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Krys Podgorski,
born in Poland, educated there as a
mathematician. Moved to the United States and received
another Ph.D. in Statistics at Michigan State University.
In most recent years
lived in Indianapolis and worked as a
professor of mathematics at Indiana University - Purdue
University Indianapolis.
He believes that being creative is the
only way for any individual to escape slavery of the
society, the later being the worst enemy of a true human
being. Not that he thinks of him being successful in the
effort.
Writes short forms for which he has a common term
"stories of moments''. |
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_______________________
1.There
are words,
2.
Creation,
3.
Words, tongue, autumn,
4.
in between,
5.
Dispersed Things,
6.
Medusa,
7.
Dreams
- something nice, 8.
Two
women of an unusual beauty talking softly and quietly,
9.
The
Eloquence of the sex,
10.
Love, 11.
Swirling
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There are words
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There
are WORDS
...after
which
I do not dare to put a coma.
There are
falls
after which I can not rise again,
These two
simple facts of my life
make it pounding forth and back between
unskilful punctuation and awkward
crawling
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Creation
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CREATION
AFTER
SEVERAL CHAOTIC, SENSELESS, DISTRESSFUL ATTEMPTS OF WRITING,
WHEN EVERY TIME
THE SENTENCES WERE PLOTTING THE HORRIBLE PARABLES,
BURNING WITH CRUELTY, DRIPPING WITH
VULGARITY, RATTLING WITH IMPATIENCE,
MORBIDLY DEVELOPING MORE AND MORE
DEGENERATING IN THEIR TANGLED COMPLEXES,
IN ORDER TO - AT THE END "ENOUGH",
FIND ITSELF AMONG WRITTEN PAGES WAITING
FOR A TIME,
WHEN THE COMPOSURE WILL SUBSTITUTE MY NERVOUS ANTICIPATION,
AND MY PATIENCE WILL EQUAL THE IMAGINATION,
MUMBLING CHAOTICALLY WITHIN WRITTEN
SENTENCES.
FINALLY I STARTED A FEARFUL
DELIBERATION WHETHER I'LL BE ABLE TO BUILD THE STORIES
BY MEANS OF SENTENCES ... WHENEVER.
AFTER
ALL THESE MOMENTS SPENT IN THE SPACE BETWEEN
BEING,
TOUCHING, DREAMING AND
TRAVELLING,
WHERE THE NOVELTY OF PLACES WAS CONSTANTLY
DISTURBING MY EQUILIBRIUM,
WHICH AS A
RESULT LANDED SOMEWHERE, WHERE ITS SENSE LOST THE REASON OF
MEANING,
AND AT THE END WAS LOST FOREVER, LEAVING ME ALONE TO MYSELF,
STAGGERING WITH MISCONCEPTION
FROM ONE EVENT TO ANOTHER.
LUCKILY IN THE COURSE OF THIS
HALF-CONSCIOUS WANDERING I HAVE MET A FEW FRIENDS,
WHO FOR ME
MERCIFULLY PUT TOGETHER SEVERAL PICTURES OF THE IMPRESSION SO
HONEST,
THAT I GOT
ATTACHED TO THEM VEHEMENTLY, SEARCHING IN THEM OF THE MAINSTAY.
ALTHOUGH THEY WERE ONLY DREAMS WITH FRAGRANCES COMING OUT OF
BODIES SWEATING WITH
THEIR RETENTION, MAY BE ALCOHOLIC, MAY BE SEXUAL,
SO WHAT'S WRONG IN THE SEEMINGLY SOLID
DREAMS, IF THE REALITY SWIRLS WITH DENSE FUMES OF UNCERTAINTY,
WHERE THE FAMILIAR FIGURES HAVE LOST
THEIR SPECIAL DIMENSIONS.
THERE, I SEE ALSO MYSELF GROWING OLD IN ONE DIMENSIONAL
PORTRAITS,
WHERE I AM STRINGED ON A THIN STEEL CORD,
SADLY SLANTED,
CHANGING ANY TRIALS OF FREEING
ONESELF FROM SUCH OBVIOUSNESS,
TO A SLOW, BUT RELENTLESSL DOWNFALL MOVEMENT.
BUT I'LL EXTRICATE MYSELF, AND THEN,
EVEN IF IT BE DIFFICULT TO REMEMBER IN NAME
OF WHAT ALL THIS TAKES PLACE,
I'LL
SIT DOWN AND MINDFULLY TAKE CARE OF MY BLEEDING WOUNDS.
I SEE THIS MOMENT AS EXTREMELY PLEASURABLE, SOOTHING, EVEN NOW.
Therefore, noting will interfere
with my aims, even the permanent barking,
nor the persistent assails of silence, nor the enduring action of time,
annoying with its monotony; not even you, or I,
because the moment prompts me the stories, written down here,
from somehow muddled beginning up till the end, unknown yet.
tran: Sota Kurylo
...There
I can see myself getting older in one dimensional
portraits, while enslaved on a
thin steel line
with a sad slant that is turning
any effort of escaping from
such certainty into merciless move
downward...
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Words, tongue, autumn
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WORDS, TONGUE, AUTUMN
A bird has fallen
Autumn lasts
Kids are crying
People are walking
Wind is freezing
Sadness is
disturbing
Music is enticing
Waiting is tiring
Memory is
soothing
Self is getting lost
Alcohol is
bewildering
Beggars are begging
Face is getting
older
Somebody is missing
Pictures are
terrifying
Words are
hardening
Sins are
being redeemed
Past is
crystallizing
Now is becoming
Future is
expecting
Leaves are
falling
Darkness is
coming
...and only a bird has fallen
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in
between
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IN BETWEEN
And we have managed
to arrive.
Yes, we arrived at our half, half
of our being, half of
being silent, half of our desire,
half of removing our traces from
sand.
It would sadden around us if we
would have to stop here,
attempting with a cry to
accomplish what we have failed
with a touch.
Let us then turn to the other side
and do not be afraid
that there is only downward.
Let us turn to the other side and
embrace this still cold
pillow, the only faithful.
Maybe from this embracement there
will emerge something that
will embrace us with the equal
strength.
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Dispersed Things
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DISPERSED THINGS
I am wandering around my own
emptiness
Wondering in a sudden reflection
Stumbling over our lost things
Who could leave them here
Occasionally,
I am raising them with tremling hands
over my head
and sacrificing them to the goodness of remembrance
I delicately caress them for a while
just to put them carefully back
in exactly the same place.
I am trying hard not to reconfigure anything
and indeed nothing, nothing, nothing...
nothing is changing
After a while, I am falling again in non-existence.
Will it remain like this forever
East Lansing,
September 1993.
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Dreams - something
pretty
Un rêve
- queque chose
de beau
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DREAMS - SOMETHING NICE
I was pulled out of
my sleep by a little girl.
She wore a
wreath of wild flowers on her head,
and in her
hand she was holding a ragged doll.
She was
standing at the window in the full blast of the sun.
Behind the window,
the hot green was
bursting through the mid of a summer day.
She was smiling to me and
the dimples of her cheeks
were reminding me my
own pictures from the twenty years ago.
I was
running then blackish - white
with a stick and a
running nose, cheerful.
Now, with the
childish naiveté,
this little person was staring
at my ripped out guts.
It was done to me last
night by some sick whore.
Ashamed,
I was thinking: why as a matter of fact I am not
dead yet?
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Un
rêve
- queque chose de beau
Une jeune fille
m’a
réveillé
des fleurs des champs dans les cheveux
une poupée
de chiffon
à
la main
devant la fenêtre ensoleillée, encore une
journée
d’été pleine de la chaleur des
verdures
Elle souriait et
ses fossettes rayonnaient.
J’ai pensé à mes photos d’il y a vingt ans.
Je courrais joyeux une badine à la main,
la goutte au nez.
Maintenant cette
enfant observait mes entrailles.
Une salope m’a réveillé et la
honte s’est installée:
mais pourquoi
jadis ne suis je pas mort ?
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Medusa
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MEDUSA
Probably people have not even noticed
how each day they are stressfully
looking for their desires to come true in rays of
sun , hiding in a sea
The
weariness with sun, tiredness with people have
allowed me to notice;
that moment - an instant, when her inert body
covered with sand,
surrounded suddenly with the splashing foam of waves
was shot up as a flight of a bird.
Later I have gathered their abandoned bodies,
while others were searching through the shells.
Touching them became to me pleasant and their
deadness seemed to be a submissiveness.
And
of their bodies I formed at the bank the women
shapes, believing that
the wind of the night, lashing them with lakes of
waves would bring them to life.
At
the next sunrise I was awaken by a scent of a women,
with wandering sigh on my body.
The
people walking around have not noticed even this
event,
still gazing at this dead red ball, which they never
be allowed to touch.
Later, at the dusk, returning along the bank they
were passing around these deserted medusas,
stomping from time to time onto them and winching
with disgust.
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Two women of an unusual beauty talking
softly and quietly
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TWO WOMEN OF AN UNUSUAL BEAUTY ARE TALKING SOFTLY
AND QUIETLY
It looked as a storm is
coming; suddenly it became dark and quiet.
He was walking the known passage along the river,
where he often was looking and usually was finding a
moment of rest from predatory hum-drum existence.
This time, probably due to the turbulent weather the
avenue was empty.
Only in a distance exerting eyes one could see two
persons who were walking in the same direction as
he.
He was thinking of nothing special, being happy of
the possibility of existing without necessity of any
activity.
Two persons upfront became close enough for him to
recognize that they were women.
They were walking with much slower pace,
consequently and gradually he was seeing more new
details of their silhouette,
He could already define: they were young, slim, well
dressed.
May be beautiful.
They indeed became a centre of his attention.
In spite clouds lead-like, and the first lightening,
they were walking slowly, as unwillingly taking step
by step, talking, from time to time helping
themselves with insignificant gestures of hands.
Between them and him a distance seemed faster to
become smaller and he somehow unconsciously
regretted each moment that he has spend behind their
circle - a result of the gravitational power which
pulls a drifting of no reason toward the existence
of movements, events, actions.
A while later he was close enough to hear their
voices, although the meaning of words were still
escaping his comprehension.
They have turned briefly in his direction but then
seemingly deciding dismiss reality of his distant
presence.
Now he was able to say with a certainty that they
both were really of an unusual beauty.
This expected confirmation troubled him beyond any
reason.
He has reached proximity that allowed to pick up the
meaning of some sentences.
He slowed down and stopped his breath in order to
listen to their attractive discourse.
He was now following them stealing their
conversation, being fascinated with their feminine
details.
From time to time he sensed some sentences that were
reaching him and he was admiring how carefully
though with no apparent effort their words are
chosen.
For a moment he was even thinking of approaching
them with some kind of pretext and become a real and
active part of the scene that has absorbed him so
much.
Suddenly braking up wind reprehended him, letting
him know that his idea would be abortive.
It is difficult to imagine his awkward words, their
questioning eyes, the lost harmony of their
conversation.
His panicking ego was shrinking to non-significance.
He was a member of a tribe of happy dark skin
people, who have everything in an abundance, what in
their understanding meant well being.
His passion are women, he is absorbed by an unusual
richness that comes from the tension between a women
and a man, and he considers himself especially able
to take it in full.
In his vanity he thinks that he is a shaman of sex
and therefore it is his duty to
accept all the rituals which the deity sends to his
imagination.
He does not know a women who would question his
mission.
The opinion of other tribesmen in this matter is
unimportant.
When to the village came an abstractive expedition
of light skin, light hair people and most of the
tribesmen seem to be excided and full of godly
admiration, he demonstrates disrespect only to the
moment when he notices two women among the
newcomers.
He watches from a distance how skilfully these women
comb their hair during morning toiletry as well as
fire their rifles when shooting the unreachable
birds during the show for the tribesmen, who get
speechless and frightened.
For a brief moment, he is angry at the newcomers for
allowing their women to do manly things.
But some less under stable feelings soon take him
completely over.
At that time he is standing aside following the next
falling bird with his spear and this funny band
around his hips which is unable to cover his erected
penis while one of the women slides a little bit of
her tongue and rests it on the upper lip when
setting for a next shot.
Stamping from one leg to another he feels a desire
with a strange to him consciousness that he will
never be able to fulfil it.
He would not even know what to do with these strange
costumes on their bodies.
Besides this strange women have not even once looked
at any of tribesmen the way women of his village
looked at him constantly, with a look of desire and
acceptance.
He does not sleep at night, during the day he
wanders around them, absorbing lustfully their
mysterious customs.
Then the newcomers leave the village.
Life returns to normal, jet he cannot accept it,
thinking that it is cowardice.
This what happened is uprooting the sense of their
existence thus he should resist it.
He tries to hunt what was always his inspiration and
a source of satisfaction.
Now this activity looks miserably senseless.
He still has in memory the echo of shooting and a
hum of birds falling down.
He also tries women, but their too well known chasm
and the obviousness of how they open their tights
fills him with disgust.
He masturbates for a few days in a presence of the
of white women drawing which he engraved on the
rock.
Then he impales himself on his own spear.
He passed by the chatting women. When the first
large drop of rain rested on his face he thought
with a sorrow that he belongs to those who after a
cataclysm are capable of returning to normality.
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The eloquence of sex
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THE ELOQUENCE OF SEX
She was looking at him,
with an expectance bordering with an insatiable
greed.
Thus, after clearing his throat he started with a
certain force, hoping
that his convoluted arguments will testify the depth
of his thought,
equalizing therefore her disturbing beauty.
However, after few sentences his believe in himself
run away into some
unknown, when he realized that with these words he
would not be able to
convince even himself.
In fact at this point,
he has become bored with this exhausting process of
talking.
Nevertheless, having no courage to look into her
eyes, afraid to find
there what he has been already rightly blaming
himself of, he was falling
persistently further in a complicated construct of
the language, hoping
that this consequence itself will prove his values.
In spite of the whole outer seriousness he was ready
to weep, when
tragically searching for a way to return to her, and
at that moment a
distance between them was measured with galaxies.
He became deeply disinterested in what he was
talking,
and he was talking a lot.
He was thinking only whether he is now more
miserable, or more farcical.
He got up and started to walk around,
constantly mumbling something and in his cowardice
always avoiding her eyes.
He talked, talked and talked, evidently now hoping
that only by the sheer
quantity of words, by some miraculous accident he
will find a sentence for
which she was waiting impatiently.
As a result he got involved in some kind of
paranoiac story about a forest
in which he was somehow lost, and where he was
looking for her,
but unsuccessfully, because he got entangled in the
density of green, and also
because of the darkness that just occurred but all
in the end seemed to
conclude happily, although he was aware of some kind
of death,
which, as he convincingly declared, was only quite
loosely related to both of them,
while she was nodding soothingly and stroking his
face with her palm,
when he bent lied on the floor wining of being
sorrow of himself.
In the end she interrupted him: "It is enough, Sir!"
and he with wide open
eyes and a half-broken sentence was gazing at her
how she stands naked
above him smiling with a triumph.
And he even had nothing against the obvious irony in
her voice.
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Love
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LOVE
Let's try to imagine two women, who have been both
interested in the same man,
and this one consequently would have deep feeling
for another woman
desiring three persons at the same time,
where only one of them would be of different sex
but incapable of not thinking about a beautiful
young boy
from the other end of the street,
the same one who is secretly and up to his ears in
love "
with a lady teacher of literature,
and at the end after making a huge circle all
around,
however unthinkable it would be, let think that the
last person,
the only one that we have not considered yet in our
bold effort,
and who was found to be a young soldier,
would be crazy of the love to the two women
mentioned at the very beginning.
Could it be said then the love took over the world?
Wow, probably better to have it like till now -
everyone loves himself.
And maybe sometimes, in a charitable gesture of
great generosity,
donating a fraction of this love to somebody else.
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Swirling |
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SWIRLING
Looking at portraits, lets emphasize flat portraits,
I have been always
astonished, fascinated, and sometimes filled with a
slightly obsessive
fear, by this strange phenomenon, an effect,
illusion or whatever we will
call it, appearing whenever the portrayed one, in
the process of being
immortalized, is persistently and sometimes, let
Almighty generously
permit, attentively looking at the brush, the pencil
or any other medium
of changing four-dimensional objects, as we would
say otherwise of spatial
and passing existence, into a flat but permanent
creation, although it is
so-so with the last trait, this one and I am
thinking here, let say, of
the brush would pay back to this interest in itself,
by making sure that
the ``portrayed'' since that moment till the
eternity, of course if only
none of these regrettable and unforgettable
accidents would occur as it
has happened so long ago in Alexandria, would stare
in all the possible
directions simultaneously that is for us, the
awkward creatures placed in
a crooked four-dimensional reality in some imaginary
twist between the
time and the space, is an incredible activity, far
away behind our
non-occurring possibilities, because non matter how
we would try, forcing
and stretching ourselves, gazing in the most remote
angles of our eyes,
still never the less we would see only blurred
shapes of things, and try,
try, saying no more our irises focus completely only
at the one designated
point that is just opposite in the case of the just
mentioned flat
portraits where faces are looking emotionless at you
wherever you would
stand, no matter how you would stand, or which way
you would place the
picture, and do not event try to catch it by a
surprise, pretending that
you are not paying attention to it, when suddenly
trying to catch the
instant when these amazing irises are directed
somewhere else, just for a
moment, it is not worth of your effort, they will be
motionless gazing
straight on you and when you share this discovery
with your friend who,
let suppose, is standing on his head in the opposite
corner of this room,
which by the way is becoming more and more peculiar
by covering its walls
with crooked portraits of persons with empty
eyeholes, he will also
stubbornly way that this look is just resting on him
and you have to
believe him because whom you would believe if not
your own friends, but
your mind is revolting against this obvious,
evidently existing
impossibility, although in fact you have nothing
against it, desiring even
deeply in your heart, tired with commonality of
every day, to have the
world filled with such crazy phenomena and maybe for
that reason envying
the painters, probably incorrectly, because what is
it - a play, a caprice
of a magician, but I can not go with these words
forever, thus at the end,
I will reach for a thin, very thin brush dipped in
the paint of this or
the other colour, most probably black and will lead
your thought further
through a delicate line of swirling, which suddenly,
in an unexpected
instant, somehow by a magnificent stroke would
change into the iris of an
sharp eye that will pin this more or less miserable
mind of yours adding
another madman to the collection of strange
butterflies locked up in a
glass case, hanging on the wall just behind your
back, just turn around
and you must admit that it is a terrifying view,
thus try avoid looking at
those portraits when they can spin around, dragging
your thoughts into
slow rotation, and then faster and faster winding up
your sight along the
axis of these motionless eyes, your sights followed
by your thoughts, and
you still watching all this but you are not sure
with whose eyes, your own
or his, with a fear waiting for a moment when your
thoughts will disappear
and then there will be a time for your feelings to
show in this swirling
madness, but not you have managed somehow to stop
spinning of the image in
hand and with astonishment you notice that it was
not an extraterrestrial
force turning it but your own hands, and although
everything swirls for a
while you have relaxed feeling lucky that you
managed to keep feelings to
yourselves, than you give me this look of blame,
unfairly thinking that it
was my fault that I have attempted to scary you, but
than you are right
asking what for I am all about this, so straight,
thus forgive me this too
long sentence-not-sentence, such an oddity, which,
as it was not enough to
loose its motif, a thought, not mentioning
pronouncements and subjects,
how many of them dispersed already along the way,
and reading of which is
extremely troublesome, especially that it is only
its beginning and in
fact nobody knows why you are reading it, and lets
hope that you do
otherwise what sense of putting these words together
in this or another
order, probably none, because you are not here
anymore, who would force
you to read this word, or this one for that matter,
or that and the next
one, this letter and more, why you are still doing
it, stop, didn't you
notice how everything starts to swirl in an nonsense
and you can not be
distinguished from me anymore, one can not tell if
these words are mine or
already yours, they got lost halfway between us, no
it is rather your
thinking that creates them, I do not find them in
me, no, no, it is not
you who got crazy it is rather me, from where are
these words,
I beg you to stop, break it at last,
I can not
handle it anymore.
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*
translation (Zofia
Borowska and Bożena Grosley) |
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