the rhythm of her walk is bothered by flashing lights and the loud noises made by her fellow men in the narrow streets of kazimierz. her eyes are wet and her mouth dry, and as she passes the small bars on the cobbled streets the dim lights make purkinje trees appear in the front of her vision. without having the knowledge of their true reason she is sure, in her drunken mind, of having stepped to the waiting hall of death - she thinks she can see inside of her head.
without any conscious thought she enters a bar, and with an air of determination stemming from a place unknown and probably non-existent she walks past two men guarding the entrance to the downstairs, descending in a robotic manner the long stairway down to a damp maze. there is no music but some electric tension in the air, pulsating, tensing her temples in a way that draws two cat-like eyes onto her sweaty face. her heart tries to catch the rhythm of the tense waves bouncing around in the ancient corridors, sharpening her mind enough to grab an abandoned glass of red from a table next to a chunk of half asleep men.
leaning onto the white brick wall while a soapy smell of some purifying incense floats into her nostrils, the only man awake and aware catches her soaring eyes. she sits next to him on a dark brown leather sofa and says,
“father, I am going to die tonight.”
her hands appear too strong to be hers as they hold the glass of red close to her chin, as if holding a bucket of flowers. her young eyes remain trapped into a staring competition with the gentle pair of his, hidden behind sagging eyelids, for a long time before he utters carefully selected words to resonate with the tension of the air around them.
“you will die every night until you have become whole in the eyes of god. you will strip your soul until it stands naked in front of all of existence. you will be the first and the only one to realize the meaning of life.”
“but father, I will die, die die die, tonight.”
“what makes you think that, my dear child?”
“I can see inside of my head. my sight is giving up its conditioning, and I can sense that soon all of my cognitive capacities will crumble in the face of their own impossibility, give up, just give up, and become honest in being but a loop. an endless loop of an endless flood.”
“hear hear, my child, hear hear. you will die every night, until...”
her face twists with fear as she feels herself being drawn up from the state of surrender she had succumbed to. as she makes her upper lip dip into the dark red liquid her eyes finally fall from his to the patriarchal cross on his chest. he is a different kind of father than she had thought.
“how can I ever be whole if I am breaking apart? I am all bits and pieces spread around all over and I am too tired to pick them up and remember the pattern they used to form. I want to... die.”
“consider yourself lucky, kid. a splintered ego clears your consciousness of the burden of the illusion of a self, letting you feel the seat and stand of who you really are. let yourself sink, fall, descend, all the way to the very depths of your heart. then breathe in, breathe out, and let the strength stemming from deep within give you power and guidance in the building of a brand new you. look at my eyes.”
“yes, father?”
she sees with her perplexed pair of blues the pupils of his, pulsating in the rhythm of the tense sound waves slicing the air. she cannot know which follows the trail of which - does his consciousness regulate the amount of light reaching his retina in respect to the wavelengths or do the wavelengths linger in respect to the amount of light he accepts?
as the now empty glass falls from her hands onto the granite floor the last whisper from him fills the air in a manner resembling a sudden burst of laughter,
“svecchakari.”
