You, you! But now... it is too late for you to try to retreat anymore!
I will never again deny myself after all of this… But tell me now more specifically about your experiences.
Well, you perhaps remember Greathead's comments when I told about my hopes in regards to my manuscript?
Yes, he was perhaps slightly prickly…
It was only a little starter poison. Suuripää knows how to play this game very well indeed. I would have seen it coming if my head wasn’t made of wood.
I came in contact with very uncouth circles. Weak people, afraid in a very sad way.
Delving deeply into topics is generally not recommended these days, because it takes time, and takes you…who knows where, and in the end it may reveal the open horizon, independent and common to all.
To me a common world sounds good?
A person who is walking a lonely road approaches a small world arranged according to his own desires, silence and perhaps some sort of reclusion. He doubtless finds it, but to his surprise he realizes that he isn’t alone after all! It is a common world, open and full of crystallized life, which radiates joyfully across time and consciousness. But its existence does not hurt your ears; it’s more a whisper that opens an important latch.
It sounds like a treasure!
I understand that! And… fear. It is threatening that those who walk their own paths are full of wanderlust.
They are no good at glorifying the achievements of the masses or serving collectors of emptiness.
But doesn’t emptiness need fullness to balance it?
They match wonderfully when the mix-ups conceptualize. Where the full-bellied calls for his share, his due, we don’t think anything is lacking there – even though the heart is missing, everything that is important.
But back to your experiences, your text and the rest… I am a publisher and a patron of the arts, I can support something!
Don’t confuse things now. But… now that I think about it, it wouldn’t hurt if you would arrange some necessities for me from the world of flesh when you were still… …alive.
How could I have guessed what the future would bring with it!
There isn’t any way to guess. Who knows if someone will force me awake after one or two hundred years! And what will he want?
Truly, wouldn’t it be best to find some safe hiding place and leave some sort of inheritance.
Something that would be particularly valuable to him. It should be something like that.
Valuable, yes. A sudden hope of inheriting money soon brings a hollow feeling. What an insignificant subject in this field! It’s pointless to mourn that you didn’t leave some… swollen pouches! I was able to see your life before my eyes!
And I received a second life, this haunting!
And I will hide my manuscript away… in a safe place.
G: The forest plays, and the stream sings along.
I’ll place a dirt clod as a marker.
Put some hay too, so that it is noticeable!
That is a good plan. Is everything here now?
Tell me about your time, its cultural life, its ideals.
The lalla lallallaa, fine art
Time? Ideals?... Hey, look! What is that? Is it… what is it? Some little being… is coming here! What does it have in its hand?
Is it some kind of harp…clearly!
(opens her mouth, strums the strings of her instrument)
(despite the la la la’s, doesn’t sing, instead speaking):
Let us begin a blithe game
and delve deeply into art, aaah
I am but a voluptuous fairy
When this little naughty girl walks at an hour named zero,
that creator of quotations fiddles with himself,
alone, holds his mirror to the mirror,
the short journey to that mush-brained baboon's chamber
inspires the publisher, the curator to join together, to rise together.
and the familiar reporter to row.
Soon the whole land will meow.
Oh lovely discharge, skin deep,
Greedy Gus takes pictures, while they strike old women,
or if the infirm’s wound festers.
The high-end lens frames the disenfranchised,
the shirker in the alleys of slums or war
sends the genius' long-lens into a rapture of pain.
Nature in a squalid state is a good launch pad,
when the Midas of the arts, black-rimmed exalted,
exhausted from flying, grabs a taboo with a sigh.
And a hundred thousand squares in the concourse,
and a million quid pro quo gyros rustle rewardingly.
Far off a river with its burdens,
And that perv-formance’s backgrounds,
a picture factory, squats on the bank doing its business.
(short pause and change in the tune)
Old dog moon and someone else like him recites:
It is wise to want the bone of happiness, to gnaw.
But if you have no scent, no tooth,
bread nailed to the door of an abandoned house,
Yah, yah, this bread is a head,
and your ears do not deceive you.
Anything can be arranged when all you do is project,
who now in the world can anoint himself.
Everything is beautiful, great and lovely, no stench, no touch.
Earthly, loose with pudgy fingers,
just strokes the pillars.
Somehow frightening, but the words were clever! Did you understand what was being told about in the song?
Perhaps a little. That’s what you got when you started asking about culture. You got some kind of explanation from a fairy that’d eaten fermented cranberries, or some goddess… after a splendid performance it disappeared into nothing, but thankfully peace returned!
A reminder about what is outside this forest, it sent chills down my spine.
But aren’t we safe here in the forest!
I don’t know about safe, but I enjoy it here.
I remember well your short story in which you traveled in Finland, in the forest. At first there were delicate descriptions of nature, and then you slipped into some kind of folktale world.
The daughter of a water elf rose from the water and in her hair… But over there… Really, someone is coming!
(appears suddenly and yells while still far off)
What is your business? What are you looking for here?
What is your business here?
Business certainly, but not exactly looking now, more like leaving. We’ve set up shop here to rid ourselves of a great burden. But why are you going around interrogating people out here?
I am a guard and I am paid to do a job. My job is to make sure that nothing illegal happens here. The machines are coming soon.
What machines are coming here?
This forest is being cut down soon.
This is normal, Grishka. N o r m a l, in other words common. And you heard right, he said this forest. Not just some trees from this forest, rather T H E F O R E S T!
What can we do in this situation?
What do you mean? Are you planning some vandalism?
Do you suppose that we will try to prevent you from performing your duty? Do you really suppose that I, a tired Recorder, and an age-old specter would try to prevent the owner of this forest from receiving his legal and generally-accepted reward for his work of destruction?
We can’t. We won’t cross their path. They cut the hands and feet from godliness. They have their reasons. But their reasons are not our reasons. Do you know what will come of this, Grishka?
Not at all. What do you think?
I’m going to run away like a coward; I can’t take any more. I’ll look for another forest.
Dear Recorder, where will I go then?
Oh, Grishka, I will send you back to St. Petersburg! Myself, I’ll go… there, somewhere.
I’ll be on my way too then.
The forest has to be felled so the wheels will keep rolling. Where would they put all the culture if the paper runs out…?
And culture is not only soft, but absorbent.
How can I explain it to you… great amounts of raw material are needed these days for many different things
Well of course, that is clear… progress surely needs it… to progress!
Progress, how did you get that in your head? It doesn’t have much of anything to do with progress. Simple greed—hollow values require us to squeeze the nectar out of nature’s delicate veins with increasing efficiency. Nothing is enough—the thumbed ape has taken hold of the reigns; the most brazen don’t get criticism, they get medals.
Adolescents have created a demon that gamblers capitalize on. The empty industry of high efficiency oppresses insults and injures, maintains dead houses. Only idiots hope anymore, and the punishment for their crime of existing they are driven underground. But although these people suffer, their nights are as white as snow.
Demons, gamblers, snow…? Life is miraculous and beautiful. Why…?
The questions grow too broad, and too much pondering robs me of my strength.
Well enough, but regardless… what of your despair! You just spoke of godliness… broken boundaries, and then came “raw materials” and “delicate veins.”
Forget it, they were just smoke, delirium. That character is so very thirsty that creates his own reality by taking up tools or weapons and wishes to prosper by showing off his willfulness. That position, whether it is fighting for or against, becoming impassioned in one direction or the other, is always present. But it’s good to know that everything, winnings and losses together, disappear in the lightest breeze in the end, triviality melts and sorrow evaporates. All that is left is the essential, the treasure, the communal treasure. And it’s right here!
Yes, the treasure! Left to be found!
There! But now to action! You go back to St. Petersburg. Crawl back into the gloom with your missing bones.
Traveling is painless for me—no sickness, no blisters from hard shoes, and best of all my heart is not heavy, for I am in this world in exactly the way you have written me, and no traveler like this suffers like those who live in the material world, and because of this, everything I cannot understand about all of this does not disturb my mind in the slightest. My veins are dry and light.
Excellent, Grishka! I will leave you now… I will never forget you, but… I’m not leaving you, I’m just continuing my own business, and I’ll try to rest and calm down, growing joyfully towards wisdom. Everything is as it should be.
Nothings stands in place, and still everything feels so eternal and unchanging. But what happened to the hay fronds, the little marker?
I don’t know! You ask so many questions… A person asks, and a ghost too.
There isn’t anything more to say…