sebtolvajen
sebtolvaj.freeblog.hu
The original of the following text contains numerous literary and cultural references, which only make sense to Hungarians in Hungarian. For this reason some of them had to be omitted, others I marked with a * and explained them in a footnote. - the translator
A (Social) Autotelic Announcement
Wound-snatcher is a 37-year-old misanthrope.
His environment can only speak about
his depressed disposition in superlatives.
Wound-snatcher's been tormented by his memory
for many years, which his closest fellow natives
couldn't find an explanation for.
Remembrance is not a private matter.
Do Something Against it!
anonymous line: +36 AMNEZIA
Saturday, 1st May 2004
It's a mystery why, but there's hardly anyone around who doesn't collect something. Collects, takes or gets, it doesn't actually matter. Folks collect money, stamps, coins, newspaper articles, newpaper articles about another newspaper article, china dogs with its kill, a wild-duck in its mouth, china dogs without duck, autographs, posters of stars and stars of posters, photographs, cameras, photographs of cameras, napkins, a lock of hair of our hated lover, old cinema tickets, theatre tickets, moles, and of course there's the careful weeding and nurturing of memories (uh). This damn inclination to systematize. Assemble, dissemble, assemble, dissemble. From A to B, then back. I said back. But back where exactly? Back is also relative. I don't know since when, let alone the reason, but I began to collect wounds. From small injuries to deep ones. I get them or I earn them, I give them or I extract them, I beg for them, I monopolize them. I think I'm hipped on this. I steal wounds. Sitting on an express train and staring out the window at the dawning fields, as the reflection of your face mixes with the landscape. To sit and stare on an express train. So the world's divided to wounders and wounded. Nota bene it's the wrong track, in fact I could even say I've found my homeland. But I won't say it.
...because what is a wound? A break in continuity, a necessary reaction to something. To something, instead of something... a wound is mystery and flesh. In the wounds blood mixes with "what could have been." We could give our wounds names like mother-wound, father-wound, school-wound, etc-wound. Thus making the systematization of wounds easier for ourselves. Women could give their wounds names of men and vice versa. (...) there was a woman, I loved her, now I hate her, and it's a pain in the ass that the latter binds us together even stronger. ...
Monday, 10th May 2004
My name ends with a D. Does this mean that I was registered in past tense?
There was an eve when the sky out my desire spied. I didn't fret, I let it, it wouldn't understand it. Then the dawn came, cold of course, and I woke but what exactly for? Dreams on swift feet left, knowing I expected them back. Engraved in the template as I am, I stare into nothingness. Days, names, dazes, without you where would I be.
I'm like a tree. Annual rings. Women's names. I'll be a splendid find for future archeologists. The number one mummy of the British Museum. They'll put me under a microscope, looking to see the picture, to see who did what when and how and anyway. This future weightlessness will be good. The way they will read all this from the lines, or from between the lines. Though I might just leave spacing. Space breaks. Gaps. Leave room/location for something. I anesthetize locally.
There was a concrete wall in the yard with a crack. Time engraved its mark in it. But in a most peculiar way, almost horizontally a tree grew out of its side. It must have lost its bearings. I performed a thorough inspection. It was to become more of a bush than a tree, although "was to become" was doubtful under such circumstances. So it was a bush, a hazelnut bush. After having the closest possible look there was no doubt. I just stood there looking at it, trying to think something about all this. Like what was its purpose.
Is it really that stupid or that brave? Don't know how but I suddenly remembered a day. Early autumn day, that typical Indian summer autumn we call autumn of old ladies. It was obvious that I was visiting an old lady I hadn't seen for about 10 years, who used to be a part of my childhood's everyday life, like the butterfly with the flapping wings.
Ten years is a long time, and it scratched the poor soul all over, but it was like those ten years didn't exist. Because I was afraid that time had driven a wedge between us and there'd be awkward silences and alibi questions (from my side). It wasn't so. I was frail, I didn't confine myself to having the image of her face in my head. I took a camera with me, like a true idiot, who's going to the zoo. I wanted to have documentation that I had had, that I had her. It was a jolly photo shoot, I admired the strength and cheerfulness she had at eighty something. One minute I was envious the next I adjusted the diaphragm. Then I came home. Like one who had done his work, yet he knows he hadn't. I couldn't take the film out of the camera. So the saved past was in shreds, a tear and the raw material was useless. The funeral was two weeks later. Indifferent rain, mud. The sound of the clods falling on the coffin made Kata feel sick. I sent her home, so she didn't hear it, and to me it didn't matter as I couldn't hear anything anyway. I was busy thinking about her. About how the distance between "is" and "was" was to grow even greater from then onwards. And I stood astride in-between the two, worried about myself a little as I was never good at doing a spilt. This occurred some seven years ago, the exposed pictures are here in my head. So am I fool or brave? I'll leave this to you.
Monday, 22nd May 2006
The red number 7 bus in the morning. It's the ruff. It takes everything. If not everything, but almost everybody. Not duly, because that would be boring even Vedically. Those things that must occur by all means, occur with simplicity on the red number 7 bus. Let's admit it: the red number 7 bus is a karmic line. The aggressive point of a middle aged woman's umbrella passes unhindered into your ribs. You easily reach into chewing gums carefully placed on the back of seats - this is a memento from last night. Even the morning stress seems to be our daily bread, which they give as a bonus besides the human evaporations. On the red number 7 bus everybody starts off with equal chances, that is without any chance at all. Everybody is flesh by predestination, although people try to conceal it with perfumes or newspapers. These attempts are generally unsuccessful, but let us call them, let us dare call them beautiful. If you will, you may become enlightened at a sitting as you stand, and two stops later you can stick this enlightenment to the bottom of a seat, or you can smear it on the window, or you can call it "past". Brave ones may inflate it as a balloon until it pops. On the red number 7 bus the armpit of a fortyish administrator looks you steadily in the eyes, so that you'll never dare to recognise yourself in him any more. To prove the justification of your presence you carry documents with you, but you carry the doubts regarding the credibility of the information they contain in the same pocket. The red number 7 bus is an open system of relations, into which all other systems of relations could be integrated smoothly or could be omitted from it by mistake. I think the red number 7 bus is the scale model of the world. Full stop. In other terms: am I the red number 7 bus (too)?
Wednesday 21st June 2006
This room is airless. I open the window. Thus all difficulties are removed, the common outside airlessness may come inside. This country is airless. Something needs to be opened. I mean we should open something on ourselves that is neither sacral nor chakral. An eye, or if not an eye then a mouth. If not ours then someone else's at least. Then if that doesn't help either, the gas-tap.
The maggot is small, but the idea in its head is so great that it is able to make worlds become what the maggot is itself. "Cheers! To your decay!" they say to each other when they sneeze in a cloud of pollen. At these moments the silence they instilled in me crouches in a corner, my learned cynicism pants next to it, just like a pedigree dog. Despite the heat I long for my thick-soled boots so much, so that I wouldn't have anything to do with anything.
When there's no future then all's left is the past. Look at all the retro-clothes, retro-bikes, retro-bars, retro-boys, retro-girls. The retro-marzipan on the retro-cake, the retro-draught in the retro-tube, retro cubed, the retro in anyone's eyes, even your bashfulness is retro, and the plaster on your retro-wound is retro too. Even your future is retro, there and back. Retro on the nth power. You're left out of something that isn't you and you even have the courage to regret it. And what's retro to them will remain to be your present. Like the last scene in a movie. (you love and only love what was)
The moral position of a country could be well illustrated by the fact that the domestic media brings the following up as a positive argument: while in Austria some 15,000 people protested on the arrival of George W "Brainless" Bush, in Hungary only 9 thousand believed that the leader of the world's leading power is a psychopath, who could justly count on the adjective "fascist" in a country whose society isn't entirely made up of distorted souls. What am I yakking about, I live here too. This is how I've been brought up. This is what servile education has done to me.
Monday 16th October 2006
I remember that as a ten-year-old I couldn't imagine being 20. No matter how many times I tried, I still couldn't. I shut my eyes tight, that's how I tried. It seemed like a sea of time. There was no way I could do it. Even though I tried in all sorts of places and times. I tried to imagine it at the Young Pioneers' initiation ceremony, sitting on a concrete tabletennis table, during school paper collection, at the distribution of end-of-term reports, (straight) after a headmaster's warning, at the song contest, at the puppet theatre performace, as I sniffed into Old L's Pannonia bike's gastank, at the canteen, at the pig-killing, at my mother's workplace, on the loo. By the way, the kindergarden's loo seemed a particularily suitable location. For years I was convinced that coming of age and sobering down could only occur while sitting on that particular loo, staring at the purple and white tiles, musing over oneself. That there'll be a moment when a different person would stand up from that seat than the one who sat down. That there'd be a moment when, after a similar incident my mother wouldn't say "when are you going to grow up, son?", but she'll see the change. Then I remember that when I was 20 I could pretty well imagine that 10-year-old who couldn't imagine that 20-year-old who could imagine him. Obviously. It really was easy to imagine as a 20-year-old what it was like to be 10-years-old. Then of course I turned 30. Deterioration of shape. That 30-year-old could imagine the 10-year-old just as well. For some reason the 20-year-old, not so much. Because he noticed that his imagination has a direction and that his imagination can be directed. The 30 something believed this to be an embarrassing betrayal, the betrayal of time, where he's the number one associate. And has been ever since. What is more, he didn't even have words for the only thing he dared to call certain, which was time and him in it. Hasn't dared since.
The 30-year-old couldn't imagine the 40, 50, 60-year-old, because the 10-year-old could stop time, like no one could ever since. Since then that time, which the 10-year-old stopped has been there in the 20, the 30 and hopefully will be there in the 40 and the rest of them too. Full dead people promenade in it looking deceptively alive, the great vital-pantomime is on. No doubt, time that has once been stopped could never be made to move again. Sometimes this makes me happy.
The present one sometimes throws a pebble into this standing time. Without purpose, he's just watching the circles become smooth and sometimes shows them to others. Their curve and rhythm. And the way that is isn't and how intolerable that is, and yet what a kind smoothness tolerance has. Normally he doesn't understand it and doesn't even want to understand. Then he understands. And on these occasions he becomes the 10-year-old again, and time becomes that mossy statue again covered in pigeon shit.
Friday, 1st December 2006
The song starts..., and it carries me away. Tükitoji szatyi szün, Tükitoji szatyi szün, Tükitoji szatyi szün toj toj toj toj Tükitoji szatyi szün, Tükitoji szatyi szün, Tükitoji szatyi szün toj toj toj toj Tükitoji szatyi szün, tüki toji szatyi szün tü ki toji szatyi szün tükitoji sza tyi szün tüki to ji szatyi szün toj toj toj toj.
I'm a gastro-patriot. And a a traitor of my nation as well. A psychopathic two in one. I realized this today when I bought the gyros from the Turkish guy. I always buy the gyros from the same Turkish guy, always. From My Turkish guy. The leader Turkish guy. The ringleader, I could say. I say it. The minutes before the purchase I feel for and find with my cold hands the patriot-button under my sweater, and I turn the switch off. I easily delete the entries related to Mohács from my mind's long term memory. This ringleader Turkish guy is my favorite Turkish guy. I don't know any Turkish people, but even if I did he'd still be my own Turkish guy. (Now I picture the situation, where the two of us bend over a dead stork. He's holding a bloody knife and I'm holding a strip of gauze. Then as, once we died, this situation reappears in the folklore of people with an indefinable culture.*)
My Turkish guy makes the most assimilated gyros in town. The others are poor imitators compared to him. My Turkish guy is one who's really in the know. He knows that these days everything is disposable, still he doesn't give in to the waves of fashion. This Turkish is as stubborn as a Hungarian, pees against the Lucullan wind and instead of the disposable he makes the traditional edible stuff. For example if I make a mess of myself as I eat, and why wouldn't I do it if I could here in the navel of Europe, then the hot sauce - as he calls it - wouldn't for the world wash out of my clothes. From the wardrobe's point of view this could even be regarded as a tragedy, but it actually makes me feel good that the relish of Turkishness was there in that sauce, and that spot will actually be a spot of evidence, saying that I'm not and I wasn't fucked up.
My anti-nationalism spears between two swallows, but it brings the fruits of relaxation, drips the nectar of spirit. That way even giving oneself up tastes good, let alone the sense of fullness that goes hand in hand with it. I look at this spot on my clothes, his Turkish spot on my cosmopolitan sweater, as they mix, as they become related. It's like watching lovers in a movie. I watch all this as I sit here on the carpet. I open the window. You never know, maybe we can fly as well.
(*Hungarian children's rhyme: "Stork, stork, turtle-dove, why is your leg bleeding? A Turkish boy cut it, a Hungarian boy mends it with flute, drum and reed violin.")
Tuesday, 13th March 2007
The Keleti Railway Station. The loneliest place in the world. When it's full it's gross. When it's empty it's frightening. It's like a desecrated church, where only the ghosts of once existed gods go to haunt. Platform 5 even ends outside the station. There's a buffet on the corner. Now it says "Little Buffet", like that. It used to be a TCS (Transport Catering Service) shop sometime in nineteen-seventy something. Chocolate roll, coconut roll and TCS chocolate wrapped in silver foil with the winged wheel on top of it. And Ubul Bonbonier, which could be used as a piggy-bank once eaten. You could be considered cool if you had one in nineteen-seventy something. We got to this spot usually in the early morning, rushing to catch our connection. At those times the smell of oil and the smell of bed mixed in my nose. My own bed-smell that I carried with myself. I hang at the end of my mother's arm with my neck in my shoulders, mortally offended, plus suffering from the early morning shivers. I dangled. I watched the empty platforms, the scattered cigarette butts and coke cans. I blinked at them.
Then we boarded the train and I waited for the departure with my legs pressed tight against the radiator and I stared. If someone came and asked if there were any free seats my mother said yes, there're two. The fellow passenger thanked her and my mother answered: please. She must have said it a thousand times or more in our lives and I never once understood why she says please if she doesn't ask for anything, what is more she's being asked. She could never explain it. The 60 kilometres were never long enough for her to do so.
One time the train was already pulling out from platform 5 (in nineteen-seventy something) and two men wanted to get on it when it was already moving. They were drunk and one of them actually did fall over with a great thud, even the bottle of spirit broke on the ground. The train stopped with a great jolt, and the man was lying right under our window. My mother pushed a kid's magazine in my hand. I pretended to read but I kept looking out the window under her arm. The passengers became nervous, some were outraged, others worried about their connections. A few minutes later a rather large pool of blood appeared on the platform's concrete and it formed little streams. Similarly to the contents of the spirit bottle. Once I noticed this I cared about nothing else but for those two to join each other, to meet there on the concrete, like cause and effect, there in nineteen-seventy-something, for me. Then our train began to move, and all the way to Vámosgyörk I was wondering whether those two converged and if they did what happened to them afterwards. I was only distracted when the conductor came. I always got distracted when they came. Lady conductors have the saddest eyes in the world. Sorrow and agony reside in their worn down shoes. I believed something like those who were too sad were made to become conductors, and that the tendency to be sad was a constitutional requirement for becoming conductor.
When we got off at our destination there was always the smell of bread in the air, even though there wasn't a bakery in the whole village. I asked my mother whether she made that smell of bread. She said "don't be silly, how could I do such a thing," and then she laughed. Then I thought she was laughing at me, but I think she actually laughed for me. Then we were already roaring with laughter. We were far from everything, far, above all, from the Keleti Station, which is known to be the world's loneliest place, hence we used to go there often.
Thursday, 31st May 2007
Laci Szabó, the son of Laci Szabó ate a bad hamburger at the Vámosgyörk TCS shop. They said so. I could never imagine anyone being in any danger in the Vámosgyörk TCS. The women behind the counter, with their buns, broken finger nails and their lipstick-resistent smiles concealing off-white teeth, didn't at all suggest that life could be something terminal. Even the clatter of the wine-cans' aluminum lid was mere vitality, and it was the decade-long filth of the will to live that the dark-red tiles enclosed in their joints. There were even our favorite characters of a children's program made of die-cast plastic hanging in the tobacconist's window. Still Laci Szabó died a year after.
Because of the hamburger, they said. That some kind of a wild meat grew inside Laci - they said so, and this wild meat definitely had something to do with the bad hamburger. It didn't matter that it was a village, that the infrastructure was insufficient, still everyone was searching for a reason. Thus the family was soon on its way to Putnok on the 11:40, to see the necromancer lady, who called Laci Szabó's spirit. She told them right out that it was all because of the bad hamburger.
Laci Szabó died at 19. And I only mention this because every story needs a death and if there's death there has to be an age too. I only put the hamburger in it for the sake of easier consumption. Laci Szabó's grandmother was 68 at the time, because she was born in 1908. My grandmother called Laci Szabó's grandmother "Janhuary", but never to her face and we were forbidden to do so too. Our family has an unusual sense for tinging human relationships. Janhuary got this nickname because she smuggled, completely accidentally, silent Hs into words clearly noticable even for the uninitiated. The whole village felt sorry for Laci Szabó. Some were worried about who was going to spray their nice big vineyard, and others were totally put off by the fact that besides all the maladies there's still some crumbs of burger left in the bottom of Pandora's box, against which we are not at all steeled. Laci Szabó had a brand new red MZ motorbike. Every Sunday, after mass, he pushed it out to the little alleyway, where we grazed the chicken. He put a little red bucket with a big sponge down beside it and whipped clouds of lather from the detergent. That bike shone so much that not even the chicken dared to go close to it, although those who have seen chicken from up close know that they're curious, aggressive and cheeky animals. Yet at the same time they're thick as well, because if you pee across between the planks of a fence they don't move away, but wait, don't understand what's happening to them and they're soaking. Standing in one spot.
Laci Szabó was buried. They had a nice little tombstone made for him, it even had one of those oval pieces of china with his photo in it. Smiling at us in his high-school graduation suit. We went to look at the new tombstone with Papsajt. While she was arranging the flowers and sniveled, I - the nine-year-old, - was wondering what was to become of that great red MZ and I picked snails from the back of the tombstone.
Ever since then none of the elderly residents of Czinka Panna Street - with it being at least 600 metres long, - have eaten burgers. And there are more and more motorbikes around.
According to Papsajt (or Mrs Papp) there was a tombstone in the cemetery, whose inscription said: "Here I rest, There you read, I wish I read, and you Rested here." I often asked her to show me, but somehow we never managed to find it.
It's past ten o'clock in the evening. You're already blind as you stretch out on the bed, pressing your leg (with its calf side) against the cold wall.
Swoon is already upon you, you've been waiting for it. Outside noises mix with those inside, plus the clicking of the heating system versus cricket herd. Swoon is already upon you, only the filtered content can reach you. You're floating. The musicians start playing in the Balaton Restaurant across the street: I'd like to ramble all over the lady's every asshole.
You're already asleep. You've already woken up. You've already combed your hair. You've already washed. You've already grown old. You're oven-ready. There are only two things left that bother you: is there a god and if there is one does he have breakfast?
Wednesday, 9th January 2008
I saw the future. It had a white walking stick, dark glasses, and a spotted dog - phew, this is one of those elevated holy trinity slynesses again. I saw the future, it said it imagined me to be different. And I said, take a look at yourself old man, you happen to be blind. All right, my nose happens to be snotty and there're some remains of an eggshell on my behind, but believe me that's not because of age but irregular washing. If at all and indeed. So I saw the future. It traveled on the left side of the escalator, it goes to wellness centres for 360 grand plus VAT and it buys iPhone on credit.
I saw the future and the first thing that came to my mind was "what about my dick? You want to have that as well?" But you can't say things like that to the future. Because it doesn't exist. The future is something in your imagination. You may imagine that it's traveling on the left side of the escalator, that all it cares about is Macintosh and it spends its weekends in a wellness centre in Szattyándorozsma. And since it doesn't exist and it's blind even, you may attach anything to it. Best to do it with fishing line because you can't see that from far away. So it can be made somewhat more living for others, it can be treated as if. It's material suitable for as-if-ing. For this reason nobody has a personal future, yet they see the future of others. And this usually makes the poor sensor sad, because he thinks he's been left out of something yet again.
That one on the left and not too far behind is my future. It's traveling on the left side of the escalator etc, etc.
And what is that on it's shoulder? Sick, I think. I threw up on it when we met in the tube's much rather semi-warm than cold draught. This kind of thing tends to burst out of people (me). I know it's not very wise to behave like an anarchist in such a peristaltic way, but what I now threw up on in future tense will once appear and the whole lot will fall back on me.
And there's my behind as well, and we know what it's like and also that it's not because of age but irregular washing, plus I'm allergic to eggs as well.
I saw the future, it had bleached blond hair - god knows where that's gone - and weighed hardly eight stones.
Tuesday, 15th January 2008
Each and every morning I become a crystal clear extra-corporeal experience of myself. The diseases have multiplied inside me to such an extent that there's hardly any room left for me. I'm my own sickness, but then it's the same with everyone. Everyone meaning that everything, which I am outside of. There's no way of doing volumetry, I'm given, the malady is given too, so I am my own indivisible set. Aches, pangs, dull bloats, protrusions, dents and by the morning I watch this from outside. It's the position of self-pity, this outsideness. I look at myself, at how the one compared to yesterday's relates to the anticipated tomorrow's, because then I must relate as well. The worst is that there's no time to take a breather, to lean back, mind you my back couldn't take that, and you can't strain your eyes either because you'll grow a sty in them, and these times I get truly pissed off. And I bet the Turkish guy will be here in a moment and take me out of this too.* By the time I get to the bus stop it all becomes clear, I see myself in a clear outline. I'm an endangered species in my whole, a toothless dinosaur, a jested newt.
(*Hungarian children's rhyme: "Ladybird fly away, the Turks are coming! They'll put you in a salt-spring, they'll take you out of it, they'll put you under a wheel, they'll take you out from there too, here come the Turks and will beat you to death.")
Wednesday, 16th January 2008
An unusual peril took possession of Máté Csepcsák, in the form of an illness. It isn't clear how it all began. What's certain is that he drew water from a well and saw his face on the water's surface.
He looked at himself, looked at that reflection he had already got bored of a hundred times before, then he pulled up the bucket and turned around. By the time he got to the house he practically began to die. Of course he had thought about death many times before, in theory, softening the edges that were unpleasant to him, but it was all different this time. As soon as he collapsed on the kitchen floor Máté Csepcsák realized that death is in fact angular and it punctures the soul, which as we all know is round and filled with air. When all this ran across his mind he began to wail and all the neighbours came running to see what happened. When there was already a nice big crowd the dying subsided within Máté Csepcsák. Later the GP arrived as well, examined him, listened to that great silent chest, as if it might hold some great secret. But he did nothing except put down his stethoscope and shook his head. Later he established Máté Csepcsák's pathography and said that he was suffering from a deadly disease. The doctor told him that as soon as his eyes don't see another human being he was going to be dying again. He prescribed the widow Mrs Füleki, his neighbour as company for him. But people knew that it wasn't only Mrs Füleki Máté Csepcsák loathed, but her type in general, by which he meant humanity, this colorless, odorless and will-less mass made up of numerous tiny septic atoms.
Thus he didn't quite believe the doctor, he just had himself escorted out to the well in the mild November cold. So in 1949 Máté Csepcsák buried his gaze into the water of the well and stayed like that for one month and four days. Then whether he froze or starved to death, not even the doctor could tell.
They filled up all the wells in Sarkadmegyer, so within two weeks the whole village died of thirst. Máté Csepcsák watched all this from the gates of heaven and then looked at that great almighty God, who was the spitting image of the picture painted on the church's ceiling, and said: You're right. It does indeed look like a happy ending from here.
Thursday, 17th January 2008
Honourable and Blessed Azure Etelköz Committee,
We would like to inform you with our greatest respects and deepest humility that we can't answer your question. We'd also like to mention that answering the question "where have the Hungarians lost the plot?"* is in fact impossible. Since for a long period of time Hungarians haven't had a plot at all, although it's true that they were occasionally lend-leased some and they also appropriated some, that is they stole. But the ownership of these plots always required clarification. To Europe's shame they had to introduce the plot-code because of us.
Ever since the horse stopped being a public conveyance of general purpose, Hungarians really have had a hard time. That's why you can see through everything these days. That's why that pink crocheted horse's foot hangs out from everywhere**. But don't let this make you pretentious, that's not our thread. Only its pinkness is what ours.
Best regards from the Country of Ironware and Steel,
Drót and Magóg***
(*in Hungarian: lose the thread)
(**refers to 1. the Hungarian saying: the horse's foot hangs out, meaning something is dodgy, not right, and 2. to the expression above)
(***reference to the poem Góg és Magóg by Endre Ady)
2008. január 19., szombat
As one gets older
The mind gets more sentimental,
In it become reconciled
Socks and sandal.
