2010 January | daniela vladimirova

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Oniric matter – battery charger

I’ve spent the whole week in a lethargy, dreaming the oddest stuff (booster dose of dreams for a few nights) and being a complete moron during the day:

- A photography show of a friend of mine, displaying small sculptures, lined along black walls and under a black ceiling. I go into a photography shop with black walls and black windows and ask the clerk, my mother, to give me a flash gun. She tries to sell me a neon light, which irritates me because I’d love to shine a very bright light. She complains that D. has ordered a full set of strobos to place near the windows: she thinks it’s a damn waste. I grow livid and say that she must do exactly what he’s told her. And then there’s a war, even though it looks like some sport with uncommonly crowded teams, mostly shooting at each other, rather than at their enemies. And then there’s another exhibition, but I can’t see it because I want an ice-cream, so I go and buy the ice-cream but when it’s time to choose the flavours I must go to the toilet, so I ask a friend to do it for me. So I get somebody else’s favourite ice-cream.

- My cousin has committed some terrible crime and must flee. I stand by the river bank with his wife, on a very cold winter afternoon, staring at the freezing water, where he’s chosen to hide while he’s being sought after by the authorities. But they get him, because of his pink, big hat. I’m shocked and decide to go to Finland. But I don’t feel comfortable there and would love to come back home.

- A fake mouse, made in boiled wool, is haunting one of my armchairs (but I don’t have armchairs!). I’m terrified. It’s as big as a shirt button, but I still feel transfixed at the sight of it. D.’s father drops round and shows me how to kill it with a broom. I’m frightened but wait for it, broom in hand, to come out. When it finally comes out, I can’t kill it, because it turns into a butterfly and flies away, hitting me in the face.

- My brother and I go to a huge cage and open it. There’s a whole universe of people living together inside it all-sufficiently: it’s a community with its own tailor, shoe mender, baker, and a Big Brother divinely and secretly watching over everything. My brother and I decide to stay there for a while and learn that the inhabitants are extremely sensitive and must be spoken to carefully, otherwise they get angry and can be dangerous. And then, we get tired of living there and decide to leave. Only that the gate’s closed. We break it open and stop by, curious about the reactions of the inhabitants. Some of them leave, others stay, others linger in the proximity of the gate, but one breaks free and tears the gate to pieces.

- There’s a white house, full of blonde teenage girls all dressed in white. It’s winter. One of them must go into the woods to get food. She starts the truck and leaves. Upon her coming back, at a crossing of two country roads, her truck stops because the road is frozen and it’s snowing hard. While she’s trying to make it work, I know that the road around her is full of other teenage girls’ corpses. If you watch carefully you can see their hands coming out of the frozen land. But then D. comes and takes her out of trouble. She goes home to the other girls.

- A mother and a girl of about 16, carefully setting the table for their love, on the road home. The mother asks the daughter to go and get some water. The little girl picks up the bottle and thinks it’s too cold. She opens it, and it’s piping hot. Then, the mother shouts “he’s back, I can hear the motorbike, hurry up!”.

- Another photography show, again black walls. But no photographs – only kids dancing. A beautiful Indian girl with lovely, colourful clothes dances better than all the rest, but nobody applauds. I feel a gush of empathy and sense of injustice. I go away, walk on the street, and there’s a shooting between two criminals. They have hostages. One of them (the one near me) is on the upper side of a flight of steps. And I think that the only way to get out of there is to kick the hostage so that he’ll fall down from the steps and die.

- Three friends of mine, all pianists, come to a show of mine. I’d love to find some time for them and for all the other guests, but I keep running into a desperate child of about 1 year and a half, crying and screaming frantically. I try to look after all the other people, but the child is left by itself, completely unattended, in danger. At the end, I pick it up. My friends disappear, and I think that they’ll have to put up with it, I have other things to do.

- There’s another war, and I’m in a team of 3 people, fighting against 20 enemies in a jungle. We’re unarmed, while the Others have pistols. They follow us into a room with paper doors and tatami floors, where one of them shoots one of my buddies. I then pick up a pistol and shoot them all. They all die with a comic-like blood burst. I’m surprised at my own ease at killing them. I go outside onto a terrace, and there’s my mother sitting on a table overlooking the sea. I sit down, she looks at me and says “you know, you have lice”. I’m extremely surprised but she points to my hair and says “do you see that light blue nit over there? It’s lice”.

- A huge cooking surface with all the fires lit. I’m cooking Wiener Schnitzels and a lot of other things, melting butter and frying vegetables. All the frying-pans seem to be placed on the wrong cooker. Big saucepans on small stoves, small frying-pans on huge ones. There aren’t any free stoves left for my Wiener Schnitzels.

During these strange dreamful eras, all my batteries are recharged, my strength is restored, my energy’s back, I’ve got the power! But there’s a drawback: I wander robotically during the day, unaware of myself; I do and say graceless things and – apparently – spend all my money. Even UN inspectors carried out a verification in my head a few days ago and found out absolutely nothing.

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Primary colours

In the place where I was born, we were all the same. On the pain of death.
Clothes were all in the same drab colours – if you didn’t like them you were to sew yourself new ones.
But then, the fabrics were all the same, so – you see – there was no point.

There seemed to be a dull and sleepy balance resting on all things, apparently jeopardized by just anything: a small pleasure, the spirit, a touch of primary colours. The only glare was the violent redness of flags; the blinding whiteness of snow.

Glass bottles were to be returned every week.
Newspapers were to be macerated.
Tin cans were used for planting spices and aligned on the window ledge, in the kitchen.
Jam was made in Autumn. And sauerkrauts.
And there were lots of books, because TV sucked.

All this can be refused or accepted. Taken for granted. Taken as a model. Nostalgically desired. Laughed at.
But colours are a right which should be granted to everyone.