkud. Ja sam odavde.- Каko to da te nikad nisam sreo?- Nisam izlazio.- Bio si bolestan?- Ne, bio sam zdrav.- Pa, zašto nisi izlazio?- Pa zato. Zato što sam bio zdrav.- А sada, zašto si sada izašao?- Razboleo sam se. Sad sam kao i svi drugi. Niko me neće primetiti.- Šta bi se desilo da te primete?- Proglasili bi me za zdravog.- Je li to rđavo?- Kako gde. U bolesnom svetu, svakako.- I šta bi sa tobom radili?- Lečili bi me dok se ne bih i ja razboleo.- Аli ti si već bolestan, zar nisi?- Оd svoje bolesti, da, samo oni hoće da bolujem od njihove...

[Turnbull]

Diary Emily Witt

I sat on a stool at the centre of the bar, ordered a beer, and refreshed the feeds on my mobile. I waited for something to happen. A basketball game played on several monitors at once. The bar had red fake leather booths, Christmas lights and a female bartender. A lesbian couple cuddled at one end of it. At the other end, around the corner from where I sat, a bespectacled man my age watched the game. As the only man and the only woman alone at the bar, we looked at each other. Then I pretended to watch the game on a monitor that allowed me to look the other way. He turned his back to me to watch the monitor over the pool tables, where the pool players now applauded some exploit. I am not usually comfortable in a bar by myself, but I had been in San Francisco for a week and the apartment I sublet had no chairs in it, just a bed and a couch. My friends in town were married or worked nights. One Tuesday I had lentil soup for supper standing up at the kitchen counter. After I finished, I moved to the couch in the empty living room and sat under the flat overhead light refreshing feeds on my laptop. This was not a way to live. A man would go to a bar alone, I told myself. So I went to a bar alone.

I waited to be approached. A few stools down, two men broke into laughter. One came over to show me why they were laughing. He handed me his mobile and pointed to a Facebook post. I read the post and smiled obligingly. The man returned to his seat. I drank my beer.I allowed myself a moment’s longing for my living room and its couch. The couch had a woollen blanket woven in a Navajo-inspired pattern, exemplary of a trend in San Francisco that a friend of mine calls ‘White People Gone Wild’. When I moved in, the receipt for the blanket was on the mantelpiece. It had cost $228. There was a cast-iron gas stove in the fireplace. I had fiddled with the knobs and the gas, but couldn’t figure out how to ignite it. At night the room had the temperature and pallor of a corpse. There was no television.I returned to my mobile and opened OK Cupid, the free internet dating service. I refreshed the feed that indicated whether other people in the neighbourhood were sitting alone in bars. This service is called OK Cupid Locals. An OK Cupid Locals invitation has to start with the word ‘Let’s’:

Let’s smoke a joint and hang out ☺

Let’s grab a brunch, lunch, beer or some such for some friendly Saturday revelry.

Let’s get a drink after

Koyaanisqatsi

at the Castro.

Let’s meet and tickle.

Let’s enjoy a cookie.

Let’s become friends and explore somewhere.

‘Let’s go now you and I’ always comes into my mind, but I’ve never broadcast an OK Cupid chat signal, I just respond. That night I scrolled until I found a handsome man who had written a benign invitation: ‘Let’s get a drink.’ I looked at his profile. He was Brazilian. I speak Portuguese. He played the drums. ‘Tattoos are a big part of my friends’ and family’s life,’ he wrote. Every era has its own utopian possibilities: ours is the chance to make our lives more bearable through technology.The man generally held responsible for internet dating as we know it today is a native of Illinois called Gary Kremen, but Kremen was out of the internet dating business altogether by 1997, just around the time people were signing up for the internet en masse. Today he runs a solar energy financing company, is an elected official in Los Altos Hills, California and is better known for his protracted legal battle over the ownership of the pornography website sex.com than he is for inventing internet dating. Like many visionary entrepreneurs, Kremen doesn’t have very good management skills. His life has passed through periods of grave disarray. When I met him, at a conference on the internet dating industry in Miami last January, he asked where I was from. ‘Ah, Minnesota,’ he said: ‘Have you ever been to the Zumbro River?’ The Zumbro flows south of Minneapolis past Rochester, home of the Mayo Clinic. It turned out that Kremen had once driven, or been driven, into the river. He used to be addicted to speed.In Miami Kremen recounted the genesis of his ideas about internet dating to a room full of matchmakers. In 1992, he was a 29-year-old computer scientist and one of the many graduates of Stanford Business School running software companies in the Bay Area. One afternoon a routine email with a purchase order attached to it arrived in his inbox. But it wasn’t routine: the email was from a woman. At the time, emails from women in his line of work were exceedingly rare. He stared at it. He showed the email to his colleagues. He tried to imagine the woman behind it. ‘I wonder if she would date me?’ Then he had another idea: what if he had a database of all the single women in the world? If he could create such a database and charge a fee to access it, he would most probably turn a profit.In 1992, that couldn’t be done – modems transmitted information too slowly. Then there was the scarcity of women with online access. Because in its early days the internet was prevalent in worlds that had historically excluded women – the military, finance, mathematics and engineering – women were not online in big numbers. As late as 1996 America Online estimated that of its five million users, 79 per cent were men. In more administrative fields, however, a growing number of women had email.So Kremen started with email. He left his job, hired some programmers with his credit card, and created an email-based dating service. Subscribers were given anonymous addresses from which to send out their profiles with a photo attached. The photos arrived as hard copy, and Kremen and his employees scanned them in by hand. Interested single people who did not yet have email could participate by fax. By 1994 modems had got faster, so Kremen moved to take his company online. He and four male partners formed Electric Classifieds Inc, a business premised on the idea of re-creating online the classifieds section of newspapers, beginning with the personals. They rented an office in a basement in San Francisco and registered the domain match.com.‘ROMANCE – LOVE – SEX – MARRIAGE AND RELATIONSHIPS’ read the headline on an early business plan Electric Classifieds presented to potential investors. ‘American business has long understood that people knock the doors down for dignified and effective services that fulfil these most powerful human needs.’ Kremen eventually removed ‘sex’ from his list of needs, but many of the basic parts of most online dating sites were laid out in this early document. Subscribers completed a questionnaire, indicating the kind of relationship they wanted – ‘marriage partner, steady date, golf partner or travel companion’. Users posted photos: ‘A customer could choose to show himself in various favourite activities and clothing to give the viewing customer a stronger sense of personality and physical character.’The business plan cited a market forecast that suggested 50 per cent of the adult population would be single by 2000 (a 2008 poll found 48 per cent of American adults were single, compared to 28 per cent in 1960). At the time, single people, particularly those over the age of 30, were still seen as a stigmatised group with which few wanted to associate. But the age at which Americans marry was rising steadily and the divorce rate was high. A more mobile workforce meant that single people often lived in cities they didn’t know and the chummy days when a father might set his daughter up with a junior colleague were over. Since Kremen started his company little has changed in the industry. Niche dating sites have proliferated, new technology has made new ways of meeting people possible and new gimmicks hit the market every day, but as I knew from my own experience, the fundamental characteristics of the online dating profile have remained static.At the same time big cities have a way of shrinking. In her essay about leaving New York Joan Didion tells a man she’ll take him to a party where he might meet some ‘new faces’, and he laughs at her. ‘It seemed that the last time he had gone to a party where he had been promised “new faces”, there had been 15 people in the room, and he had already slept with five of the women and owed money to all but two of the men.’ Didion doesn’t say, but I’ve always assumed her friend went to the party anyway.I joined OK Cupid at the age of 30, in late November 2011, with the pseudonym ‘viewfromspace’. When the time came to write the ‘About’ section of my profile, I quoted Didion’s passage, then added: ‘But now we have internet dating. New faces!’ The Didion bit sounded unpleasant, so I replaced it with a more optimistic statement, about internet dating restoring the city’s possibilities to a life that had become stagnant between work, subway and apartment. Then that sounded depressing, so I finally wrote: ‘I like watching nature documentaries and eating pastries.’ From then on I was flooded with suggestions of YouTube videos of endangered species and recommendations for pain au chocolat.OK Cupid was founded in 2004 by four maths majors from Harvard who were good at giving away things people were used to paying for (study guides, music). In 2011 they sold the company for $50 million to IAC, the corporation that now owns Match. Like Match, OK Cupid has its users fill out a questionnaire. The service then calculates a user’s ‘match percentage’ in relation to other users by collecting three values: the user’s answer to a question, how she would like someone else to answer the same question, and the importance of the question to her. These questions ranged from ‘Does smoking disgust you?’ to ‘How often do you masturbate?’ Many questions are specifically intended to gauge one’s interest in casual sex: ‘Regardless of future plans, what’s more interesting to you right now, sex or true love?’ ‘Would you consider sleeping with someone on the first date?’ ‘Say you’ve started seeing someone you really like. As far as you’re concerned, how long will it take before you have sex?’ I found these algorithms put me in the same area – social class and level of education – as the people I went on dates with, but otherwise did very little to predict whom I would like. One occurrence in both online and real-life dating was an inexplicable talent on my part for attracting vegetarians. I am not a vegetarian.I should note that I answered all the questions indicating an interest in casual sex in the negative, but that’s fairly common for women. The more an internet-dating site leads with the traditional signifiers of (male) sexual desire – pictures of women in their knickers, open hints about casual sex – the less likely women are to sign up for it. At a 51/49 male to female ratio, OK Cupid has a near parity many sites would envy. It’s not that women are averse to the possibility of a casual encounter (I would have been very happy had the right guy appeared), but they need some sort of alibi before they go looking. Kremen had also noticed this, and set up Match to look neutral and bland, with a heart-shaped logo.I wanted a boyfriend. I was also badly hung up on someone and wanted to stop thinking about him. People cheerily list their favourite movies and hope for the best, but darkness simmers beneath the chirpy surface. An extensive accrual of regrets lurks behind even the most well-adjusted profile. I read 19th-century novels to remind myself that sunny equanimity in the aftermath of heartbreak was not always the order of the day. On the other hand, online dating sites are the only places I’ve been where there’s no ambiguity of intention. A gradation of subtlety, sure: from the basic ‘You’re cute,’ to the off-putting ‘Hi there, would you like to come over, smoke a joint and let me take nude photos of you in my living room?’The largest free dating site in America is another algorithm-based service, Plenty of Fish, but in New York everyone I know uses OK Cupid, so that’s where I signed up. I also signed up to Match, but OK Cupid was the one I favoured, mostly because I got such constant and overwhelming attention from men there. The square-jawed bankers who reigned over Match, with their pictures of scuba diving in Bali and skiing in Aspen, paid me so little attention it made me feel sorry for myself. The low point came when I sent a digital wink to a man whose profile read, ‘I have a dimple on my chin,’ and included photos of him playing rugby and standing bare-chested on a deep-sea fishing vessel holding a mahi-mahi the size of a tricycle. He didn’t respond to my wink.I went to a lecture by the novelist Ned Beauman who compared the OK Cupid experience to Carl Sagan pondering the limits of our ability even to imagine non-carbon-based extraterrestrial life, let alone perceive when it was beaming signals to us. We troll on OK Cupid for what we think we want, but what if we are incapable of seeing the signals being sent to us, let alone interpreting them?OK Cupid gave the almost awe-inspiring impression of Kremen’s dream database: unlimited choice. There are drawbacks to this. As the sociologist Eva Illouz writes inCold Intimacies, ‘the experience of romantic love is related to an economy of scarcity, which in turn enables novelty and excitement.’ In contrast, ‘the spirit presiding over the internet is that of an economy of abundance, where the self must choose and maximise its options and is forced to use techniques of cost-benefit and efficiency.’ At first it was exciting but after a couple of months the cracks began to show. What Beauman says about our inability to gauge what might be attractive turned out to be true. Consider the following.I went on a date with a classical composer who invited me to a John Cage concert at Juilliard. After the concert we looked for the bust of Béla Bartók on 57th Street. We couldn’t find it, but he told me how Bartók had died there of leukaemia. I wanted to like this man, who was excellent on paper, but I didn’t. I gave it another go. We went out for a second time to eat ramen in the East Village. I ended the night early. He next invited me to a concert at Columbia and then to dinner at his house. I said yes but I cancelled at the last minute, claiming illness and adding that I thought our dating had run its course. I was in fact sick, but he was angry with me. My cancellation, he wrote, had cost him a ‘ton of time shopping, cleaning and cooking that I didn’t really have to spare in the first place a few days before a deadline …’ He punctuated almost exclusively with Pynchonian ellipses.I apologised, then stopped responding. In the months that followed he continued to write, long emails with updates of his life, and I continued not responding until it came to seem as if he was lobbing his sadness into a black hole, where I absorbed it into my own sadness.I went on a date with a furniture craftsman. We met at a coffee shop. It was a sunny afternoon in late February, but a strange snowfall began after we arrived, the flakes sparkling in the sun. The coffee shop was below ground, and we sat at a table by a window that put us just below two chihuahuas tied to a bench on the sidewalk outside. They shivered uncontrollably despite their fitted jackets. They looked down at us through the window, chewing on their leashes. The woodworker bought me a coffee and drank tea in a pint glass.Our conversation was strained. He seemed bored. His blue eyes shifted restlessly and he had a moustache. He had gone to a school for graphic design in Arizona. He showed me photos of furniture he made. He had calloused hands and was tall. He was attractive but dour and I wondered why: was it me, or a generalised posture against the world? We discovered we had been born in the same hospital, Allentown Hospital in Allentown, Pennsylvania, except that I was seven months older. In another era, the era when marriage was dictated by religion, family and the village, we might have had several children by now. Instead my parents had moved halfway across the country when I was three years old, he had stayed in Allentown until adulthood and now we both lived in bleak Bedford-Stuyvesant and were 30. He thought of himself as defiant, and loved being a craftsman only as much as he had hated working in an office. After drinking his tea, he went to the bathroom, came back and wordlessly put on his coat. I stood up and did the same. We walked up the stairs into the February wind. We said goodbye.I went on a date with a man who turned out to be a hairstylist who had attracted me with his Texas charm: ‘A nod and a bow, Ms Space,’ he had written. He arrived late to our date in Alphabet City, having accommodated some last-minute clients who wanted unscheduled blow-drys for their own dates. On either side of his neck he had tattoos of crossed scimitars. I asked him what the tattoos meant. He said they meant nothing. They were mistakes. He pushed up his sleeves and revealed more mistakes. As a teenager in Dallas he had let his friends use him as a training canvas. To call the tattoos mistakes seemed to be different from regretting them. He didn’t regret them. He said it was just that his 16-year-old self was giving him the finger. ‘You think you’ve changed,’ the 16-year-old version of him was saying through the tattoos: ‘Fuck you, I’m still here.’OK Cupid had another unintended effect, which was that in posting my profile, however pseudonymously, I had adorned myself with the equivalent of a ‘For Sale’ sign. Those who saw me on OK Cupid whom I knew in real life and who recognised my photo would often contact me: ‘I saw you on OK Cupid and I thought I would write.’ I went for Colombian food in Greenpoint with one of these. When I arrived my date was reading some documents that the National Security Agency had recently declassified to do with John Nash, the schizophrenic genius portrayed in A Beautiful Mind. We ordered arepas and beers. I liked this man. He had a job he loved at a blue-chip art gallery and lived in a spacious, high-ceiling apartment overlooking a tree-filled park with benches that formed a serpentine pattern. We talked about Cascadian black metal bands and the idea of resisting capitalism through unlistenable music and sustainable agriculture. We walked from Cafecito Bogotá back to his impeccable apartment, where he played ambient records and I petted his two cats. We decided to conduct an OK Cupid Locals experiment: he broadcast ‘Let’s lkjdlfjlsjdfijsflsjlj.’ I sat next to him on the couch. I refreshed my phone to see if his broadcast came up. It did. We looked at each other. He walked me to the train.Around this time I met someone in the real world. It didn’t work out, but it was a vivid enough reminder of what it feels like to want to sleep with someone and not even know what their favourite books are to make internet dating all but impossible for a while. The boredom returned, the ex-boyfriend resumed his place in the halls of memory. I went west and the walls of the all but unfurnished apartment in San Francisco loomed over me.Like most people I had started internet dating out of loneliness. I soon discovered, as most do, that it can only speed up the rate and increase the number of encounters with other single people, where each encounter is still a chance encounter. Internet dating destroyed my sense of myself as someone I both know and understand and can also put into words. It had a similarly harmful effect on my sense that other people can accurately know and describe themselves. It left me irritated with the whole field of psychology. I began responding only to people with very short profiles, then began forgoing the profiles altogether, using them only to see that people on OK Cupid Locals had a moderate grasp of the English language and didn’t profess rabidly right-wing politics.Internet dating alerted me to the fact that our notions of human behaviour and achievement, expressed in the agglomerative text of hundreds of internet dating profiles, are all much the same and therefore boring and not a good way to attract other people. The body, I also learned, is not a secondary entity. The mind contains very few truths that the body withholds. There is little of import in an encounter between two bodies that would fail to be revealed rather quickly. Until the bodies are introduced, seduction is only provisional.In the depths of loneliness, however, internet dating provided me with a lot of opportunities to go to a bar and have a drink with a stranger on nights that would otherwise have been spent unhappy and alone. I met all kinds of people: an X-ray technician, a green tech entrepreneur, a Polish computer programmer with whom I enjoyed a sort of chaste fondness over the course of several weeks. We were both shy and my feelings were tepid (as, I gathered, were his), but we went to the beach, he told me all about mushroom foraging in Poland, he ordered his vegetarian burritos in Spanish, and we shared many mutual dislikes.As for that night in San Francisco, I responded to an online beacon, and I went for a drink with a stranger. We kissed, he showed me his special collection of marijuana plants, and we talked about Brazil. Then I went home and never spoke to him again. Edited October 23, 2012 by Syme

[Amos]

Pisac se laća teme koja je za njega značajna, relevantna, uzbuđujuća, koja ga nosi, koja mu pomaže u saznavanju sveta, i koja će, u jednoj poštenoj, istinitoj, iskustvenoj transpoziciji preneti relevantnost teme, fabule i sižejne obrade te fabule i na čitaoca. I to je, možda, samo jedna od definicija dara, to traženje i izabiranje relevantne, goruće teme, goruće u piščevom duhu i senzibilitetu, a ne traženje i nalaženje teme po logici i pretpostavkama mogućnog best-selera i ugađanja kritičarima i pomodnim, dakle stereotipim, zahtevima dana i trenutka.Ta istinitost, to proosećanje teme, taj zanos koji diktira tema i koji iz te teme proizlazi, jeste samo drugo ime za istinitost, za literalno poštenje. Ako je stvar potekla, dakle, iz tog dela senzibiliteta, iz te neminovnosti da se tema, da se problem izruči iz sebe, onda će čak i neki književni, tehnički, retorički problemi i momenti da se reše i da se organizuju takoreći sami od sebe i na taj način da postanu drugostepenim: umetničko će delo živeti od sopstvenog plamena, od sopstvene vatre koja iz njega zari. To je ono što se zove istinitost. Istinitost nadahnuća, istinitost detalja, istinitost teme i pristupa temi.Književni zanat, ili barem nešto od književnog zanata, može se naučiti, ali prava mera talenta se meri istinitošću. Istinitost je, pak, deo književnog morala. "Veoma ste krivi", kaže Zola, "kad loše pišete. To je jedini zločin mogućan u literaturi. Dobro sročena fraza je dobar čin." A taj dobri čin, kao i taj zločin, proističu iz ličnog stava prema književnostiD. Kiš

[logoped]

- Али, поставићу вам једно друго индискретно питање: реците ми, да ли још увек пишете Манолу Секи?- Опет сам му писао ту недавно.- Треба објаснити ко је то: то је радник који држи последњу бензинску пумпу у највећој дубини Бразила.- На последњој привременој станици пута који ће једног дана доспети до Бауруа, на реци Парани, осим ако га прашума до тада поново не освоји. то је у срцу дивљине.- Зар он не ваја необични Крижни пут?- Чудесан Крижни пут. Он се у оно време, пре двадесет две, двадесет три године, већ састојао од пола туцета капела. Хватању Исуса Христа у Маслиновој гори, на пример, присуствовало је шездесет две личности: римски војници, апостол Петар, који извлачи мач, онај други, којему је одсечено ухо, јеврејске вође...итд. када сам одлазио, зауставио сам се код њега само да напуним кола бензином, али при повратку сам остао осам дана, загњурен у петролејско буре не бих ли се како ослободио гамади: ушију, стидних ваши, бува, јајашаца, ларви које човек доноси из џунгле, из дивљине, из мочвара, океана трава, и која вам врви испод коже: имао сам, дакле, времена да видим како Маноло Сека послује, и да мало попричам са њим. Он обара дрва у шуми, бирајући стабла махагонија која обрађује на пропланку пре но што их превезе и постави на место близу пумпе. Кад су кипови постављени, он их оживљава бојећи их као што су то чинили стари португалски мајстори, бојом меса. in carnar. Кад сам био тамо, управо је позлаћивао оклоп римских војника.- Зар нису сви постављени у аутомобиле?- Сви су у ауту Шаљем му, када му пишем, проспекте марки аутомобила, најрадије преклопне проспекте у бојама, на којима су приказани последњи модели, сигуран и убеђен да ће га све то надахнути. Како Маноло не зна да пише, никад ми није одговорио, не знам да ли је још на овоме свету и да ли Секина пумпа још увек постоји. Али пишем, с времена на време, том јединственом великом добричини изгубљеном у најдубљој самоћи и писаћу му све док ми пошта не буде вратила моја писма са уобичајеном назнаком : ''Прималац отпутовао не оставивши адресу!''. Али, да ли се икада то зна у тим земљама тамо, а Маноло Сека је био већ веома стар.- Да ли се сећате како је представио Понтија Пилата?- Како пере руке у мору а не у умиваонику. То је једина његова личност која није поставњена у ауто. Како је Маноло Сека учествовао у кубанском рату, из којег се вратио са једном дрвеном ногом, представио је Понтија Пилата као адмирала, како стоји на прамцу америчког ратног брода, и са тако дугим, дугим рукама да их може опрати у Карипском мору.. Био је то шпански црнац, не знам како се насукао у највећој дубини бразила. То је свети човек....- Зар немате фотографије свега тога? Зар бразилске новине нису ништа објавиле? Да ли је он тамо познат? - Потпуно је непознат. Новине о њему нису никад говориле. Што се тиче фотографија које сам снимио, оне су изгубљене кад је опљачкана моја сеоска кућа у Сен-е-Оази.( одломци из књиге: Блез Сандрар вам говори, превела Мирјана Вукмировић, Београд, Просвета, 1998 )

[Takeshi]

taze murakami za newyorker:(malo duza, 10-ak strana)ali odlicna!SAMSA IN LOVE

[jms_uk]

bas procitah pre dva dana, ali se ne setih ovog topika

[koksy]

pobedničke priče konkursa borske biblioteke

[slepa živana]

pobedničke priče konkursa borske biblioteke

ja sam gađala treću nagradu, a sad vidim da mi priča ima istu temu kao prvonagrađena... samo što je malo bolja. baš su me razočarali borani, dosta sam se uzdala u njih.

[koksy]

ja sam gađala treću nagradu, a sad vidim da mi priča ima istu temu kao prvonagrađena... samo što je malo bolja.

dok ne okačiš priču, držaću te za slepu provokatorku. Edited October 25, 2013 by koksy

[slepa živana]

dok ne okačiš priču, držaću te za slepu provokatorku.

to kad umrem. i ovako jedva živim od sramote.

[koksy]

to kad umrem. i ovako jedva živim od sramote.

odličan početak!ajd' sad prilepi i ostatak.

[nautilus]

Osetih, jednog dana, svu nemoć ljudskog života i zamršenost sudbine naše.Video sam da niko ne ide kuda hoće i primetio sam veze, dosad neposmatrane. Kraj mene su, tog dana, prolazili Senegalci, Anamite; sreo sam jednog svog dobrog druga, koji se vraćao iz rata. Kadga zapitah otkud dolazi, on mi reče: iz Bukhare!

Mati mu je bila umrla i komšije njegove behu je sahranili. Neko mu je pokrao nameštaj, kod kuće. Ni postelje, veli, nemam!A kad ga upitah kako je putovao, on mi reče: „Preko Japana i Engleske, gde su me uhapsili“.„Pa šta misliš sad?“ – pitao sam ga. „Ne znam ni sam. Sâm sam. Ti znaš da sam se bio verio. Ona je otišla nekud. Možda nije dobijala moja pisma. Ko zna šta će i ona dočekati? Ne znam ni sam šta ću, možda ću dobiti mesto u nekoj banci“.Sve se to odigralo na stanici u Zagrebu. Posle sam ja seo u voz i otputovao dalje. U vozu je bilo prepuno sveta, naročito vojnika, žena u ritama, i mnogo zbunjenih ljudi. U vozu nije bilo osvetljenja i videle su se samo senke. Mala deca ležala su, na podu vagona, oko naših nogu. Iznuren, nisam mogao oko da sklopim. Dok su oko mene pričali, primetio sam da su i ti glasovi nekako teški i da ljdski govor, pre, nije tako zvučao. Zagledan u mračne prozore, sećao sam se kako mi je moj drug opisivao neke snežne planine Urala, gde je proveo godinu dana u zarobljeništvu.On je dugo, i blago, poisivao taj kraj na Uralu.Osetih tako svu tu belu, neizmernu tišinu, tamo u daljini. Polako sam se nasmehnuo. Gde sve taj čovek nije bio! Sećam se da mi je pričao i o nekoj ženi. Iz njegovog opisa zapamtih samo njeno bledo lice. On je nekoliko puat ponavljao kako ju je tako bledu poslednji put video.U mom sećanju, nervozno, počeše tako da se mešaju bleda lica žena, od kojih sam se i ja rastajao, ili koja sam video po vozovimai brodovima. To me je gušilo, te iziđoh u hodnik. Voz je bio stigao u Srem i prolazio ispod Fruške gore. Neke grane udarale su u okno, koje je bilo razbijeno.Kroz njega je u voz padao vlažan, mokar, hladan miris drveća i čuo sam žubor nekog potoka. Stali smo bili pred jednim razrivenim tunelom. Hteo sam da sagledam taj potok što je u mraku žuborio i učinilo mi se da se rumeni, i da je veseo. Oči su mi bile umorne od nespavanja, a obuzela me je bila teška slabost od dugog putovanja. Pomislih: gle, kako nikakvih veza nema u svetu! Eto, taj moj drug voleo je tu ženu, a ona je ostala negde daleko u nekoj zavejanoj kući, sama, u Tobolsku. Ništa ne može da se zadrži. I ja, kud sve nisam išao.A eto, ovde, kako veselo teče ovaj potok. On je rumen, i žubori. Naslonih, dakle, glavu o razbijen prostor. Neki vojnici, prelazili su, za to vreme, sa krova na krov vagona. A sva ta bleda lica, i sva moja žalost nestade u žuborenju tog potoka u mraku. Voz nije mogao dalje. Valjalo je preći, preko Čortanovačkog tunela, peške.Bilo je hladno. Išao sam u gomili nepoznatih putnika. Trava je bila mokra, pa smo klizili lagano, a neki su i padali. Kad smo se uspuzali na brdo, pod nama se, u svitanju, ukazao Dunav, siv, maglovit. Sva ta magla, iza koje se naziralo nebo, bila je neizmerna i beskrajna! Zelena brda, kao ostrva nad zemljom, nestajala su još u svitanju. Bio sam zaostao iza ostalih.A moje misli, jedako su još pratile mog druga na onom njegovom putovanju o kojem mi je, bezbrižan, sa gorkim humorom, pričao. Plava mora, i daleka ostrva, koja ne poznajem, rumene biljke i korali, kojih sam se setio valjda iz zemljopisa, jednako su mi se javljali u mislima.Najzad, mir, mir do zore, polako je ulazio i u mene. Sve što je moj drug pričao, pa i on sam, poguren, u pohabanom, vojničkom šinjelu, ostalo je zauvek u mom mozgu. Odjednom sam se sećao, i ja, gradova, i ljudi, koje sam ja video, na povratku iz rata. Prvi put primetih neku veliku proemu u svetu.Na drugoj strani tunela, čekao nas je drugi voz. Mada je u daljini već svitalo, u vozu je opet bio potpun mrak. Iznuren, opet sam seo u mračan kut vagona, sam samcit. Po nekoliko puta rekoh sam sebi: S u m a t r a, S u m a t r a !Sve je zamršeno. Izmenili su nas. Setih se kako se pre drukčije živelo. I pognuh glavu.Voz je pošao i zatutnjao. Usoavljivalo me je to da je sve sad tako neobično, i život, i te ogromne daljine u njemu. Kud sve nisu stigli naši boli, šta sve nismo, u tuđini, umorni, pomilovali! Ne samo ja, i on, nego i toliki drugi. Hiljade, milioni!Pomislih: kako li će me dočekati moj zavičaj? Trešnje su sad svakako već rumene, a sela su sad vesela. Gle, kako su i boje, čak tamo do zvezda, iste, i u trešanja, i u korala! Kako je sve u vezi, na svetu. „Sumatra“ – rekoh, opet, podrugljivo, sebi.Odjednom se trgoh, neki nemir u meni, koji nije stigao ni do svesti, probudio me je. Iziđoh u hodnik, gde je bilo hladno. Stajali smo opet u nekoj šumici. U jednom vagonu su pevali. Negde je plakalo jedno dete. Ali svi ti zvuci dopirali su do mene kao iz neke neizmerne daljine. Pređe me jutarnja jeza.Video sam još Mesec, sjajan, pa se i nehotice osmehnuh. On je svud isti, jer je mrtvac.Osetih svu našu nemoć, svu svoju tugu. „Sumatra“, prošaptah, sa izvesnom afektacijom.Ali, u duši, duboko, kraj sveg opiranja da to priznam, ja sam osećao neizmernu ljubav prema tim dalekim brdima, snežnim gorama, čak tamo gore do ledenih mora. Za ona daleka ostrva, gde se događa ono što smo, možda, mi učinili. Izgubio sam strah od smrti. Veze za okolinu. Kao u nekoj ludoj halucinaciji, dizao sam se u te bezmerne, jutarnje magle, da ispružim ruku i pomilujem daleki Ural, mora indijska, kud je otišla rumen i sa mog lica. Da pomilujem ostrva, ljubavi, zaljubljene, blede prilike. Sva ta zamršenost postade jedan ogroman mir i bezgranična uteha.

*

Posle, u Novom Sadu, u jednoj hotelskoj sobi, napravio sam od svega toga jednu pesmu.Beograd, 1920.

[halloween]

Iz zbirke pripovedaka Golubije perje, Džon Apdajk

 

Bakine oči, izlizani komadići naprslog kristala utonuli u razvodnjeno mleko, raširiše se iza nakrivljenih naočara. Te naočare, krugovi srebra tankog kao konac, pripijale su se za crvene ožiljke koje su se tokom godina urezale u njen mali beli kljun. Na narandžastoj treperavoj svetlosti kerozinske lampe njena zbunjena beda izgledala je pakleno mučna. (Golubije perje)

 

A sada što se tiče ljubavi. „Ljubav“ je jedna od reči koja se pokazuje  šta se dešava sa jednim starim, zloupotrebljavanim jezikom. U današnje vreme, kad filmske zvezde i pevači sentimentalnih pesmica, i propovednici i psihijatri izgovaraju ovu reč ona se svodi na to da označava samo nejasnu naklonost prema nečemu. Upotrebljavana u tom smislu- ja volim  kišu, ovu tablu, ove klupe, tebe, ona ništa ne znači, razumeš, dok je nekada ta reč označavala sasvim određenu stvar- želju da sve  što čovek poseduje i svekoliko svoje biće podeli sa nekim drugim. Vreme je da iskujemo jednu novu reč koja bi to značila; a ti, kad promisliš o toj reči koju želiš da upotrebiš, savetujem ti da s njom budeš veoma škrta. Smatraj je kao nešto što možeš upotrebiti samo jednom- ako ne tebe same radi, onda bar radi dobra ovog jezika.“ On priđe katedri i spusti na nju dve olovke, kao da je time hteo da kaže: “Eto, to je sve.“ (Sutra, pa sutra i tako dalje)

 

Klajd se nije sećao da su te kapljice toliko pekle; on se zagrcnu i suze mu potekoše dok je Penipeker prstima držao rastvorene kapke i blago ih otvarao i zatvarao kao da se igra cvetovima zevalice. Onda Penipeker natače smešno male okrugle tamnomrke naočare Klajdu na nos, a zauzvrat uze elegantne naočare optočene kaučukom koje je Klajd držao u džepu. Penpekerov uobičajeni postupak bio je da napuni svoje sobice pacijentima koji čekaju na pregled i da onda šetka od jednog do drugog kao neki tamničar.
....
Ona vrhom svoga češlja bocnu nadlanicu njegove ruke, a on ustade na noge, uzdižući se visoko u jednu novu, manje bolnu atmosferu.
„Kada?“ upita zadihano.
„Ne“, reče ona.
„Kako se sada prezivaš?“
„Klajde, mislila sam da si postigao uspeh u životu. Mislila sam da imaš lepu dečicu. Zar nisi srećan?“
„Јesam, jesam, ali“- ovo što je usledilo bilo je tako čisto nadahnuće da su te izgovorene reči samo okrznule njegove usne- „nije sreća sve.“ (Upornost želje)

 

Kad su se kola zaustavila pred njegovom kućom, on natera sebe da upita:
„Čujte gospodine Luc, pitam se da li je ostao neki kusur.“
„Kako? Oh! Skoro da sam zaboravio na to. Još ćeš učiniti da tvoj otac pomisli da sam neki prevarant.“
Onda zavuče ruku u džep i, ne gledajući, pruži Džonu jedan dolar, dvadesetpet centi i jedan peni.
„Ovo je poprilično“, reče Džon. Vino je mora biti, jevtino. Možda je trebalo da pusti majku da ga kupi, kao što je ona to i želela.
„To je tvoj kusur,“, reče gospodin Luc.
„E pa, mnogo vam, mnogo hvala.“
„A sada, zbogom“, reče gospodin Luc.
„Do viđenja“, Džon zalupi vrata. „Zbogom Telma. Ne zaboravi ono što sam ti rekao.“ On namignu.
Kola krenuše, i Džon pođe stazom. „Ne zaboravi ono šta sam ti rekao“, ponavljao je u sebi, namigujući. Boca je bila prohladna i teška u njegovim rukama. On zagleda etiketu; na njoj je pisalo: Château Mouton Rothschild, 1937.
(Prijatelji iz Filadelfije)

Edited May 30, 2014 by halloween

[koksy]

uži izbor konkursa za kratku priču "Vranac" 2014

 

 

žiri: Teofil, Kazaz, Koprivica

 

 

p.s. ovaj link će trajati vrlo ograničeno jer ove priče idu u zbirku koja se, jel'te, prodaje.

[logoped]

 

Danil Harms

 

 (JEDNA MUVA…)(I)

Jedna muva udari u

čelo gospodina dok je trčao, prođe mu kroz glavu i izađe krozpotiljak. Gospodin, koji se zvao Dernjatin, bio je veoma začuđen: učinilo mu se

da mu je uglavi nešto prozviždalo, a na potiljku je prsnula kožica i šk 

akljalo ga je. Dernjatin se zaustavi ipomisli: “Šta bi to trebalo da znači? Ta posve jasno sam čuo zvižduk. Ništa mi ne pada napamet, da mogu da shvatim, o čemu se tu radi? U svakom slučaju, osećaj je redak, nalikna neku bolest glave. Ali neću više o tome da razmišljam, nastaviću da trčim”. S timmislima gospodin Dernjatin potrča dalje, ali ma kako da je trčao, to mu nije uspevalo. Naplavetnom putu Dernjatin zape nogom i samo što ne pade, morao je, štaviše, da zamašerukama u vazduhu. “Dobro je da nisam pao – pomisli Dernjatin – inače bih razbio naočarei ne bih mogao da vidim smer puta”. Dalje je Dernjatin koračao, oslanjajući se na svojupalicu. Međutim, jedna je opasnost sledila za drugom. Dernjatin je zapevao nekakvupesmu da rasprši svoje loše misli. Pesma je bila vesela i glasna, takva, da se Dernjatinnjome zaneo i zaboravio čak da ide plavetnim putem, kojim su, u to doba dana, obično,automobili išli vrtoglavom brzinom. Plavetni put je bio veoma uzak, i prilično je teško odautomobila odskočiti u stranu. Zato se on smatrao opasnim. Oprezni ljudi su po njemuuvek išli budno, da ne bi poginuli. Ovde je smrt iščekivala pešaka na svakom koraku, času vidu automobila, čas u vidu teretnih kola, a čas u vidu taljiga sa kamenim ugljem.Dernjatin nije uspeo ni da obriše nos, a na njega je već išao ogromni automobil. Dernjatinviknu: ”Umreću!” – i skoči u stranu. Trava se razmaknula pred njim, i pade u vlažan jendek. Automobil ga je s grohotom mimoišao, podigavši iznad krova barjak teškihsituacija. Ljudi u automobilu bili su ubeđeni da je Dernjatin poginuo, i stoga su skinuli svesa glave, i dalje su već gologlavi putovali. “ Da li ste primetili, pod koje je točkove dospeoovaj putnik, pod prednje ili pod zadnje?” – upita gospodin, odenut u muf, to jest ne u muf,nego u kapuljaču. “Meni su – često je običavao govoriti ovaj gospodin – veoma nahlađeniobrazi i ušna resica, i stoga sam uvek u kapuljači”. Pored gospodina u automobilu jedama interesantnih usana. “Ja sam – reče dama – uznemirena, da nas ne optuže zaubistvo ovog putnika”. – “Šta? Šta?” – upita gospodin, povlačeći kapuljaču s uva. Dama jeponovila svoju bojazan. “Ne – reče gospodin u kapuljači – ubistvo se kažnjava samo u timslučajevima, kada je ubijeni nalik na tikvu. Ali mi nismo. Ali mi nismo. Ali mi nismo kriviza smrt putnika. On je sam vrisnuo: umreću! Mi smo samo svedoci njegove neočekivanesmrti”. Madam Anet se osmehnu interesantnim usnama i reče u sebi: “AntoneAntonoviču, vi tako vešto izlazite iz nevolje”. A gospodin Dernjatin je ležao u vlažnom jendeku, ispruživši ruke i noge. A automobil je već otišao. Dernjatin je već shvatio da nijepoginuo. Smrt u vidu automobila ga je mimoišla. On se podiže, rukavom očisti svojeodelo, ovlaži pljuvačkom prste i plavetnim putem krene da dostigne vreme. Vreme jedevet i po minuta otišlo napred, i Dernjatin je išao, dostižući minute.

(1929-1930   

  

          

Edited May 31, 2014 by logoped