tsvetoslav shalev

He emerged from the narrow back stairwell and came up the hall with slow tread over the weathersprung parquetry, past great doors of solid cherry split open in long fibrous cracks and plundered of their knobs and hardware. Into this drawing room with high plaster frieze and foliate scrollwork. Prolapsed and waterstained ceiling, the sagging coffers. He turned, a vain figure in the ruins. Blind parget cherubs watched from the high corners. Hello, he called. A voice that went from room to room and back again.

– Cormac McCarthy, Suttree

The specific relevant content for this request, if necessary, delimited with characters: To this day I get told that Lady Luck is on my side, and more often than not. I used to dismiss such comments with a bemused chortle, but as I get on in years, I pause and think. For one, because it takes me longer to process things cognitively; and two, because there is some truth to it, after all. I must’ve made a similar comment in one of my previous musings, but this point bears repeating: so much of what it means to be alive is beyond our control (for now). It’s no wonder people still look to horoscopes, fortune-tellers, and religious practices for answers, as well as solace. I’ll stick to my Kismet, thank you very much.

If Change is Nature’s only constant, mine would be a sort of pathological inquisitiveness. A slave of the Feedback Loop, I keep my mind’s eye trained on the Intermediate. It does feel an awful lot like disembarking one train, to then wait and board another. All of them going in the same general direction, not one arriving with yours truly onboard. Okay, alright, sure – eventually and invariably, one will. A certainty made concrete through an accumulation of aches and yawns over the years; life’s sticky notes on the transient nature of our existence. You see, dear Reader, unlike the generations before mine, when people could reference history and make somewhat accurate predictions about the future, in 2023, the year of our Lord and Saviour – the Giant Space-Time Spaghetti Monster – more and more of what makes the world go around is heavily entwined with Matrices of all sorts. Unless you keep your knowledge refreshed, you’re bound to lose on points to citizen analysts, efficiency gurus, and generative AI abusers. And those of poor disposition to losing (or learning), they end up joining the ranks of the ones “disillusioned with experts”, voting further to the right than it’s healthy for us all. Yes, I went there.

My truth as of right now is that I still believe in nothing. A time-worn mind, weaving lifeless erraticness as a hobby. Wanted to use ‘erratica’, but all of the textbooks disapprove of my attempt (contempt) at making a more lyrically sounding noun. What do You think? Why are poets and wannabes allowed to break the rules, get praised for it? Why “erotica”, but not my “erratica”? I guess, the latter lacks in sensuality. Chaos excites.. differently, when compared with the alluring promises of the flesh. But I like how it sounds! Oh, I like how it sounds, the first hums of crimson blood rushing to a heart recently in love. I do not like the cacophony of the mundane and humdrum, which follows a breakup, or an unsuccessful attempt at courtship. Be Quiet! She is audible only in silence! My presence, acceptable only from a great distance. Ours, at long last, a connection made tangible in absentia.