Microcosmos and Microchaos
proesia: personal, galactic, divine (many such cases)
Editor’s note:
Another chapter from my upcoming book “Tulubaikaporia” that hasn’t been shared here before. In this chapter, the Lyrical I finds oneself in the city and in the village at the same time, yearning to see the truest images of both. Will the Lyrical I succeed? That’s a bad question, actually, very bad, fuck that question.
There’s a lot of sound work done on it to make it lively when read aloud. I would do that, but not with my accent and pronounciation. Alas!
It was, in fact, meant as a submission to an anthology but was not accepted there because of the style, so it seeks acceptance here on NoNe, naturally.
Beams of appreciation,
Ivan | Vanya | Vanechka
There you are, trudge through the city, all around skyscrapers sprout. Behind, ever so distant, lies Tulubaika; ahead, ever so near—bloody hell knows not what. On and on the avenue winds, its endless venue astretch, bound to snap like an old string, slash your cheek raw and leave a scar beneath your eye (the sight's still there, thank you very much) so you'd torture your memory over that melody never mastered.
Primordial soup of concrete, metal and glass fills the surrounding space of this chaotically ordered universe and takes shape as walls, ceilings, floors, staircases, windows, benches, poles, stretches of tarmac. Upward it grows, downward it burrows as wires and pipes and metro mole-tunnels. Outward it swells and scatters to an infinity infinitely large, until the little human within finally recognises himself as an infinity infinitely small.
The proportion natural light shrinks with unnatural greed, cars move ever louder, yet slower, people walk ever denser, yet faster. Hum, hubbub and hullabaloo, the noise of tyres and soles merge into the background—sea sound, wave roar, storm forest hour—a monolithic din beckoning one to trance. No brain-squeezing fear remains, no anxiety lingers, no claustrophobia caused by the sheer quantity of everything; instead—awe before civilization's new element: earth, water, air, fire, aether, city. The olds built pyramids for egoists; we raise them for thousands of souls to make birds envious, pharaohs dead jealous, and children of tomorrow marvelling at their ancestors' grandeur.
In that village of mine, rooftops are a hand's throw away; here you won't spot them without binoculars. There void holds its reign: pure fields, grass unmown, pure sky, stars starving for glances, houses askew from sheer emptiness. As for colors: late autumn, winter, early spring—mere shades of grey, no kaleidoscopes of carnivals, no psychedelia intipsifying all, just dust, decay, and cavity, bubble, geode. Yet, it's lovely at times: dawn layers agately, night shimmers with amethyst, birchwood drowns in citrine, firmament glows with blue chalcedony. In the metropolis though, void has voided, collapsed fracally into itself, no room for it here no more, and ceaseless secretion fills all manner of vacuums. Nature abhors a vacuum, and the nature of vacuum abhors itself. Quite capacious, this paragraph, mind you.
With bewilderment micros glow, cosmos and chaos. Wet asphalt and concrete shimmer in sungleam, once pale grey, now dark. Clouds are thin, almost finished their cry, and the hopeful light penetrates them. It reflects in the countless cars' mirrors, in the buildings' glass, in protruding phone screens that balaclavaed cyclists in black snatch from hunched passersby who but shrug and keep shuffling onwards, no umbrellas in hand, no bother for dripping warm drizzle, for a pleasant phenomenon, this mushroom rain, as our village folk would've called it. Soon, winds will lift human spores up the air and disperse them 'round the city. They will raise in trainloads from under the ground, and their presence will flood over pavements, squares, roads and streets, all those venues of avenues. Lo and behold, off they trot, some to their jobs, some to jobless affairs, to museums, cinemas, galleries, theatres, bakeries, libraries, reading rooms, skating rinks, swimming pools, plazas and promenades, food halls, concert halls, dance floors, comedy clubs, or perhaps karaoke, rooftop bars, kinky clubs, cozy corner cafes, observation decks, prayer rooms, botanical gardens, arcades, hidden speakeasies, markets and malls, parks and playgrounds, centres for everything... or simply to wander, you know, stretch their thoughts and restore to their legs their original purpose.
—From Brandenburg Gate station you ride to Tower Bridge station, there you change to the manky purplish-brown line, and head towards Brighton Beach till terminus. Take the last carriage and moment you hop off, leg it straight to the exit. But don't get lost. Bloody hell it's packed there—can't squeeze a mouse through. Then half an hour on the moving stairs and bob's your uncle. Easy,—says the navigator on my phone.
Sunward I point my face, mightly I squeeze my eyes shut, all watery from fumes afloat and borrowed sleep (debt collectors are on the way!). Jumping off the glass building, the sun's reflection douses the street with light. The city throbs, breathes, digests its tenants, and gently mocks its guests. Go on then, run along, no point standing there gawping—you'll catch a fly or some affliction of sorts. Yet here I stand, arms awide, straight as a rod, alone in a meadow barren and broad. Grumbling passersby jostle. Gentle breeze; traffic noise sounds like wind through oats ripened for harvest. O shall I leap upon my steed of two-wheeled pedal breed! O shall I race along those roads, trailing dust and childhood yarns, teenage fables, youth's swift whispers! O shall sun tousle my freckles, shall the wind shove my hair into my eyes, and shall the chain chew grease-strained trouser, and shall zoom onwards I. O shan't give a toss, or even "a fuck" as my grown-up self would permit me to say.
—Give me change!—a hoarse voice shouts to me.—Change, I plead you, urgent matter. Or I'll leave, but first I'll show you the entire intimate essence of mine! Oo! Oooo!—so he moans, hands reaching for his fly.
—Won't give any!—says I.—No change to give, nothing to share. I'm always paying by card!
—Ah, card shark! May the state torment you!
—Eh?—says I, playing fool.
—Here's your carte blanche for my essence! Oo! Oooo!
—¡No hablo inglés!—I yell and hurry to part ways with the stranger, my mind dismissing this most peculiar mishap.
I descend underground to tunnel away. Still I stand. In my ears—Shostakovich, string quartet number-8, allegro molto, breakcore rendition; in my head—a bit of a do; in my soul—the nobility of feelings ignoble; in my eyes—local adverts: bits and bobs for home and body, this and that for business, everything from tip to toe, from alpaca winter socks to lacy knickers, from Chekhovian theatre to torture by tiktoks of feline brainrot (oo ee ee ah ee oo ee ee ee ee ah ee), from attempts to sell to desires to secretly flog me some memecoins protected by nought but cryptography. Here, underground lies half of the city, be it rail transport, car parks, or shopping malls going down and down, while in Tulubaika—only the dead. Here, I'll slip into another world in an hour, in Tulubaika—into Tulubaika itself for the umpteenth time. Here, the air's full of suspension, in Tulubaika... Well, none of that's there, in fact, only clean air, pure water and pure starry sky, pure as the consciousness of a fresh victim of gnosis.
Inward and outward voices fuse: whispers from within meet the clamour of the crowd.
—Ey up, I'm done in, mate, proper done in. Laid me low, this influenza.
—All sorts of bubonic bollocks going round t'village nowadays. Mowing down folk left and right, young uns and old uns alike, and they keep shuffling about, breathing in and out their miasmas! Unbelievable!
—Tell me about it... Them city folk rabbiting on...
—Put mask on then, thou daft apeth? Get thee jab and all.
—Aye, reckon I might do just that!
—Aye, right then, do it then!
—Cough once and they eye thee like thou's broken loose from some leper colony.
—At home thou stayest, dost not walk away. Get on with the times, the stance, the circumstance. It is what it is. Autumn. Weak immunity. Muck and mire. Khondria...
—Stop thy khondering then! Everyone's now a hypochondriac! Get thyself pumpkin latte.
—Eh up, pumpkin hodgepodge now? What young uns won't think of next, eh?
—It's coffee with milk, grandma. "Latte," from Italian.
—Whatever keeps young uns happy. Long as it ain't deadly nightshade "latte".
—Undoubtedly, the characteristic patterns of urbanized environments, featuring high population density, intensive social interaction, and developed transport infrastructure, create favorable conditions for exponential growth in the transmission of infectious agents within the population.
—Just dost not breathe then. Might solve all thy troubles with them acute respiratory viral agents and their sleeper agent network.
—Take thy vitamins, C and D, maybe Omega-3, might shift that flu of thee.
—Think I got no sense to spare? With all the wit I have to bear?.. I can tell a plum from pear, know what's foul or fair.
—Pale as death on antibiotics, thou art.
Train arrives, empties its carriage, into its innards invites us. Rather stuffy inside, one must say. Rushourous travelers stockpiled like sprats. Proper and pensive we stand, ears plugged, eyes on phones (absolute suicide to be without one) or on newspapers passed around unwanted, except to crack up at the latest debates between vegetarians and lotus-eaters. Hot; sweat gathers on my solar plexus, between my shoulder blades, deep in my armpits. Departure's announced, doors close, snatch my scarf, and the train, with the tonnage of several Tulubaikas, creaks and plunges into the depth of tenebrous tunnels. Our faces' reflections amuse us in windows concaved. We breathe down each other's necks, nudge each other with backpacks, cough politely.
Time hovers, spirals, spins its wheel, threading through my ears and eyes, tickles my nostrils to sneezing point. Tra-la-la, tru-la-la, never a hint of boredom, not at all. I never get bored, not ever, not I. There's this tool against boredom that will bail you out without much fuff—called "thinkering." One might langurously daydream, one's head in clouds, become a sofa philosopher, count the x's and y's of world mathematics, become a professor in syllogismatics, sit at a round table with a king and a jester and other facets of lyrical I to establish an anonymous society of knights, witnesses of solipsism, and wander from door to door, from one's own to another's, preaching that schizoid thinkering. Thus it was, thus it shall be, from dawn till dusk, from dusk till dawn, till kingdom come. Location matters not—it's all in the noggin, innit, not in the village or the city.
—Well... Never been fond of modern bookshops, if I'm honest... Don't want to pretend.
—Well... And why's that?
—Well... Just is. Can't stand the smell of new. They should smell of age: dust, yellowed paper, well... The scent of pressed flowers forgotten between pages. Not of factory glue.
—Well... Wouldn't have had any bookshops back in the village, mind.
—Well... Suits me fine. Library was plenty enough, never had much use for a shop.
—Well... Libraries and graveyards are rather alike.
—Aye, both full of stories gone quiet.
Somewhere there, beneath birch crowns old and dear, a lone chap from police moonward howls his sorrow, longing for how far we've strayed. O thou shalt not ask for papers no more, shalt not hit our door with thy boot, shalt not hit us with thy baton, shalt not huff and shalt not puff, shalt not trace our IPs. O we're out of range, unavailable. Leave thy message on Signal, not after one. We're no longer "there", yet not quite "here", just as "there" isn't quite there anymore, and "here" isn't really here yet; we wade through liminal bogs. As you name your ship, so shall she sail. Exile? By no means. Escape? As they say, fate's unwashable, planida, planida... Now, "mission"... O "mission"... a noble name, that one.
Where spatiotemporal clothes once pinched the shoulders, these new ones from exodus-sale racks now embrace like a straitjacket—sleeves unbound, afloat.
—Mommy, dear mommy. I shan't wear this. What a frightful thing, what a cut!
—Stop moaning, give it a bit.
—But mommy... This seam's proper scratchy, like sandpaper it is.
—Sort it out we will, that seam.
—And this bit's all pokey.
—Wear it a while—it'll stop.
—It's so prickly! Like a rose bush, mommy, honest.
—Gets everyone, that. You'll manage.
—I don't want to! And this button inside keeps bothering me.
—Once we're home, we'll snip that button right off.
—Mommy, dear mommy, what if I grow up?
—Here's hoping you will, love.
—It won't fit then, will it?
—We'll get you new ones then, won't we?
—But mommy... still, is it really the time?
A "WAY OUT" sign, moving stairs, turnstile gates; until a ray of welcome light reveals our path; joyful we leave to see the lovely things that Heaven bears and hail the op'ning glories of the stars.
Bit gloomy, this. Dense fog weaves patterns all around. In proper weather, a building tall would loom before me, but now I'm lucky to observe five storeys up. The view's absolutely smashing, they say, whole city served like on a proper plate (indeed), not just the city—the world itself, no vantage point higher there exists, and even the horizon watcher shall have libido satisfied.
Crowds bustle through the square. I squeeze between them, heading straight inside. I'm ready, building, ready to serve my sentence in the most dismal line. It ends, the queue. I flash my QR-code to the attendant then hop into a lift for twenty souls. And thus we stand in silence embraced by sound of Satie mixed with crickets, musique d’ameublement.
And lo! Hundred and eight floors later, we are up top (before one dares to blink). Now, prepare to greet me, elevation! All yours, I'm here, take me!
Across the roof towards the wall of tempered glass I walk and squash my cheek against it, eyes open wide with all their might. And what I see? Entire world spread out! I never knew (yet I confess—expected) it would be mere haze. No buildings tall, no peopleants, no traffic jam in sight, no Ararat with Fuji, no paints, no flowers, no roofs, no pipes, no spires, no birds, no towers, no bridges, no weather vanes gone mad, no kids' balloons, no pompous pigeons (flying rats, more like), no colourful umbrellas, no sun in puddles, no cats on windowsills, no laundry flags, no mother's pastries, no chalk on asphalt, no "CLOSED" signs, no sparks from trams, no balaclavaed cyclists, no soap bubbles, no tunes from windows, no whiff of pumpkin spice, no wedding rings on traffic lights, no swings, no paper kites, no hankies waving last goodbyes; in seven words—all proper grey like homeland in winter. And "here" isn't there, and "there" isn't here, only betweenherethereness. And thus we stand, daft tourists in a castle in the sky, trying to comprehend the zen of God's provision (tickets gone to fuck). But... Actually, no "buts" about it—time to descend.