Oktawian Bulanowski

On the Other Side of Writing

© Oktawian Bulanowski, 2023

„On the Other Side of Writing” is a work inspired by the philosophical concept of writing developed by J. Derrida and E. Jabes. It reveals in its hybrid and dialogical form the philosophical questions of being. It alludes to the Bible and draws on experimental poetry, always having in mind the archetype and the experience of writing.

ISBN 978-83-8324-742-7

Created with Ridero smart publishing system

Dedication

I dedicate those verses to crows which taught me to understand the signs of the world, and to the sun which told me how to describe the song of a pebble, to trees, which reminded me that life is the Book composed of all drops of desire … I dedicate these songs to you, and me.

Acknowledgements

I wish to say my warmest thank you to Ms Jadwiga Nelicka and my wife Magdalena for their patience and help.

Author

Achoo!

In the beginning, there was an achoo.

Very simple, and with smiles in the eyes from which the stars, waters and land originated.

From time to time it happens to me when I reflect on the primordial one, which sustains my thoughts in their existence as in the Book of the World. Leszek, what do you think of sneezing?

What’s Worth Remembering: Life

— Who are you?

— I’m the sign of writing, and it is the wound of the world which has detached itself from my heart.

— Is your homeland also a sign?

— Yes, it is like a chiasm between light and darkness, and like a journey to first words which have shown my future.

— Where is the writing born?

— I think that in the hope of the date palm. It just gave me my name and taught the lesson of life. That is her who has refreshed my heart with the death of the alphabet. Yes. That’s her, the palm under whom I was born.

— You don’t mention your parents, teachers, siblings…

— My parents use the moonlight for humming, my mentors taught me only how to forget the day when the first grasshopper was born, my brothers and sisters live far away, in the song as silent as the writing.

— You said nothing, you know.

— My speech is the denial of speaking, it is in the process of forgetting, it is like a draft which flows with the stream of light. I say nothing because nothing can be forgotten. All of that is like a burst of laughter which gets away in words. This is only for the purpose of living in the book, as if she were a joke, weeping, and as a wound of seeing, like everything that is nourished by words.

— Are you crazy? You talk nonsense like an owl at midnight, like a swan who watches summer going away.

— The book is the madness of the world. And me? I only attach next verses for breathing which are like my mother’s milk, like an offering of my veins, or like a prayer, which lights up the Moonlight. Yes, that’s all which has been remembered by my eyes, what my fingers heard. I repeat: the madness is the unveiling of eyes, like words which have become alive in the sunlight.

— No. Everything is the other way. All of it is like life and her taste in the mouth. You tell lies and that’s all. Nothing is left.

— Yes. That means no. That means that like I’ve told you as our great-grandfathers taught whom I’ve forgotten. I live in exile, among those who bark in the alphabet of the night.

Dialogue with David

— This song is like a speech of the pebble, it turns into life…

— It is a refuge in the outspoken, but it is inaudible. The listening to my wound, which is alive like the writing in the bottle of dates which are assigned to an offering.

— David, you dwell in the sound of your skin which is filled in the hard pace of the verses flowing from the slopes of the mountains, aflame with forgetfulness.

— Marek, the wrinkles on the skin of the world become deeper and deeper, and you can only see the first fold, wet from the tears, with the odour of the first verse. Yes, this is only the beginning of the song, the start of the exile, and before you there is your fate about which even roadside grains of sand don’t wish to sing neither do the leaves of your geranium calmly growing on the window sill.

— David, shall the sound of your psaltery defeat the darkness of the consonants? Is it stronger than the power of vowels spoken by the stars?

— Marek, the syllables are destined for dying every-day for that world which shall not survive till dawn without slight movements of fingers on the keyboard. Because they give life to the mornings likewise the clicking of the air trembling with the hot weather forecast when you forgot what your world looks like.

— David, only flies sing about that. Only the bumblebees can sing about that during mating seasons. I don’t know what drives me, I don’t know who outlines the route which leads the silver syllable amen to my ears. I can hear it as if it sang far away, I can hear it how it sounds with thousands of years. And you? Do you still raise your instrument full of bitterness?

— Simply speaking, I praise what is hidden inside sea waves. I hope that grapevines shall flow like the streams of the writing, just as the birth-giving flute and trumpet. They shall become our bread in exile. My body is only an instrument, and what’s most important is a real song because in it there are breaths of our bodies.

— I’m laughing, David, with the joy of the night. I’m singing with the syllables of the year when I was born because I am unable to forget my birth. Rabbis say that holy syllables mean the very beginning, but it is closed in the circular end. And we? Are we moving along its line? Is this journey fulfilled in every-day hard work of rising and setting of the breathing screen, before which I pray every-day?

— Your prayer links you with the song of grass. It’s enough to look through the window and listen. Only that and nothing more. Because the prayer should be unheard and silent like the reflection of the green and the murmur of cottonwood about which you say so little.

— David, it is the birch, but only that which sings with the wind, this is the birch-tree which resists the humming of the engine, it is the tree which embraces me to give life. But, what does it mean? What did sages tell about the wound with which I was padding my song and my words like the black which is subject only to the Highest?

— Our sages don’t speak about your experience. Exile is something particular. Therefore, start studying the meaning of alef. And this is a never-ending story, as the beginning doesn’t exist.

Abraham! Abraham!

— You’ve heard, you’ve taken a decision and you go to offer your heart. Father, where should I chop the wood to set a flame under my head? Where will you find a lamb, deeply afraid, which would like to escape from you like from the death order? The fire wood is ready, the lamb has saved its life, I am awaiting something and looking at your hand clutched with love.

— Marek, come with me to bring a blue flame which is alive in our veins. Have a drink of water from the spring under that stone, which is going away from your feet. We won’t come back, we don’t look backwards like the wind which goes forwards. Marek, they say that the voices are seen by the blind. So, close your eyes and go, go!

— My son, frail like a leaf of a cypress, fragile like your thoughts that we shall always celebrate the coming of the spring rains with Mum. We go till the end, and the sacred knife we shall unite us. My son, before us only despair, as holy as the command and the lack of choice. We go, and the end is near.

— Dad, I don’t want to die as an animal offering. What is that for? Does it make sense besides weeping of the broken heart? Or splashing of the hunger for the wandering in the desert? Is it necessary? Do you know what obedience means as if it were a crime feeding the stream of love?

— Marek, don’t ask. It is necessary, because the meaning is unknown, and it flows like death which is as strong as the calling, like the scent of your words, which implore you not to stop the order established by the wind of first words.

— Daddy, I don’t want that.

— Son, I don’t want it either.

— Daddy, we need that.

— No, my son, I won’t go for the promise of bloodshed, which sounds like an order and like an inner life of the way. No!

— Dad, that is the moment, and you’ll receive the blessing, and my life is only a murmur of my hand which may deafen the promise of the covenant.

— Marek!

— Abraham! Abraham!

Song of Jacob

— The gate is the closing of your eyes, and the voice which reveals you is an unheard call of the streams of the blue. Jacob, what does your eye see? What does your solitude hear? Is it wounded by the word?

— I put my hallucinations on my shoulders only to liberate myself from the stoned dreams. Look, Marek, angels ask for your blessing, trees request a sign, and the paths you follow every day also implore your attention, and you are silent like a pause suspended on a leaf of a cypress…

— I’ll tell you the common story of my pupils. I’ll ask a question if you feel a pulse of your glances by which you would like to understand your belief in stones and your hope suspended on barbed wire. This is a story about what I don’t remember. I appear in the gust of the wind, and what you see is the life which is fed with the writing.

— Yes, that’s my life. Yes, that’s my cloud, not obedient, but proud. It is embodied in the hardships of loneliness as the roads leading to the mysteries of the horizon. Could anyone hear it? Could anybody embrace my star to the heart?

— The man singing the songs of stars is the song itself, the pure value of the notes which live in the body. Jacob, did you feel that? Did you sing with the inner part of the sound at midnight?

— No, Marek. I’m your insomnia and your opening to the death of writing. And do you dream about living in the book? You need to understand that you become the uttering, so silent as the wrinkles on your cheeks, those which describe your fate. Could they be questions sculpted by the writing like the stylus in your hand? Sure, they will grow with time. You shall only become one mark, the question mark.

— If the sea instead of speaking with words could sing my question mark, I’d turn the gaze of the sea itself. But, it’s me who recedes to the depths, because that’s my place among the seaweed. You could hear my question from there as it flows on the waves detached from the depths of life.

— Unfortunately, replies are reversed questions based on which I’ve built my home. I started to live there till the last breath of the alphabet. That must be enough to tell you about my choice. Shall I live in the silence closed by my decision? Sure, it belongs to my mouth, it speaks through my closed throat. My self observes its chunk life.

— Are those questions a manifestation of my choice? Are they a pure existence with no ground? You need to close your eyes and choose life following the choice itself, and the wave which goes nobody knows where. Maybe somewhere the simple obviousness closes its eyes to your needs.

— Marek, asking questions means choosing. It simply means staying in the space of your homestead, because it can embrace you. You needn’t search for sureness, which is written in an unknown typeface.

Anxiety of Eve

— Marek, you’re tempting me like the rainbow around your arms. Will you love me as sinfully as the touch of velvet? Will you kiss my breast which is waving like the scent of the pure body?

— You’re so beautiful like the sweetness of the light! Eve, we’ll not sin for our purpose. Your breast is like the fruit, and it tastes like the greenness of your look. And me? Maybe I leave the burden of purity and choose my fate with you against the Father’s will.

— Marek, that’s another story. We need to unite in the abyss of our senses, and what will be, will be. Don’t be a philosopher when the body dreams of infatuation. Fate is only a figure of thought and the blessing in your arms.

— You’re tempting me with the black of your lashes and the dates of your passion. But I’d like to have children who could lay my life under my head, give me water and a cup of wind.

— My body is like a trembling leaf under your tongue. Marek, let’s not think about anything because everything is like anxiety suspended on the neck for centuries. Both of us are orphans, and we’re accused. And we’re not made of marble, we’re not made of bronze. We have only our bodies, and they are enough till the end.

— Yes, bodies.

— Those which weren’t born from the body.

— It’s the body which sings, dances, and loves with the earthly dust, and trees growing nearby a road and grass.

— Did history start with the beating of the heart? Or, earlier there only was a shining which illuminated nothing at all.

— Yes, Eve. Without you, I wouldn’t exist, nor would the stars which reflect your desires.

— Without you, the black couldn’t be felt under my tongue. It is like sand. Marek, don’t be afraid. Come on!

— I don’t want that game which like the hummingbird song covers my eyes. I don’t want that. I don’t want that emptiness dancing with the breath of the night. It choked with its dreams. I don’t want that!

— The night is like silence and like the calmness of the ocean. Don’t be afraid. I also feel the anxiety of the convulsions of the lungs and the darkness which spreads in the eyes.

— Eve, are we both going to choose the darkness? Shall there not be salvation for us? Because we have sinned. And our guilt is like our life. That is the guilt for our children for generations. They shall curse us by unspoken prayers. For we have prepared the stoned cradle of life for them.

— Are you sure you’ve lost everything?

— Yes, I am.

— Marek, you’ve eaten the fruit. And what? You still don’t know anything. You don’t know what is good and what is bad. And you’ll never know.

Batsheba is Sad

— Marek, a storm of falling stars is ahead of us. Somewhere in the desert we stay — expelled, with no food, naked, down and dirty. Our son shall drink poisoned milk and sing his song which we shall not hear any more. Which name will you choose for him? Will you bless him against his misfortunes which shall tear his heart apart?

— No. My wish is only… I dream only about the healing of my wound. Our son shall be living in his suffering as in the cradle padded in the blaze of fears. Let the separation follow with no return and no hope that the sun shall reunite us. Let’s forget about our future, as our past like the rope revolves around the neck, and we shall stay by ourselves, and look.

— Marek, there’s a separation in you, somehow like silence, which is broken by the hotness of the desert. I fled away with you, but now you go away to your wound which fills you up with the words from the past. Where are you? Do you dream of your thoughts and steps around the horizon? You live on emptiness, in the space of the question, to which there’s no answer, as they are only a game which is tempting you by your passion.

— No. I’m crying with my question. I live in the closure as my roots releasing the question marks. My enclosure is the grimace of the mouth which throw the clouds in the desert. No, this isn’t a dot and line game. It’s just gazing at the sounds of the harp closing the notes. If I said that the crying is my heritage, I’d lie. If I said that the cry goes out of my heart, I’d lie. I can only keep silent and listen.

— Marek, inside us there’s only the air missing. We were born from the void, and we live for the nothingness. What’s that for? Isn’t it better to wet our lips with wine? Is there the density of the matter inside us? Please, think about the carelessness of the void which is behind the pupils. This is just a gift for you which is like our lives.

— No. We’re like a sheet of paper which is encrypted with invisible paper. Perhaps we’ll taste its sour breath under the skin, under the eyelid, under the tongue. What shall remain from our lives? Shall it be the taste of our names? They are our lives, they lay the path in the desert for us.

— Marek, you told that our breath is in the grain of sand which leads its own life in our lungs. Could you make an oath that the rays of our words shall reflect in the mirror? If not, go away!

— No. I’ll stay with you. We’re free, though I’ve lost my face which counted our steps. I’ll be with no name like a sea wave. I’ll be inscribed in the murmur of a leaf falling down on the earth in autumn.

— Marek, we’ll live with the freedom of the scripture. Sages don’t know anything about love.

— Yes, Bathsheba. The future is only a reminiscence, and the possibility of forgetting, but we’re here and now.

Reflections on the Book

— Words are like the silence of the rain or notes on the syllables of the stars. When you listen, you’ll see your first day.

— Is the wound of the Book proportional to my wound? No, because it is essentially a silence, and I cry with the signs of the clouds.

— Remember only one phrase. It’ll be OK, you may pose questions endlessly. Sages speak only about scriptures, but you tell about your words like a magpie which left her parents and is not looking for the reminiscences of her childhood.

— When you don’t reply, you cry. When you speak, you only tell your darkness.

— Be modest, you’re only an invisible sign of the book!

— Does the book tell lies? No, because it keeps silence with its questions. And you simply take an old thread to study the labyrinth, and finally, you don’t know whether you face the Book or her reflection in yourself.

— You suffer when you look at the face, and the depth of your suffering is the air.

— You say, you’ve seen Him. Has He united with the light? Was His face a surprised letter?

— You create forms from the light. This is your prayer, which He keeps listening to absent-mindedly. Perhaps the reasons is that your lips move the wind.

— You sing with this moment. This is enough to see the whole book.

— Did you count the drops of the rain? Maybe it’s enough to miss even one.

— Have you read the book?” “I read a cloud after cloud, a tree after a tree, a sound after a sound.

— Our ancestors knew the book, but they read her the other way. For us it’s open with the chart of forgetfulness. The book is empty. What does that mean?

— She doesn’t keep any secrets? I think the biggest one is the meaning of your name.

Solitude of the Book

— The book is alone like the writing of the Universe, the alphabet of stones on which you walk along the seashore. The stones sing with your bleeding feet when you wash in the sea.

— David, are you walking or is it the absent voice which leads you when you talk about your history plunged in your song? Is it true that you’ve seen the star praying with the light? Did you embrace her breast? Who is more like you when you talk about the solitude of your pale blue eyes? Tell me about the song which you pour to the ocean and drown your life like the fish which is deep in prayer…

— The book is blind. The book supplicates for the blessing, but whoever could do that? Only the insane, reading her as if she were the curse for the eyes? Stretch out your hand, take out your tongue and eyes, cut off your foot. Shall it be enough to receive the blessing? Or, to cry out her loneliness? To see her wound? To go to the abyss, leaving the signs of the blood on the waterside stones…

— What is the solitude of the book, if not a forgetfulness. Where is her beginning? You could say that it is in the refusal of the tongue which you use in order to tell the silence. You could say that it is unsuitable to tell your story, as it is the denial of speaking, like taking out the burning words, that stop the falling star.

— To whom shall I go for the blessing? Is there anybody who could share a drop of their despair with me? And what is more painful than the wound made by the book where even the night is the cry of the absent voice.

— Go away from me the book, come to me the pale silence, you who are like the road pebble, buzzing the prayer. Go away from me, the Cherub, who brings life to me on the closed lips, for who shall remember that while praying you become helpless and alone, and dressed with the silver patterns of the alphabet carved in your heart.

— David said that He shan’t hear your prayer, because those who don’t listen to the grievance of the grass on which you walk are deaf.

David confirmed:

— You need to listen always to those whom you’ve deafened. Thus, don’t tell about solitude, don’t tell about anything, instead listen to the speech of basalt, which pours out from the depths of the volcano. Don’t say anything. The speech is the denial of solitude like a refuge, which is nourished by the silence of the stone.

— Man, while going back to his pride, encounters the book. Our sages taught us that it’s not humbleness, but strength that we need to live in the book.

— David, please, bless me with your strings.

— No, Marek, go away. You’ll sing with your wound. She’ll be my blessing on your hand.

My Book, You Write my Life

— Is it me who writes the Book? Or, is it you who hurts me by the signs on the pages, where they flow with the streams of ideas about you? With my feet I mark the traces which I leave in my lungs, inhaling the words, and exhaling the drops of the invisible wound. It feeds me like a crow burbling at midnight while pondering on her imprecation.

— At the beginning of my life, that is at the threshold of the Book, I left my first charter. It was pure. Soundless. Inside there was everything. Each bone, articulation, vein, and thoughts, awaiting the birth.

— I cry with my name, which means I prepare for the endless journey, without a roadmap, without any outcome. I walk in the labyrinth of my name which is my outlook buried in the glow of the night.

— I cry, cry, oh Lord, and my cry glistens with the innocence of my wound, linking the East and the West.

— They read the book.

— Who?

— Frogs in the pond, cranes, palm leaves, new moon, and me, who am absent now.

— What’s your manner of reading?

— The tension of the eyes, the flash of words, which come into existence on the roof of the house, where crows talk to each other. And the rhythm of the invisible voice, leading me on each opened page.

— Have your eyes forgotten pleasure?

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