10 March 2009, 22:50
I was postponing for a long time starting this diary on the Apocalypses. I didn’t want to mix prose and web codes, prose and tender specifications, prose and applications… And these latter ones pressured me to finish them. I even mentioned it to Primož that was late, that I was over the deadline, that I had not started to write yet. He didn’t want to give up on me. So, here I am, I started. Although I wrote some poems these last days (I might attach some of them here), something pulled me to prose. A bit of prose, nothing pretentious, nothing significant. A bit of auto-therapeutic prose. To clear up my thoughts and get some breath.
Hans wrote to me on 5 March. I only saw the message this evening. It got lost somewhere in the fucking junk folders. Hans wrote that Triztan Vindthorn had died suddenly. And that he was sad. Hans. That’s it. I stare at the screen and I think that I shouldn’t think. I should press delete and I should call Triztan. Ask him how he was, whether we’d meet in Norway or in Macedonia. Or somewhere third? At some warm quite place… And I know that Hans is right. Triztan is gone and we’re sad. That’s it. What more is there, once you think of it?
These last days start unrolling. What do I have to write? What happened to me? What would really interest anybody? Nothing. Peanuts, as Giovanni would say in his next book of poetry. He sent me his final manuscript yesterday evening. I read it, we spoke a bit on the phone. I asked for more poems. He sent me some of the ones that had removed. The first one took me in immediately. We need to rework the book, remake it. It will be another good book. Giovanni is good. I like publishing good books. Even if they are not sold as the junk that they push under my nose. Let them. Those specifications, applications and other paraphernalia would cover for another book. Only one thing scares me: would I know how to be happy with them, from my heart and with a sip in my mouth? I published two in February: the third haiku book of Josip, the second book of poetry of Sash. I had so many things to settle that I did not even look at them. Sash’s book has smudges on its cover. I was arguing with the printer for several days, then I simply told him what was to follow if he would not fix it. I should have told him that the first moment, fuck my nice self… And Sash is nice. We sit at Krug the next day in the afternoon, we drink slowly, and she says: “It’s OK, Igor, we’ll do it like this.” She’s very nice. If I were her, I would look for a new publisher. Seriously. Although some of my books were published with mistakes on their covers, with mistakes in the printing. My heart aches when I think of it. And I don’t think that some of them will have a second edition. But, who knows, miracles can happen… And Ljupčo, who made two long photo sessions for the cover of Sash’s “Barbie’s Aquarium”, he’s nice too. We drank with him late at night, the light was not good, but he also said that it was OK. So that’s it. I’m the only one who’s not OK with it. Fuck it.
Then they took me to some other place. They took me out of Krug and then out of Jethro, I don’t frequent these places. And I rarely go out. I drink at home, I drink sometimes and I drink a bit. I’m quiet. It’s warm here, at home. Doesn’t matter that I work like a dog, sometimes something succeeds. The second place was packed, the music was awful. The Jamie was OK. I drank all the money that I had and when they called the last round I went home. Just like 10-15-20 years ago. Except that home is now really a home. And I know that I’m not alone. Always when I return home I look at the girls, tuck them in, switch off the TV, pick up the books. That’s how my three girls sleep, with a pile of accessories, ready for each bit of sleep. And when I see them asleep like that, I calm down. It’s easier.
For several days, we clean up the lower apartment with Kalina. We spent some good years there. We love that apartment a lot. That was where Sara started to walk. That was where I made Babylonia. There… It’s OK here as well. And there is more space. Both here and there the places are warm and quiet. Ours. I don’t know what I would do without her. If I had not found Kalina I would have been in hell by now. An alcoholic, a junky, who knows… I should remind myself of it more often. I should be happy with what I have. A damn fool…
Well, after I had come back home after the last round, I wrote a poem. It’s rare that I don’t immediately know if the poem is good or not, how deep it is and has much it tells. But, in the last 2-3 years, more and more often I know if it’s gonna be OK at first. This one was OK. It wrote itself. Who knows where it slept within me, and how long it waited there. The next day I woke up early, a bit dizzy, as if I had had sex all night long. Full with light, warmth… All from a poem, I didn’t even remember the Jamie of last night. Only the poem. “Alright”. That’s how it’s called.
Lately, I have been waking up early. Then it’s strange when I think it’s five at one PM. I sleep for 3-4 hours, I rarely dream, I wake up sober. For ten days already. The only smart thing that I started to do before going to bed is ask myself what I did during the day. Let it do itself… I need to relax, you can see it from a helicopter.
I read somewhere that workaholism is similar to alcoholism. My ass. Work never made me fly. Alcohol did. Not very often, but it did. With respect to how much I had drunk so far, I’m a good and experienced flyer.
It would be better that I pour myself a drink than rattle about drinking.
I pour myself a drink, I take a bottle of cold water. Feels good. It slides. And I have been coughing like a chimney, for three weeks already. Nothing helps. No cigarettes, no cold water, no antibiotics… Today, my doctor put me on some inhalation. It helped a bit. But then I was all dizzy. Who knows what she put in the solution, but I was high. And I rode my bike, slowly, as if floating. There was some cold, north-north-west wind. It penetrated under your skin. And I was slow. I did not look at my watch for a long time. I arrived at Brico’s, I sat down for a haircut, I listened to him talking, and I did not look at my watch again. And I usually do, because Brico has a talent. He cuts something every minute or two, and in the meantime, he waves his hands while he talks. So my haircuts can last a long time, if I don’t control him. Today, I let him be. He talked and talked. Then I was happy that I gave him some of my time. Actually, I gave it me. Inside it was warm, nice. In the pauses between his words, I listened to the wind hauling outside. I looked at myself in the mirror. We had a truce, Isakovski and myself. We coped with each other.