MONDAY part V

She took the glass and they sat stargazing for a while at sky in general rather than looking for some special guiding mash of gas and light that had travelled across the universe and projected its past to be looked at and admired for the the beauty of something long gone and dead perhaps. Both pretending to be listening to the band too attentively to talk, they were immersed in their own thoughts, with loneliness that needed company to be bearly tolerable and less lonely.

Hope was cataloging the images in her head, changing their order of appearance and trying to make them fit together into a patchworked slide-show she would more easily explain to her friend – the people in the camp, the torched houses and the flashbacks from her own past.


If there was any order in all of this disorder, it was firmly beyond the reach for the time being. 

She wanted to tell him everything she’d lived through since they last saw each other – Amir and how frightening his fear was, how the river tasted like love and how she misses her stupid brother and his idiot ways, but something under the surface of things was preventing her and  she was unable to do this, despite willingness and the best of her attempts.

Instead of pushing the stone up the mountain knowing the disheartening certainty with which it was set to roll back down once more, she decided to sit and listen to the music, let it guide her thoughts and allow the night to figure out how to unload the day that preceeded it on its own.

Things falling into place happens when you stop trying and just hold your breath.

The band made their way through most of the album that had an image of a man with a gun pressed against his temple on the front cover. The collection of songs that were bitter, disappointed and heartless, the music that was stripped down , bared and unrepentant so that the album painted the picture of her unwhited white city and the blood that stained its face.

And hands.

The guitar sounded almost inhumanly sharp, and the newly recruited rhythm section was struggling quite unsuccessfully to dull it a bit down. The trademark synth had nothing of that early emotional warm tone left, it was demised to being only a piano crescending the tragic and desperate attempt to fight the monsters coming out from underneath the beds, making their lives similar to a minefield planted with jacks-in-the-box that popped up imagery of chopped up people and refugees every time the eyes blinked.

- The setlist is gonna be the insanity one.

Sasha liked the older less direct stuff better, and was making a disgusted bitter face, frowning at the very idea obviously.

He reminded her of people for the Oscar Wilde novels, upper class twats that frowned at the worlfd first and then took their first breath upon granting the world the pleasure of their existence on Earth through the compulsory inconvenience of being born.

Like a child eating broccoli and wanting the taste of the chocolate next please .

- Can there really be a different sound now? I mean, it’s not like anyone could sing about the bright future from this tiny speck in the universe right here, this cog on the map that’s disintegrating to tatters because of the curent one-too-many attempt to rewrite it? C’mon what would you sing about ? – she retorted harpishly.

-What the hell is your problem?-she went on. You want poetry you better go elsewhere, we ran out of that yesterday. Oh , wait, no – it was the day before yesterday actually, yesterday we only ran out of bread – she grinned at him and then jumped right back to staring at the night and preventing him from answering.

It was rhetorical venting anyway.

This was the band that sang their songs of the rising tide of anxiety and the war years before this real war had began and people still believed that things would be ok

Warning signs had only been picked up by souls prone to translating feelings into fine art, with the rest of the population irrationaly clinging at the edge of the downward spiral that was about to suck them all in lulled by their denial that bad things could  never ever not in a million years happen here.

The band that played through their war repertoire downstairs was mass consumption material that had attained a cult like following across the old country, best known for that black and white video from a few years back that made you feel uneasy after watching, that instigated emotion unsettled and undeniably scary, starting a chain of thoughts on a subconscious level that made one see the unforeseeable future and in it  what was rolling behind the mountain – the very, very heavy artillery.

-If he could sense the horror of things coming our way back then, how do you think he feels now when all our fears have turned out to be reality? If I had any talent singing – which I don’t but that’s not important – If  I knew how to sing I’d be shouting at the top of my voice exactly the same lines he is.

-There’s no future to look forward to with a smile, there’s no love or loss of it left to reflect and dwell upon, there’s nothing human left in us, we are fuckin’ Zeros in Zeroland and the rabbit that we chased down the hole is a weapons smuggler that is fuckin’ laughing all the way to the bank.

- And I bloody well certain don’t want to listen to someone who is pretending that everything is fine and normal and the way it should be like my mom, I am not listening to anyone who has anything to preach, I will hear of nothing except someone who will climb the soapbox with last remains of his strength and scream that feeling shit hopeless and desperate is a-o-k beacuse this shitfestival going on  is hopeless and that's it.

-Why can’t you see that I need to hear someone say  it out loud -'this is bullshit', all the lies they're telling me about how we are the nation of heavenly origin – just because it is a huge pile of bullshit but no one has the guts to say it here. I need someone to spell it out for me so that I know I am not the one losing my sanity in this madhouse of a country. I need him down there in the dark to sing exactly these songs right now right here right this minute – otherwise there’s no point. Really. There’s no other music I am able to hear. Really.

Her eyes always welled up when she was angry, but she refused to wipe them and just stared stubbornly through the wet mist, listening to him shout more than sing as he joined in the song from the second verse – the song that she remembered had actually made her cry for real the first time she had heard it, because of the unforgiving way in which it worded the chaos around them hitting the nail on the head so hard that that the handle of the hammer breaks and the splinters make the hand holding it bleed.

Her friend and she, he not uttering a sound and she articulating her frustration, they both knew that she was absolutely right.

Knowing how screwed up things are doesn't make  you feel any better, it just makes you feel relieved enough to continue breathing. 

The man with the voice and the guitar sang probably the only kind of song a sane person could sing and assume he would remain sane by the end of it.

You can hear the sound that reminds of a howl coming
From deep in the heart of the woods
Trees are falling one by one by one by one
The wall made of tears dies, it
Dies now
The beast dies.


I forbid you laying the traps of your deceit
I forbid the envious touch of sickness
Becoming all that is left behind
This cannot be
all that is left behind.
...