they even know of life? Have they ever lived? Poets, yes, they know about it. Other writers only imagine it. Scoundrels who climb naked onto a ledge and threaten to throw themselves off if nobody will listen to them, that’s what writers are. If it wasn’t for poets, who question every certainty in order to climb higher, and who extend to them the support of poetry in order to get them down like firemen with a scared cat… Life, yes, but other people’s, thought The Master.
If at least they had a bit of modesty, they’d only need a little possessive adjective, a hygienic grammatical precaution:
My
life has been, etc., etc., there’s yours, speak for yourselves. What do you know about my life?
The desire to be loved
? I never loved my wife. Nor did I ever want her to love me. At most, I desired her and that was it, but that was a long, long time ago. And she never wanted to be loved by me—by someone else perhaps, certainly not by me. She married me only to be able to despise me, to have someone to insult, to hear how her own voice sounded against a man who had run out of arguments, ultrasonic waves hitting an obstacle and turning back: the same physical principle that is the basis of radar is also the foundation of marriage. But I don’t feel sorry for her, let the old girl rest in peace, or rather, let her rest, full stop, clad in the fur coat of hate that she took with her into the grave. She wasn’t a wife, she was a factory of negatives. As for
time passing
, that was more nonsense. Time never passes,if it ever did. Time is always in the past, in the present there is only space, looking at the objects that surround us, filling our lungs with air, listening to the sounds of our environment. And the future is anxiety, insomnia and fear of dying. But before I die, I’ll have what I’m due.
The Master angrily closed The Writer’s book and placed it with a little bang on the counter of the library.
“I’ll take this, too,” he said to the bespectacled library assistant.
We should know our enemy before the battle.
From an experiment conducted by the Max Planck Institute, it appears that dogs are capable of understanding and recognizing at least 200 words. Some breeds, like border collies, even 1,000.
For now, The Beginner’s parrot couldn’t understand a single one. All it seemed to be doing was looking across the room with its icy eyes towards the window and the faded blue of the sky. It was as if it were suffused with an impenetrable magnetic field.
A gangster who’d turned State’s evidence and was appearing in court behind bullet-proof glass: that was what the parrot looked like.
But with time it would speak, oh, yes, it would speak. The Beginner, who was getting his bag ready for his game of five-a-side and couldn’t find his boots, was sure of that at least.
Even though the
Manual on the Raising and Care of Parrots
which he had bought along with the cage suggested, on page 78, “do not leave parrots alone for too long in order to avoid the onset of psychotic behaviour of a self-harming nature (it is typical of parrots to pluck their own feathers)” and, on page 79, urged the reader to “spend more time with the bird, talking to it a lot and letting it explore your home”, it was also true that on page 80, almost at the bottom, it said that “if you really haveno choice but to leave it alone, it is best to leave a radio or tape recorder on”.
That was why The Beginner, who in the meantime had found a single boot and, given how late it was, had contented himself with that, took from the bathroom the portable radio that enlivened his showers, tuned in to a private station where they talked twenty-four hours a day (even when the championship was over) about the most popular football team in the capital:
“…Right now there are people who don’t want the best for the team, but are only thinking of their own interests. And I don’t only blame the players, because although they’re
If at least they had a bit of modesty, they’d only need a little possessive adjective, a hygienic grammatical precaution:
My
life has been, etc., etc., there’s yours, speak for yourselves. What do you know about my life?
The desire to be loved
? I never loved my wife. Nor did I ever want her to love me. At most, I desired her and that was it, but that was a long, long time ago. And she never wanted to be loved by me—by someone else perhaps, certainly not by me. She married me only to be able to despise me, to have someone to insult, to hear how her own voice sounded against a man who had run out of arguments, ultrasonic waves hitting an obstacle and turning back: the same physical principle that is the basis of radar is also the foundation of marriage. But I don’t feel sorry for her, let the old girl rest in peace, or rather, let her rest, full stop, clad in the fur coat of hate that she took with her into the grave. She wasn’t a wife, she was a factory of negatives. As for
time passing
, that was more nonsense. Time never passes,if it ever did. Time is always in the past, in the present there is only space, looking at the objects that surround us, filling our lungs with air, listening to the sounds of our environment. And the future is anxiety, insomnia and fear of dying. But before I die, I’ll have what I’m due.
The Master angrily closed The Writer’s book and placed it with a little bang on the counter of the library.
“I’ll take this, too,” he said to the bespectacled library assistant.
We should know our enemy before the battle.
From an experiment conducted by the Max Planck Institute, it appears that dogs are capable of understanding and recognizing at least 200 words. Some breeds, like border collies, even 1,000.
For now, The Beginner’s parrot couldn’t understand a single one. All it seemed to be doing was looking across the room with its icy eyes towards the window and the faded blue of the sky. It was as if it were suffused with an impenetrable magnetic field.
A gangster who’d turned State’s evidence and was appearing in court behind bullet-proof glass: that was what the parrot looked like.
But with time it would speak, oh, yes, it would speak. The Beginner, who was getting his bag ready for his game of five-a-side and couldn’t find his boots, was sure of that at least.
Even though the
Manual on the Raising and Care of Parrots
which he had bought along with the cage suggested, on page 78, “do not leave parrots alone for too long in order to avoid the onset of psychotic behaviour of a self-harming nature (it is typical of parrots to pluck their own feathers)” and, on page 79, urged the reader to “spend more time with the bird, talking to it a lot and letting it explore your home”, it was also true that on page 80, almost at the bottom, it said that “if you really haveno choice but to leave it alone, it is best to leave a radio or tape recorder on”.
That was why The Beginner, who in the meantime had found a single boot and, given how late it was, had contented himself with that, took from the bathroom the portable radio that enlivened his showers, tuned in to a private station where they talked twenty-four hours a day (even when the championship was over) about the most popular football team in the capital:
“…Right now there are people who don’t want the best for the team, but are only thinking of their own interests. And I don’t only blame the players, because although they’re
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