was//

still life beyond panoramic windows; A top-floor maisonette Airbnb apartment in an uninhabited building across from the big international fair that hasn’t been used since the start of the pandemic; No life outside - an empty parking lot with parking slots neatly painted on the concrete & a single lonely security guard cabin by the barrier, white, desolate, like something emitted from spacecraft. On the side stood a car rental service announcing itself blandly with lit neon green ugly letters & those white characterless vehicles lined in columns according to size and features. My car was waiting for me at a shabby backstreet half sunk in mud and whatever was left of the snowfall from the other day - a spot carefully chosen to avoid parking fees which, as proud as it made me, to have outsmarted the system so well, soon proved well inconvenient since I, too anxious to lose my spot, never used the vehicle once until it was time to leave the city for good and even went grocery shopping which was a good 4km away on foot in the storm. Not much of it… food just didn’t work in those months. It all but looked so unattractive in all the shapes and packaging in which they have it for you nowadays; bleak, sanitary, hollow;

still, dare I did not try the river, although I often imagine it at night - how I would walk up the boulevard halfway up the bridge and let go to be carried onward by the steady flow of streams unbothered and safe. Then I’d remember the untouched gas station sandwich I left in the car - how it lay there slowly freezing and stiffening on the passenger seat and surely made for a much more character, but a very sad scene. I couldn’t leave with that there. Exactly the kind of details that hurt people the most. isn’t right.; The suburban gloom of great cities’ outskirts on a bad month say, January; mid-January, 22, various observations on post-apocalypse life along the outer edges of Eastern Europe. Yacht called Valetta, mattress laid out to dry on a catamaran’s deck so sad in the glimmering sun, graffiti on the fence says gambler by heart; Junky, skinny, dirty blonde with needle marks, squatting at the edge of the bus station cutting grass with scissors & laughs with a laugh like sobbing; on her left a cardboard man is holding a thumbs up forever hopeful and a waste truck passes by oozing smelly heat, something cozy about it almost inviting. Clouds are like Brussels sprouts, she is dropping a chapstick, mannerism just nuts, and Gangsta’s Paradise glides along from a passing Mercedez; Clouds like the insides of an old canape. Imagine jumping and it just holds - slingshot and into a motionless neverending; this is how they picture heaven - place where nothing, nothing ever happens. The flight attendant was announcing overhead that perfumes all be uniquely cheap because “of course in the sky, there are no taxes!” Georgio Armani - very good deal for the ladies, Hugo Boss - exceptional offer for our gentlemen on board today” Humour me.

Vertical clouds – as they shifted and swirled, a big chunk of sun abruptly lands on my cheek; the afternoon is humid with the sweat of passengers. Rise - the spirits of the fall delivering the gift of disorientation!; This is where the road ends and we’ve got a permanent concussion from hitting that same brick wall relentlessly..;

again: The bathroom floor’s cold-ass tiles against your ribcage and just.. hollow. Like whatever - all hunger, cold, or ache beside the point, seemingly your life’s been nothing but a byproduct, there was a gremlin in that mirror;

Earlier - searching for an atm in the rain at some seaport has been turned into mega discotheque complex and just as I’m about to lose my nerves, haven’t slept, gonna be sick, want to shout at somebody bc all one would want to do in a situation like this is go home, but I don’t even wanna do that and we finally reach it - the end of the pier getting sketchy as hell; there the machine blinking its green light from a dark corner, minor relief, not even noteworthy, until a drunken accordion starts playing somewhere and suddenly it’s wonderful because you see not all is lost; Comedy largely is about people in crisis.

once, Thai place richly decorated with cult movie posters, memorabilia, and Edward Norton for some reason. Endaxi, the women working the wok so stern, each of their movements so painfully practiced & habitual; face masks a formality, first real food in a week. Cat outside in agony; of those mornings when you just want nothing to do with your self; “Exit twoeniee tfreeuee”; I so wanted to die but they wouldn’t let me. Cool, problem is, they don’t wanna help you live either. The impending doom or foreboding of sorts be that you’ll be back right here at some point, whatever you do, only, more disappointed, so - a stronger smack; something’s got to give, no? commuter frenzy; pod people; let us leave this world undone. Etched onto her face were the marks of a blizzard; “he don’t drink so we’ve little in common.” memories i.e. scary stuff; Later - a printed emoji - shading and everything, on the cookie she stuffs in my ice cream cone and I’m in one of those rare comic and psychotic episodes of utter uncontrollable sadness walking with my ice cream in the hellish heat, eyes all the while waterfalling onto it so vanilla starts to taste like salted caramel.; Always transfixed by their intensity while we be like careful, watch your step, etc; “I don’t want to go on vacation with you - why not? - cause it’s deceiving.” Guilt in the Anthropocene is like a discount store in times of inflation. still, I can’t shake it; Begin today and quit tomorrow. And suffocate in your own predictability while everything goes according to plan;

Frailing at the edges. The core of our planet has stopped spinning - an article says; immediately inevitable solipsism: have I? these days, caught up in a series of odd routines - dance to the washing machine, drawing pleasure from rhythmic intervals of zipper & buttons against the drum, pendulum legs, reverse crunch, flutter kicks. Sharpen the pencil always 8 times around, pedantic. We get obsessed with things in our isolation. Like the water that gathers at the bottom of your toothbrush-holder mug, or a particularly steadfast spiderweb appearing overnight ever at the same spot. They grow in the mind these inglorious little obsessions, suggestive of all kinds of unwanted nasty developments. dirt, contamination, decay. Echoes. Trickster comes in like a parasite, carrying the unavoidable fact of complete isolation. A hammer - goes unnoticed while it fills up the negative space, the gray thing, deceptive and disorienting - smoke and mirrors - until it invades the physical stuff - the mattress, the food, every textile, and the timbre on the ceiling, reaches the tip of your toothbrush and then fills the mirror whole. Like all the dirt swept under the rug and suddenly there is no rug; water under the bridge but you’ve burned all the bridges. Don’t you remember? Now learn to swim. I remember those same deceptions going around my head when I was fourteen and cRaZy 4 Brian Molko. Have we evolved at all? and what’s it gonna take? Because I still see that knife under my eyelids right before I open my eyes every morning and those are some minutes of laying there disfigured where weight is immeasurable. now, this tug of war with has grown rusty and is squeaking; I am tired and its nightmarish sound is a thing to forget. And rest, rest assured.//

​

All texts are personal and authored by the artisrt​*