My fingers are burning. I must be dying. Beware of people. I want to tell you everything as fast as I can. Everything. Hide from her gaze, her fingers, her speech. They will love you. I won't make it. Escape your fate. There is no fate. I don't know what I'm saying. I no longer even know what I'm saying. I have so much time left. I could do this the long way. For a whole minute. How much time do you need for a thought? A thought has no time. Grains of sand are slinking down the glass trap. I have so much time left. I will put my feet on the desk, cross my hands behind my neck. I won't move. I'll be quiet.
The floor smells of cheap detergent. In a web in the corner above the window a hollow fly is twitching. No. The shine from the floor reminds me of carbon wonders, of precious stones, of rays from pale suns, of beautiful things. Of beautiful things. And the spider will dine in silence.
It is actually possible to do the wrong thing. That is surprising. This possibility. But it exists. I have always considered a mistake to be something you learn from. A detour on your way, a momentary abandoning of your chosen path. So that it would not be too easy, so that you would not come to the finish line without any scars. But today everything is so full of meaning. A mistake is no longer an excusable human flaw, it is the quality which determines particularity. We are no longer human. We are a bundle of right and wrong steps. There is no finish line. Only footprints in wet snow. Cuts in the fog. What does not kill you, kills you.
And outside the war for the soul of humanity. Just this word remains of everything that humanity should be, if it wanted to be humanity. And it means hardly anything anymore. Less and less each day. If you can find change in a piece of chalk, well who are you then? If you can find change in a perspective, well who are you then? A pulse of lust, weighed down by words which should mean something, like a stand of trinkets on an incandescent town square. You shake with horror and give off a sound of mellowed sheets of copper hitting against each other. Someone else will mistake that sound for an encouragement of his faith and he will come in front of you to beat his chest in a mating ritual you are no longer able to understand. It has been made impossible for you to understand it. Your foundation has been laid on sweet smoke. It is sinking. Into the glass hole's narrow throat.
Things have no end. Lives are never finished. The pane of glass in the window is slightly trembling. The enamel of my teeth is stinging. I miss my friends. Even yesterday, I think, we were together. The day before. Some time ago. Years and years and years ago. A minute. For a single minute. Nothing ends. It just goes silent. Silence. The end is saved for things without beginnings. For the eternally silent things. I write this for them. For the pots of the mute, for those never speaking. I write into them. My fingers carry the words of mouths completely shut. Until the end and in half. I have so much time left.
I am not real, so I am allowed. Please, do not mistake me for a joke of theory. I am really not real. Everybody else is real, and I am not. You are real. You are so real I could cry. I look at you. I see you. You will never end. You will go forward and forward, you will unwind into the world as a spinning top, unroll from the tongue and lose your balance and rumble along the sand in pure joy. We are alone, you and I. I am behind your eyes. Well hidden. You can't see me. Friend. I miss you.
In/Half - a novel
In/Tweeën, De Geus, 2017Na/Pol, Cankarjeva založba, 2013
Set on the global stage in a post-global future, In/Half tells the story of three characters, struggling to find meaning in a world where meaning is an impossibility, a vicious joke, a dangerous notion.
the individual crumbles because he is not alone
Evan Z., an addict theatre director in future Tokyo, is staging a play and lamenting the loss of the love of his life.
family crumbles because it is fuller without than within
Kras Volk, a family patriarch and ex war minister, is celebrating his fiftieth birthday in the Slovenian part of what could nowadays be called Fortress Europe.
society crumbles because it runs out of imagination
Zoja, an anarchist poet, is getting ready to read at the Brooklyn festival Poetrylitics, attended by a motley crew of intellectuals, artists and madmen.
The Press on In/Half:
Belgian De Standaard's Book of the Week
4/5 Stars
“The madness of 2036 - a damn good writer at work.”
Profile in Bruzz
“The Future is Ticking”
“An overwhelming vision of the future forged from the great cacophony of tangible and virtual life.”
