Because

This was originally written in Polish, for a competition. The requirement was that it start with "I like oranges because..." and that you buy a kilogram of oranges along with it. As the nearby Tesco didn't have enough oranges, I was left with this text...

I like oranges because they can instil life into any still life. They are suns the size of your palms, suns that can be placed in the lower right-hand corner of a painting, where the sticky juice of golden light drips onto them succulently. Where it touches them hardest, they reply with pale goose bumps; elsewhere they merely smile warmly. When you place them next to red-and-green apples, they contrast with a color full of enthusiasm, at the same time calming their spotty cousins with a uniformity of finish.

You can cut them a bit with a bluish knife, and a delicate smell of pale gold pieces dressed in flimsy white fluff will fill the painting to the brim.

You hold in your hands the suns of the South, picked for you from a sky without a single cloud – orange distilled from the essence of blueness. Eat them; that’s what they’re for.

Triptych

From Sunday's excursion to London.

The marbles in Westminster cathedral form a dizzyingly dazzling quilt of inter-hue relations. Pink, green, blue and gold, its Byzantine extravagance is a far cry from the typical English Gothic, and how it stuns! Westminster is the largest catholic church in London, but it’s not its size that impresses. The nave – the widest in any place of worship in England – seems more like the waiting room in a train station than a monument to God. This may be due to its unfinished state – above a certain height, the marbles give way to a dark, crude stone. As if the message of the church were that paradise is on Earth, not above our heads and tombstones. A very convincing message, if not for the ray of light that, right before our exit, embraces the rough materialness of the stone suspended somewhere up there, above our heads.

But it’s not Westminster cathedral we came to London for. It’s for the National Gallery, for a journey through the history of beauty.

The thirteenth to fifteenth century paintings are exquisite. It’s that period that’s so very often underestimated – as if art had emerged completely formed with Leonardo and Raphael. I’ve only really discovered it through the pre-Raphaelites, and to be honest this discovery slightly undermines my love of this nineteenth century style. For it seems that the pre-Raphaelites did not add much to what people had painted like in the fifteenth century – they just revived and slightly modernized it. And the fact that it can be so easily modernized makes fifteenth century art astonishing.

Nonetheless, one does get tired. If I closed my eyes at the end of this section, I’d probably see rows of hyper-realistic Virgins clad in pointlessly, dizzyingly bright gowns, holding pudgy, naked baby sons who stare out into space vacantly...

The Madonna with the Iris – workshop of Albrecht Dürer

This one strikes you from the moment you set eyes on it. The intense crimson of the gown, along with the hyper-realism of the surroundings – of course that’s what draws your attention to it. But there’s more to it – the Virgin’s face, roundish and unholy, crowned in piggish-blonde hair, seems to be exclaiming, with the air of a lady of high standing: “Oh look, it’s a child, how cute!”. She might soon return to her partying and give the child back to its nanny. But the sparkles of gold upon her hair!...

They force me to reconsider my hasty conclusion. “Oh look, it’s a child” – is not her expression the one of someone who just looked at a loved one as if they had just seen something completely new, to whom it seems for a moment that they understand, they know? The expression of someone who loves. In the unholy, vain way that is the only way we can truly love. “Look, this is my child.”

As for the child itself – at first, he strikes me as impossibly stiff and unnatural, in that curled-up way of his. But then look at the way he’s clutching his mother’s arm with his feet, the way he’s holding her wrist with the palm of his tiny hand. His whole body is tense, yes – it is tense because he is completely taken up with his sucking, he is one great gulp of milk and life.

Then there’s the hyper-realism of the surroundings. Each blade of grass makes your insides somersault. And the simplicity of the background view, the one line of the horizon cutting the air and sea with a sharp calmness. And the color, the subtlety of the color!

Unnatural at first, impossibly natural second, finally as unnatural as only life can be – yes, there’s always room in the world for another well-done Madonna.

Unfaithfulness – Paolo Veronese

The diagonal of her back juts out of the painting and into your face. She’s showing us her backside, and I can’t help but laugh.

It’s the nicest of the four “allegories of love” exhibited in this room (unfaithfulness? the nicest?) – but they’re all extremely nice. A lot of it undoubtedly has to do with the color, the same subtlety as in “The Madonna with the Iris”. Indeed, our unfaithful Venus is uncannily similar to the Madonna – she’s even got the same hue of hair. Perhaps this is the “partying” for which she leaves her child to her nanny?

She’s handing a love letter to a pink-clad and rather characterless dandy, while her lovestruck husband (?), dressed in pretty orange, looks on with sad – and intelligent – puppy eyes. He is softly holding one of her hands as the dandy gluttonously snatches the letter from the other one. The husband seems calm (perhaps resigned, perhaps still naively trustful, maybe gently reproachful), but for the odd perspective from which we see his foot; it seems to jerk in pain involuntarily, as if to kick the hated rival. The cupids stare on in disgust.

A Woman Bathing in a Stream – Rembrandt

White, coarse, thick – the paint thrown onto the canvas with a frenzied palette knife, the gown, the gown! The nearby darkness billows vaporously with abstract golds, there’s a momentousness somewhere in the air. There she stands, soft and blurry under the coarse cloth, completely preoccupied with the cold water she has just entered. A film paused for a second, there is an immense stillness in the way she is about to lift the gown over her thighs. There is such intimacy here, such quiet and simplicity. “The picture appears unfinished (...), but it was clearly finished to Rembrandt's satisfaction since he signed and dated it,” reads the information plate below the painting. Unfinished? But “finishing” would have beat all the beauty out of this masterpiece! There is nothing more or less in the painting than what needs to be there.

After hundreds upon hundreds of gaily colored gowns, carefully outlined hyper-realism, and overpopulated heroic dramatisms, Rembrandt quietly puts a coarse, wet cloth over your eyes and filters gentle sunlight through it.

Yes, if paradise is anywhere, it is on Earth. But it is not in the marbles of our earthly walls, it is in the rough stones of our ceilings and the stripes of light that slice through them.

Whoa, that was a swiping generalization. Hurray to Rubens and Vivaldi, obviously you guys are just as wonderful as Rembrandt and Bach.

Squishy, squelchy, unfun fun

Ha, I actually managed to write something about Oxford - well, not about Oxford itself, but about its caving club. This is a description of my first caving trip - down Swildon's Hole. Unfortunately caving isn't a very good pastime for taking pictures, so there's nothing I can attach to this text; but there are some cool photos of the place around the internet.

“It only starts being really fun when it almost stops being fun” – the oh-so-deep thought hit me in my third hour underground.

Actually, it was really fun from the very start, from the moment we put on our ridiculous caving clothes – the fleecy, one-part, baby-garment-like undersuits; the brightly coloured oversuits, blue ones like blue builders’ coats, yellow-and-red ones like yellow-and-red clowns’ uniforms; the wellies that were sometimes two sizes too large and from two different pairs; the helmets that I can conjure no humorous description of. So there we were, dressed in our ridiculous caving clothes, surreal specks of colour walking across a brown field in Mendip. And there we came to an inconspicuous hole in the ground. One by one, the specks of colour disappeared from the surface of the earth, entering a world whose surrealness rivalled their own.

And then it started being really, really fun. We waded in an underground river, squishing, squashing, squelching, splashing in squishy, squashy, squelchy, mushy waters. Water in our wellies, mud on our hands and faces and hair – a child is happiest when dirty, an adult is happiest when her resemblance to a dirty child becomes almost too uncomfortable to bear. It only starts being really fun when it almost stops being fun.

Down onto your face and cram your body into a tightly cramped tunnel, walls jam, ram, slam into you from all sides, you in a little tunnel of air surrounded by infinite expanses of stone. Unable to move your head, all you see are the wellies of your predecessor kicking furiously inches ahead of your nose, and on and on you crawl – nay, slither! – thrashing your legs about likewise. Then the scenery changes – velvety expanses of undiscovered darkness, spacious emptiness that fills your insides with shudders of awe. Below – a waterfall, trickling, murmuring, drippety-drip-dripping... Next to it a ladder, a spindly, frail affair, swinging to and fro as you come down, the water eternally rushing past, its wet, cool indifference deeply reassuring.

That emptiness, that something which turns your insides upside down, that something which is nothing, which is perhaps an illusion and is all the more powerful for it – that is the biggest treasure one can find in a cave. My feet begin to ache, I have bruises all over my elbows, I don’t know whether I am really enjoying myself anymore. But I know that when I come out, these will be the moments I shall remember as true happiness. “This is it, there is nothing else – and isn’t it the best it could possibly be?” I tell myself, and I think I know what I mean.

We scramble, scurry and scuttle up and down in the most ridiculous places and poses. Hands on rough stone, feet somewhere miles away, I carefully think of a way of getting down without falling. The caver’s motto goes: “Why use your hands and feet when you can use your bottom?” – indeed, caving is a wonderfully undignified game.

In that third hour underground I stop noticing things around me. It takes most of the effort I can muster to keep on going – I mechanically lift my feet, look for footholds, mechanically shiver in the cold underground stream. But I am so content, how good to feel so bad! That was the moment when it started being really, really, really fun.

And then came the moment most fun of all – the moment when it absolutely stopped being fun. The moment of the sump. Which is the technical term for a passage completely submerged under water.

First you have to lie down in the icy cold, frightfully freezing water. God, God, God it’s cold! Everything inside you tells you to get out and run away – instead, you search with your numb fingers for the rope by which you are to pull yourself through the water, and you submerge your helmeted, crazy head. Oh my God, oh my God, I’m gonna die... Long milliseconds... Can’t b-b-brrrreathe... Solid rock above me, what if I won’t make it?!... Made it.

“How was it?” “Oh. My. God.” Grins from ear to ear, shudders from tip to toe, we’re as happy and as terrified, cold and exhausted as can be.

But the scariest part was yet to come... A realization was shaping itself in my mind... “Are we going back the way we came?” Of course, I already knew the dreaded reply. Those fifteen minutes of further exploration, knowing that once we turned back I would have to go through that hell again, and that now diving was not a matter of bravery, but of necessity – now that’s what fear is...

The second time itself was much less scary than the first. Cold, in, out, shiver-shiver and time to leave.

When we came out after five hours, how amazing seemed the sky, by now specked with sparkly stars! How amazing the dry clothes, how amazing the fireplace in the hut and the tea, the hot, delicious tea! This is it, there is nothing else, hot tea is as happy as you can get.

Nobody there

A short story that was meant to be on the loose subject of "bodies" and ended up being on the loose subject of "bodilessness".

PS I promise I'll write something about Oxford at some point, but probably only after the end of term (December 5th).

I tried to remember what flowers looked like. Pink roses in the garden of my childhood. Deep, dark pink, a lot of them, simple and so obvious. Pink, pink, pink, it’s just a word now... It’s hard to imagine colours when you’ve got black film spread over your eyes. Your eyes...! I’ve still got my memories, but already they are fading away, the bright pinks and oranges washed away by the tears I can no longer cry, blurred to better match the surrounding darkness.

Tried to remember what it was like to cuddle up in an embrace. Soft, safe, still. Warm, solid arms around me. Tried even to remember what it was like to hurt my toe, to yelp in anguish and internally curse myself for being such an ass.

At least that I could still do. Except now there was no externality to limit and define my internality; being nowhere at all, I was within and without at the same time.

Tried to remember my death. That razor-blade edge where something became nothing, the point where I went around in a perfect circle and fell down from the abyss of highest pain into the heavens of emptiness.

1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4... Adagio, allegro, andantino? Had it been a day? A month?

What do you fill eternal emptiness with? Memories you will inevitably lose, thoughts that cannot be inspired by anything outside yourself? Can you create a story now, can you discover mathematical ideas?

“What was it like to look at a flower?” The thought was so different, it hurt. It came with the image of ghastly purple hyacinths, pulsating in and out of focus, and a sense of despair mingled with awe in proportions I had never previously experienced.

Following this head-on collision with an alien entity, my previous train of thought was knocked off its tracks completely. It plunged into the black pools of despair, full of rebounding echoes of reflected hyacinths, wrinkled menacingly by passing waves of sorrow.

I held on to a strand of awe, by which I pulled myself out to the shore and shook off droplets of pain. Thereupon I found a realization:

“There must be others! Others who think of hyacinths! I am not alone, there is a point!”

“Can you hear me? I am here, I am here, I am, I am...” I thought as loudly as I could. But of course that didn’t make the thought any louder.

And once again there was only me, for a very long time. The possibility of human contact temporarily kept my spirits high, but you can only dwell in future imaginary lands so long, and eventually I had to accept that I might never be able to communicate with another being.

At this point it would have been very easy to give in to a feeling of despair, had it not been for the sense of awe that now seemed inseparably bound with this feeling. How terrifyingly amazing, that I should be here!

A course of action soon presented itself to me. I shall create something – I must, must be able to. But first let me have a look at the resources available to me. There is no one else; so let me introspect. What do I remember, what do I know, who am I? Given all this time, let me begin by segregating the contents of my consciousness; and doing it well.

There were the personal memories; and there were the snippets of books, paintings, symphonies, mathematical proofs. Music posed a particular difficulty. I struggled to recall even small parts of Schubert’s fourteenth String Quartet – pam, parapampam, I got stuck in the first measure, the maiden stuck forever in her coffin, pounding on the wooden lid in a distant echo of sounds that would be endlessly beyond her grasp.

I concentrated as hard as I could. No, I was losing it, concentrating on the concentrating, not on the music. And then...

It took me a while to realize that this was actually it. It wasn’t just that it was a different interpretation on the part of the musicians. It was a different pair of ears that interpreted it as well. The climatic point was somewhere to the left of where I was used to hearing it, I hardly noticed that favourite part of mine that had always obscured everything else, and the whole had a rather more reckless feel to it.

Presently I became aware of visual stimuli as well. I looked up to the stage of that memorable concert and gasped. No, no, no, that is not the right colour for a violin! But in a way it was the right colour.

Then it all went very quickly. I would be overcome with inexplicable feelings, experience alien visions and memories, all in rapid succession. Then they would begin to overlap to the point where you could not tell where one ended and the other began; you could not tell where I ended and someone else began.

There was just the one clear vision. I lifted the knife repeatedly, and stabbed and stabbed. The shriek filled the entirety of the space around me, pushing into my ears and every corner of my consciousness. The anger, my anger, followed in its tracks, finally overcoming and silencing it.

***

I think that was the end of her. Oh yes, there was still the Essence – the memories, the point of view – but it had been blended with other Essences beyond distillation.

The unity of souls, the Universal Mind, the goulash of consciousnesses, dissect, cut out, rip, shred and mix well...

In the end, there is only death.