white horses run in slow motion above the sea. their hooves bounce off the tense surface, splashing and sending vibrating waves to travel down towards me, floating underneath. the stream of the horses is endless. I have all the time in the world to focus on their movements, their beautiful muscular bodies, not really dead yet never been alive. beyond time and space there's no necessity to breathe in, no necessity for a heart to beat.

as I open my eyes nothing changes in my bodily sensations - I am still under the sea, floating in the abyss - yet without a single afterimage I see what I really see. laying on my side, I support a thick book leaning to a pillow with my left hand. focusing my eyes onto the page on the right, I read,

“each novel presents an opposition, which is never canceled out dialectically, of many consciousnesses, and they do not merge in the unity of an evolving spirit, just as souls and spirits do not merge in the formally polyphonic world of dante. at best each could form, as in dante's world, a static figure, one that did not lose its individuality, one that linked together rather than merged with other figures – but this static figure would resemble a congealed event, similar to dante's image of the cross (the souls of the crusaders), the eagle (the souls of the emperors), or the mystical rose (the souls of the blessed). likewise the author's spirit does not develop or evolve within the limits of the novel itself, but, as in dante's world, this spirit is either a spectator, or becomes one of the participants. within the limits of the novel the hero's worlds interact by means of the event, but these interrelationships, as we have said before, are the last thing that can be reduced to thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.”

relating the words to my own experience of separateness from the conscious minds around me, the image of an old windmill arises and I turn onto my back to stare at its reflection from the cracks in the ceiling. the concepts of those who have tried to intellectualize this beautiful existence from the blessed perspective of the I into false patterns float faintly through my mind, and my heart begins to beat in zeal. turning my eyes to the page on the left, my eyes loose the capacity to estimate their distance from the text and try focusing to somewhere beyond it, making the letters and words and paragraphs twist and multiply.

if I can't even read, how could I write?

I drop the book onto the rug growing out from under the bed, creating a short damp sound to bounce off the empty walls. the huge room with three windows facing west, one of them a bay window partly opening up to a balcony, provide me with as much light as the wintery world outside can offer - the sun lays its rays nearly set.

I left most of my material belongings to the holy land of crazy poets, st. petersburg, five months ago when I drifted here to one of the most beautiful districts of european capital cities - vinohrady. in five months all I've bought for this apartment is the rug and this bed. when I arrived I had nothing on me except for the clothes I was wearing, few notebooks and eleven of my companions in books - just small drops now in the mass of them inherited from my uncle who used live here. he was a writer, a prominent one in prague, and I guess in all his benevolence he thought I'd be able to follow his footsteps if just taken away from the rotten streets branching out of nevsky prospekt, like he was forced into exile by the bolsheviks long ago. he didn't have other heirs - in addition to the books the apartment is mine to keep.

I climb from the bed to sit on the wide windowsill, and open one of the windows up to the snowy twilight. as the coldness sweeps over my body the white horses neigh and run down my spine to hide under the radiator. I light a cigarette, and the smoke I blow out of my lungs ties its warmth to the cold air, producing a steam rising up to the sky.

two weeks ago I found a stack of notes by my uncle, dated back to the forties. he had hid them inside the shallow covers of a book titled ancient weird religious rites. in them lay markings of my uncle cultivating a coherent enough of a theory on characterization to have grown quickly into a vast land of intertwined concepts inside the mind of mine. it is beginning to form a reality around me - a reality from which it is easy to draw perfect characters into writing. perfect, meaning such that they'd fool anyone into believing their consciousness in black and white to be of a true individual, not something created by a mere imitator of reality. something more than a product of a mind that's merely that of a naturalist.

the idea, in short, is to create internal value structures so wide that they grow to demand characterization from any conscious mind perceiving them. they demand an independent existence within the mind of a writer, a demand justified through the coherence of the value systems they hold, like they hold the potential of reflecting their vastness through action and dialogue. how could one deny such beings an existence in black and white? can't blame them anymore for pounding the back of my mind, calling me to write them into being - chattering like monkeys in a tree.

as the sunlight leaves the particles in the air bare, the first stars become visible high above. I don't know if I have what it takes to ever create a coherent character. my own system of values is still infallible, and so, if the madness of my uncle is to be trusted, there exists a danger of merging. that is what the book I had in my hands has words on, too. did dostoevsky create the views into minds of characters such as nikolai vsevolodovich stavrogin while remaining himself separate from their values, their imagined minds?

my uncle saw the process as something resembling schizophrenia - in order to understand another human being, for whatever reasons, the decision to deconstruct them leads to holding a complex structure providing a view of how life is for the other I within one's own mind. there is no need to worry about the capacity of a human mind to hold such vast conceptual realities within it. the issues arise when the person becomes confused over his values and those that are merely the products of his empathetic capacities. as a result, his mind looses coherency, his judgements suffer, his perceptions vary.

the only way to relieve the burden of characters, concepts, whatever one wants to call them, from the mind is to cultivate the internal structures into something tangible, externalizing their existence. that is art therapy. on the next level a conscious mind decides to cultivate the internal value structures far enough to reflect them for a wide variety of other conscious beings, in the light of his choosing. that's the ability to create a work of art that stands independent of any contexts in its capacity to transform vast amounts of meanings into a comprehensible whole - an object with a lot inherent in it.

in literary works, every time a character once cultivated from a value structure imagined by a writer becomes understood by a reader, understood through so many words they fill not a page but five hundred, the character becomes realized. that's the mind of a character, reflected from his thoughts, words, actions and even the scenes surrounding him in a mental vision drawn subjectively by every single individual reader.

I climb back to my bed by the windowsill, close the window and sit looking at the dim room for a while. I need to separate myself from myself to see what I hold within that's deserving to be evoked in black and white. for starters I need to find another heroine than the one who I've been obsessed about - too much money and an obsession to white horses, nothing particularly interesting nor new in that association for anyone.

wearing my black leather cape over a wool sweater, I walk up the hill by riegrovy sady. the thick layers of snow creak under my boots, compelling me to walk faster. I need to sort my head out, refresh it a bit. too long of a chain of thoughts to elaborate exists as the reason why that translates into a need for absinth.

inside my regular, resting on a concave opening up to a small square, a brisk sound of chatter gives rhythm for the yellow hue around. the scent of beer hanging in the air associates to the senses left into me by many past nights of bedlam. after ordering my shot, I mix it with water while still standing by the counter. the opaque green transforms into a misty greenish haze. the sight warms my heart before I've even had a taste. I feel my mind orientating itself away from the antisocial void experienced together with the coldness outside.

I look around and see mikhail sitting at a corner table, talking to some locals. I sit next to him, and by striking a conversation in russian I close us into a world of our own. after a few exchanged platitudes, we begin to speak in english, mixing to other loud voices around. after the shot I switch to lager, and in the following hour my empty glass is changed to a new one by a nearly noticeable, rapid two handed being circling between the counter and a table full of men, and another, another...

mikhail has been drinking way longer than an hour, I realize as he begins to go on about dostoevsky. I've heard it all before, and he knows it. the only reason he uses his loud voice to speak about this again is the desire to draw in desirable strangers from the other tables around. I already see a couple of eyes on us.

“in dostoevsky, the adventure plot is combined with the posing of profound and acute problems; and it is, in addition, placed wholly at the service of the idea. it places a person in extraordinary positions that expose and provoke him, it connects him and makes him collide with other people under unusual and unexpected conditions precisely for the purpose of testing the idea and the man of the idea, that is, for testing the “man in man.” and this permits the adventure story to be combined with other genres that are, it would seem, quite foreign to it, such as the confession and the saint’s life.”
“saint's life?” repeats a man from the table next to us. holding a glass of pale lager close to his lips, he is ready to continue his static patterns of behavior as soon as his words have reached and encouraged mikhail to become even louder - he goes on to deconstruct the situation at hand to its bits while I sit quietly pondering on how would a saint's life feel.

“at the base of the genre lies the socratic notion of the dialogic nature of truth, and the dialogic nature of human thinking about truth. the dialogic means of seeking truth is counterposed to official monologism, which pretends to possess a ready-made truth, and it is also counterposed to the naïve self-confidence of those people who think they know something, that is, who think they possess certain truths. truth is not born nor is it to be found inside the head of an individual person. it is born between people collectively searching for truth, in the process of their dialogic interaction.

socrates called himself a “pander” - he brought people together and made them collide in a quarrel, and as a result truth was born; with respect to this emerging truth socrates called himself a “midwife,” since he assisted at the birth. for this reason also he called his method “obstetric” - but socrates never called himself the exclusive possessor of a ready-made truth. we emphasize that socratic notions of the dialogic nature of truth lay at the folk-carnivalistic base of the genre of socratic dialogue, determining its form, but they did not by any means always find expression in the actual content of the individual dialogues. the content often assumed a monologic character that contradicted the form-shaping idea of the genre.

in plato’s dialogues of his first and second periods, the dialogic nature of truth is still recognized in the philosophical worldview itself, although in weakened form. thus the dialogue of these early periods has not yet been transformed into a simple means for expounding ready-made ideas, for pedagogical purposes, and socrates has not yet been transformed into a “teacher.” but in the final period of plato’s work that has already taken place: the monologism of the content begins to destroy the form of that socratic dialogue. consequently, when the genre of the socratic dialogue entered the service of the established, dogmatic worldviews of various philosophical schools and religious doctrines, it lost all connection with a carnival sense of the world and was transformed into a simple form expounding already found, ready-made irrefutable truth; ultimately, it degenerated completely into a question-and-answer form for training neophytes - catechism.”

the honesty of mikhail's has now drawn two more familiar local faces to our table, and the discussion begins to fly off to all possible directions. inhibitions become forgotten, and after a while I am no longer in control of what I say. reacting almost too quickly to the words of others, I reveal the depths of my mind in everything I say. just out of mad confidence I let the flow of thoughts speed through a very coherent structure of associations, traveling a route called “random.” my drunkenness holds hands with the ability to tie into short sentences the vastness of meanings drawn from the moments we share, only comprehensible to the other mindful beings entwined in this time and space.

I am not completely sure how, but we seem to overcome everything at hand through the words exchanged, extending the reality through the concepts within our minds. even though enjoying the sense of being inside the tight spot between time and space, I break its spell by rambling. the words brought from that sense obscure the material world devoid of inherent meaning by a plenitude of subjective meanings suddenly intertwining around this table, filtered also through other minds than mine.

I lean back to listen and observe the others for a while, and glance around the bar. something on the walls triggers me to remember the reason why I left my dungeon to come here - I was to find another heroine. I look at mikhail and he turns to look at me, and our eyes exchange a few senses of things. he has plans for tonight. I am not included.

smiling a smile nearing a laugh, I think about the foolishness of coming here in this search of mine. it has been a long time since dead poets like me and mikhail found muses from any bars. our taste of them has anyway turned to these places filled with just middle-aged men.

I pull on my cape, farewell everyone, and walk out from the yellow hue into the grainy darkness outside. in an instant all the toxic strains laid by me on my body for the past days feel as if climbing up my spine, and my head sizzles itself dizzy. my knees kiss the ground, but I feel no pain. crawling towards the small icy fountain in the middle of the square, I am so delirious the snow under my hands feels hot.

I turn to lay on my back to catch my breath, and quite obviously hallucinate the snow around to melt into a pool of liquid, so hot it steams and vaporizes into the air. raising myself to stand up, I notice a woman approaching me through the mist created by my mind. when she gets closer, I see she has long orange hair down to her waist and a body dressed in layers of black. her eyes defy the ability of mine to focus.

everything that happens next arrives to my conscious mind as if through a blurred lens, like a sped-up-film not focused to anything. the first moment from which I can say myself to know something unravels as I lay on the backseat of a car, a taxi most likely, with my head on her lap. her laughter is loud and her flowery scent an impossibility in the frozen lands we live in. I am surprised over the coherence of my voice howling out my address,

“chopinova dvě.”

the room bathes in white light as I awaken. more snow has fallen down from the heavens during the morning hours. I feel my body - no hungover. I stretch my hands towards the ceiling - no bruises.

climbing to the windowsill, I clumsily open one of the windows and breathe in the fresh air. my eyes burn and turn the scene outside to its negative in color, just for a split second - riegrovy sady flashes from pure white to dark shades of phosphorous green, as if the trees of the park, now buried under snow, all would lively sparkle.

what happened yesterday? I was supposed to begin the construction of a character for whom to write a story for, but instead I... got drunk? is that it?

I light a cigarette, pick up a pair of wool socks to wear in addition to just boxers, and fall into a memory of last winter in st. petersburg. the coldness wrapped into the air floating damply over the baltic sea went through everything I could imagine wearing, making a sprained muscle under my left shoulder blade color a few weeks with suffering. the moist from the sea feels different in the air than the moist from vltava. it is not so suffocatingly cold here.

in an instant my mind ties together pieces of information not before associated, memories, as I see a dark figure ascending up the hill towards me through the park. I recognize the orange hair, returning from the center. frozen to but observe, I follow her movements through the whiteness to the front door underneath. where did she get the key?

I close the window, jump down onto the bed, onto the floor, and quickly dress myself. all I remember from the night that involves her is being delirious in the square in her presence, laughing on the backseat of a taxi which I did not pay for, and then laying here drawing circles on her back. I am not sure if we were introduced. all I know is that I don't know her name.

I hear the key turn inside the old lock and suddenly sense the smell of the books around, a smell that is normally adapted senseless for my conscious mind. the door is open and there she stands, silent and stunning.

closing the door, she walks to be but a touch away, and I look into her eyes for the first time through sober filters. my quick mind has already gone to create a characterization of her, and as we stand and stare I think, which comes first - the eyes of the character or the character? where do the internal parts of a paramour end, where do the external begin?

she leaves my gaze to go through a stack of books by the bed, and I begin to make us coffee. waiting for the water to boil, I sit onto the windowsill by the kitchenette, and look through the open space how well she fits here. her presence is completely coherent. there is nothing in her gestures or posture which could translate to insecurity of any kind. I could almost make myself believe she owns this apartment and not me.

I remember the sentences read yesterday, the words about static figures, the kind that do not lose their individuality and become merged with others. as I look at her I am sure she will never merge into me, nor will I to her. I know it from her presence. she is present in every moment, making it impossible to infiltrate her mind, her perceptions, her senses. memories from last night begin to emerge - otherwise I wouldn't know these things about her without even knowing her name.

I pick one of the books left to rest on the windowsill, and open it from a marked spot.

“anyway, it seemed to him that when you add a concept of dynamic quality to a rational understanding of the world, you can add a lot to an understanding of contrarians. some of them aren't just being negative toward static moral patterns, they are actively pursuing a dynamic goal. everybody gets on these negative contrarian streaks from time to time, where no matter what it is they're supposed to be doing, that's the one thing they least want to do. sometimes it's a degenerative negativism, where biological forces are driving it. sometimes it's an ego pattern that says, I'm too important to be doing all this dumb static stuff.

sometimes the contrary anti-static drive becomes a static pattern of its own. this contrary stuff can become a tiger-ride where you can't get off and you have to keep riding and riding until the tiger finally throws you and devours you. the degenerative contrarian stuff usually goes that way. drugs, illicit sex, alcohol and the like.

but sometimes it's dynamic, where your whole being senses that the static situation is an enemy of life itself. that's what drives the really creative people - the artists, composers, revolutionaries and the like - the feeling that if they don't break out of this jailhouse somebody has built around them, they're going to die.”

the coffee pot hisses and spits out steam. I pour the coffee into two tall glasses, covering it with greasy milk. seating myself next to her on the floor, leaning to the bedpost, I look more closely to her and see that in addition to the coherence of her being, there's acceptance. she possesses a coherent structure flexible enough to accept the love of another into it, without confusing it to the merging of values, experiences, bodies. her mind can be penetrated without breaking it. perfect.