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A friend of my brother is a book seller. Quite recently he showed some interest in the Street. So I came to him with the Streets hoping that he might want to buy one or maybe even all three of them. But he thought maybe he could have the Street in his book store. Again the old problem has revived which I had been considering dead for very long. Or maybe it only flashed like a candle flame right before going out. I found I really couldn’t imagine my books in a book store. I could if I had much bigger editions, if my books were not individual books, as if lonesome and stand-alone. But bigger editions would compel me to face another problem: what should I do with unsold copies? grind them up? burn? burry? annihilate? wash? recycle? Now I have no unsold copies, no wastes. And almost no profits. This is very unusual situation. Almost perfect. September 2024 The bottle with The worst wine in the world is standing on the shelf in my studio. Another bottle, half the size, is standing beside, with The dead man booze in it. Of course, it might seem the everything suits perfectly. However it’s not like that. So, it is as usual, because it must be as usual. The feeling that something is wrong does not refer to the jacket – the sheet of plastic I used is not the perfect one; the perfect one I had bought years ago, quite accidentally, but I had only two pieces of it, and I can’t buy more now for it seems unavailable. This threatening uncertainty deals with the wine itself. Or with the text. That I should have written the story in a different way. For example as third person singular. To make it look more like a novel and less like a diary. Thus I would get more space, better perspective. Many things would be more clear. Now those who know neither me nor the place I live in may find many things confusing and unclear. I solace myself this wine was to be bad, so let it make things unclear, let it be not tasty. Poor solace it is. The dead man venom permeates me. I’ve begun to think that everything I’ve written so far I should have written in a different way. That I should have made something else. What? Poor tribulation it is. May 25, 2024 Something has happened that shouldn’t have happened. Never. But it has. I assembled the street-book all wrong. Sometimes it happened I printed something wrong or glued two sheets together wrong. But it has never happened I assembled the whole street in a wrong way. And it has. I folded the fourth sheet inside instead of outside and then everything got mixed up. A stone which triggered an avalanche. Only at the end I found that it was all wrong though while assembling the book I felt that something didn’t fit. Then I tried to save this copy. Somehow I succeeded, but instead of a standard cuboid I got a clumsy tilted parallelepiped. I wrote on the cover: this copy has been assembled faultily and can be shown only at home – I thought I could use it just in that way, however the very next day I asked myself a question: can a faultily assembled vehicle be shown at the car showroom? In case of books every element of which has an ambition to be more or less full of meaning, what would this mean? Once again a small error that has dramatic consequences. Obliterating. Annihilation. Like a lethal mutation. But this is not so important. Not this very incident which soon will become an anecdote from time to time recalled from the more and more chasmic memory. This is important that on the shelf in my head a new book is standing. The Worst Wine of the World. It is ready. It is one of those books where everything suits perfectly at once and no changes are needed. All that is needed is to take it from this shelf, take it out of my head. This will last a while. Before I have to complete the Theory of Tangling. (But why before, why not after?) And it does not belong to these perfect books. Well, it should be so, this is the book telling about the toil of (dis)entanglement. April 24, 2024 It’s strange I have written nothing about the exhibition at the Jagiellonian Library – it might seem really very hard to find a venue of higher prestige than this one. Maybe because this exhibition was not mine. But this could be a very good reason to write something. Not mine means the exhibition of my books made not by myself. The first on. At last. Incredible. I was neither the one who imagined it nor who prepared it. And it was prepared with panache and momentum, really. With a documentary film (almost), with a publication containing a few essays on my works. Excellent. And I have written nothing. Most likely because there were the others who wrote something, and I had taken no pictures due to the mayhem of the opening ceremony. Nevertheless I’m writing now for the reason that is even better. Yesterday we celebrated World Book Day. The Library invited me to tell something, and I proposed the following topic: the freedom of a book. I took a train, I thought it would be more comfortable. And it was, however it exhausted me more than driving a car. In the Library I felt a strange trembling all over inside me and was afraid I would be able to say nothing. Jitters? No, not at all, I used to speak so many time in so different venues. More likely the differences of pressure and temperature, crazy weather, a town itself I am not used to any more, so this wood-meadow savageness growing in me, sort of general tiredness and discouragement, reluctance… Anyway, I said what I was supposed to say. Did I? No, My speech was chaotic as hell. Too loud. Too long... Talking all the time about the same is very exhausting. Repeating the same anecdotes, examples, explaining things so obvious, explaining inexplicable... Can I do anything else when talking to people who haven’t read my books, just a while ago have seen them beautifully arranged in the showcases? I composed a nice speech in my head before, I seemed ready, but a grenade exploded in my head, again, and everything got mixed up. I felt like an old horse pulling more and more heavy cart climbing more and more abrupt slope. Luckily there were not many witnesses of this ordeal. Coming back home I reminded how in almost the same train, though more junky and much slower, running along the same track, I had been imagining my very first book. Now I was looking at the lights of the cement factory, the same as then, rushing away in the same deafening thud of wheels. This time I thought it was high time to stop making nonsense speeches. I feel like my writing is getting better and better, while my speaking is getting worse and worse. So, there is a chance that when I stop making speeches, or maybe even stop talking at all, my writing will be perfect. Sounds almost like a New Year’s promise to kick the habit. Almost, so it is not. They are not. Neither promise, nor habit. February 1, 2024 Events having no impact on the world’s fate were completed almost two weeks ago, and I didn’t know what I could write about it. I didn’t know whether I should write anything about this weighty fact, because AN EVENT (concert + reading + action = presentation of the book) has been planned for May when it is warm and dry enough, although a good weather like that can happen much earlier. I was waiting for I didn’t know what and… I was making four copies. They were almost ready. Then I found that in each copy a part of pages had been reversed. An imperceptible lack of concentration resulting in a stupid mistake. At first the sound and the fury. Then a while of consideration. There was a chance to save them. So, tearing apart, disassembling. Printing the reversed pages. Assembling again. Binding again… Quite a success. Only one copy is a bit distorted. It will stay in the reading room. Was it a next event which impacted the world’s fate in no way? December 2023 It’s time to start repairing the big streets. Nearly a month ago our double exhibition was closed, and in almost four months my single exhibition at the Jagiellonian Library will begin. And the streets are really trampled, creased and crushed here and there, even torn apart or almost. I will have to smooth and iron all the folds, glue the flaps and pages together. I won’t print the new copies. At least not for the April exhibition. I will show there those devastated ones, with tens or even hundreds of shoeprints which I will not erase for they will be an extra feature, genuinely unique, indeed. It may happen that after the April exhibition the streets will be too devastated to be repaired. Then I will make new copies. Maybe. I shall see. Unless there is something else to be done. Something will appear unexpectedly and will grab both myself and my time. It has always been like that. A Theory of Tangling has been waiting, too. I thought it could have been presented in April. No way. Absolutely. Most probably it will be replaced by the Events having no impact on the world’s fate which have emerged suddenly from the mist of vague ideas, from the chaos of various pieces of text being collected for some time, and appeared in a shape of a ready book. Even an art action to support the official presentation has been figured out. While there are 20-30 events still lacking… It’s like to finish the race having not run some parts of the distance – completing them is the last what you think about but you must do that. Yes, one shouldn’t read books before they have been written. September 2023 During my morning walk with the dog, after a few years of roaming all around and over my head I saw this book in its ultimate and the most appropriate shape at last. There is only a small doubt concerning the title: A Theory of Tangling. An Outline. or A Theory of Tangling Cables. An Outline. Or A Introduction to… Now the only thing I have to do is to write it. At first the cycle of lectures for the Liberland Extreme University, then I will collect, tangle and print them. In two versions but in one volume: tangled and untangled. Everything is so simple, indeed, these knots, twines and tangles... September 2023 An exhibition in a month. Big. Very big. First of all the new Street. New Street – Old Street crossing. A real one, absolutely real, no metaphoric… While Esplanade-Street crossing will be imagined, more or less symbolic. Because Esplanade will be hanging on the wall while Streets will be spread on the floor… Maybe I shouldn’t have printed Liberland, so Esplanade either. A sheet of paper is something different than a screen, and the space of the venue is not a cyberspace. However the space of the venue is much more closer to cyberspace than the space of a codex book. I would be able to make real links there using strings… It’s not as important as the fact it was to be an ordinary exhibition, though very big and retrospective one, and it will be a SUPERBOOK. The whole exhibition will be a book, thus entering the venue one will enter a book. August 2023 I „finished” the English version of another STREET. I have used the quotation marks because it will never be finished. It will always seem to me, I will always be convinced, I will always know that I could or even should have made it in a different way. The first STREET is a “hit and sunk” kind of book – it is what it is and can’t be something else, can’t be different. Period. Another STREET is a “missed and not sunk” kind of book. Or “hit and not sunk”. So it will be floating like a wreck. The only solace is that it was to be different than the first one. And it is. June 18, 2023 I keep producing new Streets. I have made 11 so far. If I counted well. One huge, enlarged twice, the one which will be spread on the floor in the art gallery during the October exhibition (almost a month of work). Three in original, as if native, size. Four a bit smaller (and this is going to be the basic format, and the paper 160g will be the basic paper, due to the crossings. Four small, pocket streets, more than two times smaller than the original format. 4 + 4 + 3 + 1 = 12. So I made a mistake. I didn’t count the already printed but not yet assembled copy. This is somehow boring and exhausting. But in spite of growing feeling of being worn out a gauzy idea runs through my mind: to make a copy twice smaller than the pocket street, and then a miniature which could be put into a matchbox… and of course to make a giant copy, as if a billboard one, and then a Borghes copy or 1:1 – printing the text right on the pavement or printing the natural-size street on a material? Where could such book be put, on what shelf? How could is be read (this is easy), and how could it be spread (this is difficult)? How could it be folded after reading and to what slip-case put back? April 1, 2023 The very first copy of the new Street is on the table. I’m looking at it not with an enthusiasm but with uncertainty. I don’t know if all is right or wrong. With no doubt the paper is wrong. The one the cross streets are printed on. It is as thick as the one the main street is printed on while it should be a bit thinner. Folding them the book is swelling dangerously. So, either the whole book should be printed on a bit thinner paper or the cross streets should be printed on much thinner paper. I will make the second copy and print the cross streets on thinner paper. The third copy should be printed entirely on thinner paper. On 160g paper. I have such paper but little bit smaller. So the third copy will the same as the second one: main street on 200g paper – cross streets on 135g. Or will be smaller and thinner. We shall see. Soon all these papers will be gone and I will go on printing on 200g offset paper which arrived yesterday. The same weight but the paper is more soft. Unfortunately slightly less white. Won’t fit to the 135g paper. These are suppose to be sheer technical problems. Shouldn’t interest but myself, so what am I writing about them for? I will not be writing what the book is about. If I were to explain all intricacies and reveal all its secrets, I wouldn’t have to write it. The book explains itself in the best possible way. Like every object it lives its own hidden life, and every life, even so silent, has its problems. Are they worth describing? Why these ones, why not the others? March 1, 2023 The first version of the new STREET is ready. Sienkiewicz Street in Kielce twenty years after or in search of the other side. Now we (me and the book) must take a rest. It won’t last long. Time urges. Ideas urge. Everything urges November 5, 2022 I went to Wrocław to see The National Book Art Show. The main reason was to meet those whom I haven’t seen for very long because there was no such show for a dozen years. I was not disappointed – quite many friends came and we spent really nice time together. Another reason to go to Wrocław was to see what has changed and what hasn’t. Going there I found the simplest and shortest definition of a book: A BOOK IS AN OBJECT TO BE WRITTEN AND READ I thought that according to this definition there would be very few books at the show. I was not disappointed. There was only one book: “The General and Special Theory of Volution”. All other items were objects to be looked at and in, certainly this looking at and in although some of them were partially rewritten. So, nothing new. Everything as it was. The fact I didn’t look for any inspiration was new. I was looking at but I was not spying. I felt inspired enough by what I had seen in the past. However what I read inspires me constantly, though I should say it rather confirms my choices. The plans, intentions and objectives are set. They loom on the horizon quite clearly. I visited an (extra)ordinary book store not far from the art gallery filled with objects written to be read. I didn’t try to imagine my “snailbooks” somewhere among normal books. So, where should they be? Maybe they should crawl across the street trying not to be smashed by rushing cars. If they succeeded most probably the rain would transform them into unpleasant paper pulp. All objects (unjustly named books) in the art gallery were made by the artists themselves, but only I did write it thus making it a book. In the book store all books were written by the authors, but there I would be the only one who made his books by himself. Everything is clear – nothing has changed because nothing could have changed. Not. Not everything is clear. Now I have to define, in the same concise manner, reading and writing. I’m waiting for a good chance. October 2022 Objects are ready. Well, I could easily write: Object are not ready yet. This statement would simply tell, that I’m going to add next drawings and texts. Or take something away. Or erase. Or move. I could same easily write: These bloody Objects will never be ready, never. Thus I would get my frustration off, my discontent being the result of lack of a general idea, kind of frame, for example a premise that I’m going to draw all objects gathered in this very space, or on this very desk. While I have just said: it’s enough. Yes, now it’s enough. I can do next volume in the future. And in the next volume the drawings will merge with texts and texts with drawings. Now they are placed on adjacent pages, connect mentally but not physically. So, in the next volume the drawings and texts will connect both mentally and physically. Or only physically. Oh! that’s interesting. So often I’m staring at an object and thinking about something else – this object provokes no associations, it is an entity perfectly parallel to myself . . . . . Well, one day in the future. After the second Street. Yes. Now the time of the second Street has come, and I have to concentrate on it. At the exhibition in OBK in September I tested the twice enlarged copy of the first Street. It suffered a lot, but I protected it in no way, just spread it of the floor and let the visitors walk on it. I used to explain that reading the Street is like walking along it – is walking along the Street like reading it? This copy was somehow experimental and I decided to show it in the very last moment. The second Street should have such enlarged copy, too. But let me do the normal copy first. I need the base. September 1, 2022 An empty hall. Not square – an oblong rectangle, but any other shape would do. Not entirely white. The floor is made of grey concrete faintly gleaming. In the very centre, although it could be a corner as well, there is a book on a white slim cuboid table high. One book. A very normal book. Conventional and standard. But absolutely real. A book to be open, with pages to be thumbed through, with texts to be read. Somebody is approaching the book, somebody disappointed, angry, frustrated, concerned, again expecting a stupid trick instead of decent piece of art. Justifiably. Is opening a book, and the book is exploding, ejecting colourful pages, tons of various letters and signs, words, phrases, paragraphs. They are flooding the floor, covering walls, reaching with splashes the ceiling… Well, so far, so good. And then? There is always this troublesome THEN or WHAT’S NEXT? So far everything is possible. However we can be almost sure that then everything will be impossible. The visitor who opened the book and caused the eruption of tales should close the book loading the semantic lava back to it to give the next visitor a chance to cause another fantastic explosion. What a strange idea can come to my head during the morning walk with the dog the day after making an ordinary exhibition. Or after another, consecutive attempt to put together the book-puzzles into NOBODY KNOWS WHAT. June 14, 2022 There is a date chosen for a big exhibition in Kielce: October 2023. There is a reason: the twentieth anniversary of “Ulica Sienkiewicza in Kielce”. There is a decision and will to make a new “Street”. There is an idea how to make it, what it will look like. And there is enough power. Probably. And enough time. Probably. Is it enough time to make also “An Atlas of Trees”? No. Is there enough time to make for this exhibition “A Copybook”? No. “An Atlas of Trees” has been waiting for fifteen years or longer. It looks like its time has come. At last. It looks ready to be materialised. It looks like I am ready to face the challenge. The very first piece of text has been written, which not necessarily is a tree – it is kind of introduction but could turn into a tree… “Atlas” would contain trees from the past – I documented the garden almost twenty years ago. Some of them do not exist, others keep growing, so they look really differently. It would be an atlas of the past trees. This doesn’t mean some present trees can’t be in it. Just right after they have been written they will be the past ones. “A Copybook” has been waiting not long. The copybook which is going to be the base for “A Copybook” has been waiting for forty five years, if my counting is right. Neither it knew it was waiting nor I. For quite long I have been thinking of a slightly palimpsest-like book, however not based on this copybook written up entirely during a very long and winding journey. “Another Non-description of the Hill” turned out to be an absolutely new book. Another “Street” will be a new book, too, more like a sequel than palimpsest. Maybe “A Copybook” will do, although the copybook is not one of my books written long time ago which I would rewrite and comment abundantly and maliciously. The copybook is just a copybook. I have bought a new tablet for drawing and writing the trees and the street. Nothing special, at least it is new and twice as big as the old one. I’m not so sure if I draw and write trees and the street on it. No doubt this will make my work easier. But simplifications can be treacherous and easily transformed into complications or even in impossibilities. However spending the whole summer on the street and drawing house after house is not what my body is dreaming about – I won’t be drawing the houses in the way I had done it twenty years ago. I will redraw the pictures I took with my mobile, quickly, within two hours. So, the work is in progress. The new “Street” will be longer. And larger. And more tricky. It will tell about going through. About going out. About what can be found on the other side. About what can be found on both sides. And “The Objects” are more than a half. While making an English version of “A Treatise on Earth and Metal” has just begun. “Vineyard” keeps growing very slowly. More and more work to be done. Less and less time – better not to waste it for the issue of superfluousness. So many things all at once. More and more things all at once. A senile madness, indeed. May 17, 2022 I have finished MNIEOPISANIE (Auto-non-description). I’ve made a few copies. The well known question comes back: what for? This time in a bit different context. In the context of the street-book. What do I write and make other books for if people seem interested mainly or only in the street-book? I could use my energy and time to produce more copies of the “Street”, and take but it to book fairs . . . . . Such a book is a curse. Yes, it is. You can make a lot of other very interesting things, but people remember only this one, and they think they know very well your works . . . . . The context of the street-book is even larger. Twenty years have passed since it had been written and made. The time has come to make a sequel. The hero of the June walk along the Sienkiewicza Street is coming here again and going the same way, which is not the same as it was, it’s different like he is different and the street is different. Everything is different. Nothing is the same . . . . . What’s the point of this difference? What is the difference? What is otherness? Interesting questions. Worth to be non-described . . . . . Non-description of a different street. Non-description of the (not) same street. A different non-description. April 29, 2022 Last time I took part in a book fair ten years ago. I guess in Oxford. Then I found it was enough. Let the books go by themselves, if they want. But they didn’t want and don’t want. I also found the time had come to make people come here, to the books. And this began to happen, but then stopped – at first the pandemic broke out, now the war is going on in the neighboring country. That is why, but there are some other reasons not very clear for myself, I decided to take part in the Bristol Artists Book Event. I went there by plane. Well, I felt almost like fifteen years ago when I had been there for the first time. Maybe better, in some aspects definitely better, although I earned only a half of what I spent. Never mind. With no doubt the books were much heavier than fifteen years ago. Quite strange, for I have been writing more lightly lately. It means I must write much more lightly to make the books fly by themselves. October 31, 2021 Twenty four or six books after Non-description of the Hill I made Another Non-description of the Hill. It is different than the first one. The first one is based on the pictures taken from one place in the garden. The second one is based on drawings made in various places in the garden, and outside the garden, too, as well as of some other mountains. If one day the third one is made what will it look like? If the first and the second ones are non-descriptions from outside, should the third one be a non-description from inside? From underneath? August 31, 2021 I have updated Treatise on Pageography. So far the Polish version only. Which means it's not an entirely new book, but the old one revised and redesigned. The second edition. It seems better than the first one, more coherent, more consistent, it has more space, more air… Most probably the third edition would be even better. And the third edition should be the last book, for it should be based on the all-my-books experience. And if so, it would be better to write at the end an autobiography, wouldn’t it? This autobiography would consist of several dozen chapters, of as many chapters as many books I created, because each chapter would tell the story of one book – I didn’t describe them in the Treatise, I only mention them (not all of them), use them as examples. It’s very interesting what the last chapter would be like. It should tell the story how I was writing this autobiography. Yes, this is very nice idea, really catching my attention, for it comes back again and again. Risky. Firstly because I don’t know when I should begin to write such autobiography to complete it on time. Secondly, if I didn’t die right after printing the first copy, and if I were living for some time, even quite long, I could create no more books. That’s good. So much rubbish and litter less… April 23, 2021 The General and Special Theory of Volution is ready. As if ready. All elements suit each other. As if. Everything is as it should be. As if. Since early morning I’ve been meditating it should and could be different. I should have written something different and differently. A little bit different stories from the snail’s life. Some other snail stories… But right now I have to solve the problem of boxes for my snailbooks. They are fragile and need shelters. April 2, 2021 I’m gluing a slipcase, slim one, for the Concerto. The cardboard is slightly softer than the one I used before, and those delicate grooves even less visible. This must be the result of different waste papers. Different texts and images. I wonder what those texts and images were like… No, I don’t wonder that, for I’m concentrated on smearing the flaps I’m going to join with the glue. And when I am about to touch them and press, my mobile starts ringing. I don’t have to answer, I’m busy, I’m doing an important thing, I can’t break the process of gluing otherwise the glue will get dry and the flaps will be warped due to moisture… But I can’t let it ring, either. All my life I have been waiting for such a phone call. For this very one phone call: somebody’s calling to order all my books, and is saying: I have decided to call you because I love your works, and I’d like the others to love your works, too, I’d like to make a lot of people love your works, as many as possible… Of course, it’s more than obvious that the one who’s calling now will say nothing like that, but there has always been a change for an unprecedented occurrence, so if I don’t answer the call this chance can be lost. Yet I can also say that it is more than probable that if I don’t answer the telephone, the call would turn out to be just this very one… With one hand I’m holding the glued flaps and press the other side of slipcase to my belly and I make a few steps towards the keyboard where my mobile is lying. The number shown on the screen is not on the list. I’m taking the mobile up and I can hear a bit sleepy, rather more tired than sleepy, monotonous and bored voice of a woman in her forties. The voice is asking if I’m the owner of a house, and having got the yes answer is informing me that if I only would like an expert can explain everything that is needed to get a grant to install solar panels on the roof of my house and this explanation will last less than eight minutes. It means longer than this very conversation. I’m listening as indifferently, with no passion and enthusiasm, as the woman is talking, a little bored, exhausted and tired, and not irritated at all, thanks to the slipcase, I’m informing the woman that I already have solar panels on the roof of my house, then she hangs up at once having said no good bye. My dying dream has survived, and the chance has been saved. The slipcase has been glued. Almost perfectly. March 25, 2021 I was making a copy of Treatise on Pageography and thinking again it should be revised and extended. Nineteen years have passed since I completed it. More than twenty books. Quite a lot. Both of time and of books. A lot should be described and added. How can I do this if new ideas keep coming to my mind? Still coming and want to be embodied or embooked. Shall I wait till they stop coming, till I’m sure no new book will appear, because only then the treatise won’t have to be supplemented? To supplement, add, extend or write anew? The Second Treatise on Pageography. Or just Pageography. Or something else, something different. Librography. Libromania. Librology. Bookology. What a writer could know about a book. A book – terra incognita. Liber incognitus. If it is going to be a new, different book, then let it be new and different – let it describe the circumstances of making all my books, let it be a set of their biographies. Interesting, but risky. Even more than making an ice wine – if you don’t pick up the grapes in the right moment, they will get frozen and worth nothing. What will I risk here, in case of my books? I will not finish this last book, because I will begin it too late? I will finish it too early because I will begin it too early? And then? What will I do then? Nothing. Or I will begin to practice violin. November 8, 2020 The new book, two first copies of it I made day before yesterday, is very paper, indeed, even paper sophisticated, to some extent, of course, although in this very case the aesthetics seems to overcome semantics. It’s interesting, though not so surprising, this is not the book I mentioned in the end of August. Now, in the beginning of November, I don’t remember which book I was thinking about. Certainly, not this one which I have just completed, because then I didn’t think about it at all. I like books appearing suddenly, as if from nowhere, and which have so unusual title on top of that.  As you can see the title is a drawing. Yes. This is neither a secret writing, nor a cipher, nor a pictogram – this is an ordinary drawing, not abstract although it may look like one. Why should the title be a word if the book is half written and half drawn? August 24, 2020 I have made an e-book. The first one. And probably the only one. Anoisiology or a few lectures on stupidity. It looks like it looks, although I wanted it to look differently, it means better – for example, I wanted every lecture to start on a new screen – but I couldn’t do that in spite of great endeavour. Great but short. Too short, though in fact much too long. Time is running short and shouldn’t be wasted for learning what can’t be learnt. The html code has been and will be a mysterious language for me. Let it be so. Here you can download the file. (Un)fortunately the lectures are in Polish. English versions can be read at the Extreme University in Liberland: Anoizjologia.epub Anoizjologia.mobi I do hope the collection of short stories, not so very fantastic but very Polish indeed, is far better. This is a normal pdf of A6 edition thus adjusted to the size of the screen of any e-book device. Anyway, pdf is not a “classical” e-book; it’s much better, and comfortable, to read a pdf file on a tablet (then it should be A5, just like I did when publishing the stories separately). Futuro-ebook.pdf Well, now I can begin a new book. A paper one. Most probably only paper. July 26, 2020 So, the book is ready! FUTURO – short stories not so fantastic. A few copies are on the shelf. There will be a few more. A few + a few = ten. Ten is more than a few and is not a few. Ten is less than a dozen, so it doesn’t belong to the category of dozens. Ten should be enough. Must be enough. Probably I won’t have time to make more copies. There are a lot of other things to be done for the upcoming exhibition. The opening will take place in a few days. Exhibitions are exhausting. Very exhausting. I’m thinking of making an e-book. E-books are ugly. Very ugly. Just a raw and rough html file. I’m thinking of making a nice e-book. Pretty. Fine. Or at least not ugly. For example a A6 pdf file. Just the size of a screen. Certainly in greyscale. This is how I imagine FUTURO as an e-book. But first of all I’m thinking of “Anoisiology” or the lectures on stupidity. “Anoisiology” will be an html file. How can I make a simple html file look really nice? A fine (press) e-book. But that’s not the only point. E-book gives you a chance to change the layout. In overwhelming majority of cases the layout has no semantic value. And if it has? Most probably FUTURO will not be in English. Mainly due to the cultural context of this political fantasy, although not all stories are local, and even if they are there is some globalness in them. And because of lack of time, too. July 9, 2020 I have refreshed Non-description of the Hill. I have scanned once again the photographs which luckily had not been lost. I corrected a few errors. Set the text anew, certainly in the same way as the former one. I changed a little the construction of the book to make it easier to open it and spread. Now it’s better, however not as good as it should be. This book will never be as it should be. I will never say: this is it. Well, that’s the nature of this book. Some books are just like that. So, instead of trying to improve it once gain in a few years, I should make an entirely new book. With drawings. The spot is ready. I have cut the shrubs from under the giant oak which is the father and mother of a few dozens of oaks growing in our garden-primary-forest. Now I have a window with gorgeous view, but I don’t have a bench to sit there. I will make it right after the opening of the exhibition on July the last. May 24, 2020 I have written a short story. It’s titled RA-DIO. It’s in Polish. Even though it is in English, it will not be understood, I’m afraid. Not because of the language puns which are not many. Because of the cultural and political contexts. Of any context. Because even I, myself, can’t understand what’s going on here. So, this is one more attempt to comprehend incomprehensible. That I can’t understand a distant country with totally different culture, history, nature, landscape I sneak through it’s not strange. That I can understand less and less the country I was born in and where I have been living my entire life it’s, what a surprise, even less strange. So, what should I write and how should I write to understand? What should I write and how should I write to make the others understand? For example the ones from the distant countries I was sneaking through. How can we explain inexplicable? To ourselves and to the others. And neither immaculate conception nor quantum entanglement is the point, for these are relatively simple things in comparison with the slaughter of everyday life. April 23, 2020 When I was going to bed the day before I didn’t remember the World Book Day would be the next day. Anyway, in my dream I visited a bookshop. It was a single room, quite big, with a huge kidney shape desktop placed in the centre and entirely covered with books. Behind the desktop, at one of its ends, if round figures have any ends, but oblong figures certainly do, a women was sitting and eating. “Well – I thought – it’s a lunch time, isn’t it?” In front of the plate there were two square books, one was open, another not. The women was reading the open one. Could she read the close one? Of course, she could, why couldn’t she? The books looked like one novel in two volumes. I tried to read the title, but the letters were too small, and the distance to big. I moved to the right. Then somebody approached me and said: “I think you are looking for something like that”. And he showed me a book which looked like a pizza. This made me a bit anxious and indignant: “No. Absolutely not. I’m looking for something different. I’m looking for a spoon. A talking spoon. I write a book about eating. About eating from a spoon’s point of view. About how a spoon perceives eating”. Of course, in my dream everything was far more exquisite, the idea seemed brilliant, dazzling, stunning. I wanted to wake up and write it down. I did my best: wake up! wake up! you have to write it down! At last I woke up, but it was too late. Something extremely important has been lost in the thicket of day reality, something that made the dreamt scene not bizarre at all, and a spoon talking about eating was so natural and so obvious… That’s what books are like Oh! So many things are going on, and so many are not! I’m going to write the most difficult book ever. The book of face. Facebook fanpage . . . . . What am I to write about? How? Briefly about what’s going on and what is not. My new website has no “news” tab. So: The congress of conology didn’t take place at all. Oh! Not here. There. I should write it over there. On the fanpage… Yes, in a moment, in a few days April 2020 I have made an e-version of „Kukuryki” (Cock-a-doodle-doos). To be distributed freely. For our comfort in the gloomy, though so sunny here in Dąbrowa Dolna, time of plague. It can be downloaded here: KUKURYKI April 4, 2020 For a few days the sky has been clear. Little frost in the night – almost forgotten that’s why so surprising. In a while, maybe tomorrow this would-be winter will breathe its last… It’s dry. So dry. Molehills on the meadow have bleached – now they are creamy, ivory. You kicked one, and it would turn into powder, explode like an old puffball at the end of summer. Astonishing calmness. Like in the cyclone’s eye… An eye of the cyclone of the plague. One of so many, of uncountable eyes. As if this cyclone-plague was a fishing net which has caught the whole world. The whole human world. It’s our turn this time, again, though it would be more proper to say we have caught ourselves. And we don’t suffer at all this meadow, and all other meadows, these molehills, and all other molehills, trees, birds and worms didn’t notice it. While we should suffer because of that. This is what should make us suffer. Staying in the cyclone’s eye I should write a book about the viruses’ happiness, fantastic development of their civilisation, how they colonize new lands, islands, continents, universes, how splendid things and works they created… I have completed TUSCONY. Or rather I have eventually get rid of TUSCONY. I have finally non-described (not described) the conical world with triangular base. I travelled through very rough sea. Now I must make in my garden a literature installation, in a spirit of non-classic Tusconian literature. Then I will take pictures of it. Dismantle it. Make a report on the Congress of Conology which will not take place, and which some very decent and wise guests were to participate. January 2020 Once again Liberatorium is an overground small press. I don't know if it's good or if it's bad. Maybe I regret a little bit. Maybe I'm slightly sad. The fate of my books hasn't changed at all. I don't know if it's good or if it's bad. Maybe I regret a little bit. Maybe I'm slightly sad. October 2019 I’ve dreamt books again. I stopped when I had completed my „somnambulic crime story”, one and a half year ago or maybe even more. And I didn’t dream any books up to now. Because today I have dreamt a snail-book. A book-snail. A book having the form of snail. At one end the sheets, in fact long strips of paper, were rolled, convoluted, like a snail shell, while at the other end they could be turned like in any regular codex book. I saw it very clearly. I remembered it very well. It was small. Only a bit bigger then a snail. I didn’t like the cover – it was made probably of a thin metal foil and under it there was ordinary canvas. I didn’t like metal but I liked canvas, so I even tried to tear the metal foil out… I woke up. I didn’t forget anything. The pictures neither smudged nor vanished. In the afternoon I made a mock-up. Some problems need to be solved, but all in all a book-snail can be made quite easily. It will be more difficult to write it in such a way no one will be able to read it fast – this should be a (non)description of the slow world, indeed? July 2019 They say a writer writes all the time one and the same book. It looks they are right, and if they are, I have to worry about nothing. I have always been promising to myself to write only one book at a time (promise = think this is what should be done, try really hard, take care about it, have no idea it can be done in a different way, no oaths, no promises). I begin next book only when I finish the former one. And now I have begun to write three books simultaneously. What a disaster! But if the three small books are parts (chapters) of this very big and only one, then I don’t have to worry I have broken a fundamental rule. Three? But I’m already thinking about the fourth one, am I? Already? I have been thinking about it for quite some time. Summarizing: one written, two written-drawn, one drawn... What does it mean? What does it tell about? Where are we (me and my books) heading to? January 2019 I should have written something in December. At least a few words about the symposium in Ireland. For example: that I took with me a special notebook (half-filled with drawings made a few years ago in Istanbul) to draw wind – I expected strong wind and it was blowing really furiously, the loose sheets could easily join seagulls and get lost in the whirling sky. The whole first day I was rambling around the village and along the seashore trying to resist the wind. The drawings I made were as bad as the symposium was good, so there won't be the next part of the dedrawing of the world – thus the excessive audacity was punished. It's so nice to spend a few days with some friends I haven't seen for years, and with people I've never seen before, who I needn't apologize to for what I do… A dozen of lectures and presentations, each about something different – the diversity of the book world is really astonishing. I was talking about Liberland, my hypertext book-project. I forgot to tell no wind was blowing in Liberland. I said and showed a lot of interesting things (I hope), but I forgot to say and show even more. I brought with me some of my latest books which never been shown in Ireland. I wanted to bring “A Treatise on Earth”. I thought it would be completed earlier – I wanted it to be one sentence really written on the ground (then I would have also an English version), but I changed my mind (or my mind was changed) and now the treatise is different. Yes, it is completed now, and the whole element cycle is completed, too. Quite unexpectedly there is a treatise on metal in it, and this is right solution for metal is in earth. So, case closed. Now it would be nice to make somewhere a presentation of the whole cycle. It would be also nice to answer the famous question: what next? This is so simple, indeed. There are so many thing to be added to Liberland (well, for example lectures on the ecology of mind, road system should be developed, industry needs some investments…) The second volume of “My State” would be welcomed. The second revised and extended edition of “A treatise on Pageography” seems quite desired. A description of the cone world with triangle base has been stored for quite long in the corner of my mind. How about a description of the overcrowded world? The idea has been noted recently and is still rather misty. I should at last get down to the description of myself, or to “Selfscription” - I described my hair 2-3 years ago and it was a good start, now time has come to write something about my nose… Well, I should make English and Esperanto versions of this and of that… And I should keep on trying to draw wind… But first of all I will fix the signboard to the wall – at last I have it. Of course not now. I will wait for the spring. Maybe I should do this on the first of April? Exactly in the 10th anniversary of Liberatorium. Or to unveil it solemnly. Would it be the rejection of the strategy “sit silently in the corner – at last they will find you” so successful so far? Well, I leave the corner from time to time. Maybe too seldom, that's right, but if I used to leave it too often I would waste too much time. And if too many people come here, they will waste too much space… Interesting: space can be regained, time can not – the space-time is really bizarre. I need a balance. What kind of balance do I need? How can I find it if it keeps changing all the time and uses the most sophisticated camouflages. October 2018
I completed the „Treatise on
Plastic”. What a painstaking (or
painful) and exhausting work it was, really. A
ferocious battle, bitter combat that ended with
a ceasefire satisfying nobody. I was going to use in the
description a phrase I have been thinking about
for so long: “this is the worst book I
have ever made”. However I refrained from it.
Firstly because I thought immediately there
could be the one even worse among all other
books I made, so the phrase should look a bit
differently: “this is one of the worst books I
made so far”. But didn't use this phrase,
either. I looked at
the first copy carefully and found it quite
pretty. Glossy film, thick smooth paper, dark
magenta letters, cover made of silicon
quarter-transparent paper. All parts and element
well chosen (maybe
except the thread which could be a fishing line), fitting each other, glad of being
there and content with neighbouring materials. A
real plastic book, no doubt. Plastic literally
and metaphorically, because the texts it
contains are rather trifles, shining but not brilliant… If it is so, then this is an
excellent book. Excellent due to its
adequateness. A truly plastic treatise. If it is
so. It can be not so, can't it?
Never mind… It's
completed. That's what matters. Now I can calmly set
to ground-scratching.September 2018 Have I circled back? I have bought a dot matrix printer to print some parts of the treatise on plastic. I don't know if I succeed, because such letters can be easily wiped off from the silicon paper. Which can be very interesting. Will confirm the thesis that nothing can stick to plastic. Even bullshit. Maybe I will print also "Treatise on Earth (Ground)". Thus I will come back to the idea of a book written with sand grains; "Elephant's Tail" is to be such book, and the first few copies printed on dot matrix printer were just like that. I don't remember at all what became of this printer after – it had to be fixed – than ink jet printers appeared – and then my first dot matrix printer disappeared, simply vanished… And some small parts of "Treatise on Metal" I will type with my old typewriter. Yes. This is exactly what I will do. Will I circle back? Or maybe square back? Ellipse back? Hexagon back? Irregularly polygon back? Will I go back to the beginning? Close a figure? Or will it be the first coil of the spiral? Yes. That's it. It will be the first coil of the spiral. 4D spiral. September 2018 I was reforming Liberland whole spring. I finished in the beginning of summer. Now I am writing about it in the beginning of autumn. Why now? Why not in springtime? It doesn't matter at all since there are no seasons in Liberland. There are no years, either. Which could mean there is no time… However the reform did not consist in founding a time, let alone to imprison this time in a calendar. The reform was administrative, first of all. Also territorial. If Liberland has any territory. So, it would be better to write about the situational reform. Site-and-location reform. Meaning what-is-where, where-what-should-be-looked-for. The fact the files have been moved to another server is of no importance – these are inner affairs not interesting even for specialists (provided that they are not specialists in colonization, invasion, conquest and things like that). External affairs are important. There are no net, com, org, eu domains now. There are no four entrances. As if there was no harbour, airport, access road, underground tunnel. There is only one way to enter Liberland: through Liberatorium, through the laboratory of books. Well, indeed, Liberland is a book, a kind of book. A book-land. A state-book. A free land of free books. Free or totally dependent on myself. Because it is myself. I am Liberland – to some extent. I am a book-state. A book-land. A land-book… So, now Liberland is more dense. More condensed, more complex and complicated, however more clear, too. Some things have been written and added, a few other things have been erased. That's all. The system is the same. The principles are the same. Again the time of painstaking labour has come back. January 2018 A few months have passed since the exhibition in France. In Occitanie. In Aveyron. In Naucelle. I have written nothing about it. And during almost three weeks I spent there I wrote no word either. Maybe too beautiful, too good time it was... Instead I was drawing quite a lot. And I made a book titled DEDRAWING (dedraughtion / desketchion) OF THE WORLD. It has no number. I don't know whether it is the zero or the first part. I don't know if any more parts are going to be released. I have quite a lot of drawings. I will have more of them. We shall see. What can not be described, can be drawn. What can not be drawn, can be described. What can not be drawn and described, can be played. What can not be played, drawn and described, can be… Mmmm… One day neither drawing, nor writing, nor playing will be needed. Let's hope the delight will remain, not the dismay. end of June 2017 There are books which appear suddenly and unexpectedly. They should neither be devised nor designed, because they are ready, and all their elements fit each other perfectly. They don't need to be written, because they are written, everything you need to do is to rewrite them. Unfortunately, they need to be printed, because so far they haven't learned the art of materializing themselves. They used to appear in spite of all plans and intentions. You absolutely can't wait to materialize them – waiting, caused by plans and intentions, destroys them…. No, not destroy. They simply flow by and away and disappear. And never come back. Like clouds. Like butterflies. Like shimmering water. Such a chance can't be missed. This is why for almost two months I've been rewriting (materializing) something which I can call, although with hesitation and for fun, a somnambulant crime fiction. The word crime is not the right one (fiction isn't either). However I don't know which word would be right, and if I ever found it. Most probably I would have to invent it. The book has no title. It's intriguing. It has everything except for the title. This could indicate that the lack of the title (or hiding the title) is a significant piece of the puzzle. So, maybe the simple word puzzle would be the right word. A somnambulant puzzle. Maybe this book has appeared as a reaction to the long and exhausting struggle with the angular world. Here there is no struggle. I just wait for the next part to be dreamt and I write it down. And that's all. Wish each book were like that…. Isn't it like that? Writing a book is like turning the reality into a dream. Writing this somnambulant puzzle is like turning a dream into reality. December 2016 In a few days I will go to a big city to take my books back. For more than two month they have been exhibited in the Beautiful Book Gallery. I will take back home one half. Another half will remain there. Now they will be standing on one shelf – they won't be exhibited, but they will be ready to be read or thumbed through. They will be among other beautiful books. This gallery is new, was opened this year in springtime, there are not many books in it so far. Are my books in the right place? Do they suit this venue? Are my books beautiful? The presence of several old letterpress machines suggests they are not. Because they are not printed with metal types. They are not printed on beautiful, high quality papers. They are not really fine press books. Nor they are bound excellently. However such suggestion would limit the beauty of books to the craft aspect defined as hand work made according to the rules applied in the pre-digital era. Thus we would deal with a part of beauty only. How about the rest? What would the other parts of beauty be like? A beautiful book should be written beautifully. Probably first of all… A beautiful book should be imagined, thought up, beautifully, as a book, as a whole. No doubt about that… A beautiful book should have a beautiful construction, beautiful structure. Of course… A beautiful book should tell beautifully, and using all its elements, a story (a beautiful one, this would be the best though this is not necessary taking into consideration the simple fact that the majority of stories and histories are not beautiful). This can be understood… The beauty itself cannot be understood. Which can be understood. We always deal with its parts. We can never put them together. Always something is lacking, an important piece is lost. We always forget something. We always make mistakes (it would be great to make beautiful mistakes, but this is not easy and can happen very rarely, because beautiful mistakes are real rarities, besides we can't practise making mistakes – a mastered mistake is not a mistake)… Further considerations seem to have no sense. Many a book has been written about beauty. However we don't know if those books were beautiful. Probably not – undoubtedly the one I have at home are not. Should a description of beauty be beautiful? Oh, who cares….. So, it looks like making a beautiful book about beauty would have profound sense. Because the Beautiful Book Gallery is in a great and important city where many important and great book people live, few of them were to come for the opening of the exhibition. Maybe with their help I could have answered the question whether my books were beautiful or not. However nobody of them came. It is supposed some important and big events prevented them from coming. Let's hope these events were beautiful, too. Thus as usually nothing big and important happened in the life of my books. That's good. That's great. That's beautiful. All the time the beautiful everydayness is going on. Still beautiful. And still going on. August 2016 My big laser printer is out of order. Suddenly, while printing a page of "Kukuryki" it began to rattle and roar terribly and shout for a new magenta toner which was absolutely unacceptable for the installed toner was more than half full. Instead of calling someone to look into the guts of this monstrous device, I bought a new inkjet printer. It has a new technology of permanent ink supply, it's much smaller and five-six times lighter, although can be fed with papers of the same sizes as the laser printer. Of course, it's slower and has only manual duplex (which is not a big problem in my case). And I paid for it even less than I would pay for a new original magenta toner. Well, maybe it's simply a bad luck, that right now, after seven or eight years, the toners for my laser printer are the most expensive ones, but it is not the matter of luck, good or bad, that using any laser printer you have to replace from time to time not only toners but also imagining units and some other parts, not cheap, generating by the way a huge heap of wastes. It looks like I was one of the numerous victims of the common conviction that you pay a lot purchasing a laser printer but then you pay almost nothing for a printed page, while inkjet printers are cheap but ink printing is expensive. As usually the myth and the truth turned out to be a contradiction. Of course, laser printer is faster, but I don't print tens of thousands of copies monthly… Anyway, these are economical and technical problems, important, no doubt, but secondary ones when compared to a problem of really profound philosophical nature: toner or ink? Toner stays on paper. Toner is as if glued to the surface of a paper sheet. Ink soaks into paper. Ink is in the paper. Ink is noble. Toner is barbarian…. Really? . . . . . What does it mean? It does mean these are fundamental problems of the third rate. Deeply inferior issues. They will become primary ones only when tone and ink get the burden of meaning, of special function. Like colour. Like shape of letters. Like selection of adjectives. Like deformations of syntax. Like breaking the rules of punctuation….. We could equally easily discuss endlessly another topic: pen or pencil or ballpen? So, let's cut it short with a supposition being almost a statement: it looks like Liberatory enters once again the epoch of ink It's interesting whether the epoch of dot matrix printers will be back one day. As well as the epoch of typewriters. It's interesting when I will print the first page with letters standing on it… or growing out from paper like grass blades are growing out from the ground. And how about the zerory, the most superior, problem? To print or not to print. This is the question. And the answer today does still sound: to print. February 2016
This is the
second book which I didn't plan at all. The next
one which has appeared all of a sudden. The first
one, "6/7 A Treatise on Wood", I found in a
stationery warehouse. I saw sketchbooks with
sheets made of a manilla paper, nice and smooth,
more brown than yellow, light brownish, and I said
to myself: what a paper! excellent! looks like
wooden…. I bought a few sketchpads, brought them
home, hoping to use them one day. And I used them
almost at once. Wooden paper. As if made specially
to print a treatise on wood on it. Here and there
wood is considered an element. It's not clear why.
As well as metal. Does it mean I have to look for
a metal paper? . . . . . . But at first I focused
on this wooden paper. I remade Monodrum.
Entirely. Thoroughly. All the time I had a feeling
there was something wrong with it. So I threw the
music and pictures out. I left only three tales.
About cutting the tree down. About chopping the
trunks. About cutting the branches. And I add
three more: About whittling the sticks. About
carving the blocks. About the shavings. And a
fraction (of) tale about the sawdust . . . . . . .
. This book came up so suddenly and unexpectedly
that I even didn't announced its appearance. But
it really did appeared. And it is. It is waiting
for the next book about the next element. A
treatise on fire. Oh, it's going to be absolutely
elemental (if not elementary) book. It will.
Readers will be burning of impatience waiting for
the end. They will be burning down. Only ashes
will remain. Cinder and slag.
This happened a
few months ago. Then it seemed everything was on
its usual track again. Some new texts for
LIBERLAND. Everyday "Fire" writing. And suddenly
hens. Why hens?
I was to buy a
gift for my brother's grandson, three years old. I
thought of a children book. So I went to a
bookshop. Strange thing – bookshops have begun to
threaten me. I enter them curious as ever. And
almost at once, having crossed a threshold I feel
lost. Too many books. Too many. I don't know what
I'm looking for. I don't know what I am to trail,
to hunt, to stalk. I don't know where to go. I
don't know where to hide myself and what from.
Yes, it's really strange, I feel like a bookshop
is not my world any more . . . . . . . While a
second hand book shop still is. Maybe because it
reminds me my own home library where majority of
books are not new….. So I went out, and decided to
make a book for him by myself. Somewhere I had my
poems stored. I would find them. I would collect
them. And the book would be ready.
I found them. I
collected them. They were not many. And they
didn't fit. So, I had no book. I decided to write
new poems. About what? About hens. Why about hens?
Why not about silverfish? Many a poem has been
written about hens, no doubt about that, while no
poems has been written about silverfish, no doubt
either. Or I'm wrong? I know silverfish. I can see
them in my bathroom. And in my kitchen. I have
never seen them in my library, and I know they
like to eat book covers sometimes. A book about
tardigrades, known also as water bears, would be
even more exciting, for they are absolutely
extraordinary, as if fantastic, unreal,
creatures…… And hens? The most trivial and banal
creatures? OK, let them be hens. The poems began
to proliferate. When I had 11 or 12 I came to the
deadline and I had to made a book. A booklet, so
to say. I was drawing hens basing on my memory.
They were sketchy, patchy, bit abstract. Malice
and nasty hens they were. Although it was quite
warm and no snow, they didn't come to our garden,
as they usually do… I made three copies and I
thought this was the end of my adventure. But it
was not. I continued writing. When the number of
poems approached thirty I decided: enough. I
should keep some time and stamina for silverfish
and water bears.
Of course, an
interesting problem emerged: is it possible to
describe a hen's world? Not from the outside, but
from the inside. From the hen's point of view.
Like a hen would do this if it could write. To
write in a hen's way. In hen language. What would
this language be like? Could it be translated into
human? Provided that I would become a hen for some
time and would remember this experience, how would
I see it then in my human memory? Could I remember
it in a human way?
Cock-a-doodle-doos are not the
answer.October 2015 More and more often I think as follows: I am sixty. And what can I do? The only thing I can do is to create books needed by nobody. It is something, indeed, but it is only a little bit more than nothing. So very little bit more, that the statement „I can do nothing” is only a very little less than truth.... Well, the fact is I have been writing all my life and I can's write a proper / decent / good / solid / hearty / reliable / true / right (I can't make up my mind which one of these adjective is the most suitable) book..... I've recalled a history I read somewhere. When Paul Cezanne's father was dying, the artist wanted to draw (or maybe paint – I don't remember) his portrait. Then the wife advised him to ask a decent, good painter to do this. It was not the right time for tomfoolery (most probably she didn't say that, but she could). October 2015
For
some time the feeling of indescribableness has
been stronger than usual. Words
keep swarming in my head while fewer and fewer of them can be
found on paper. Liberland has been growing very slowly.
Slower than usually. Having described water and
wood, I began to describe fire. I will be
describing it till spring, till the end of the
heating season . . . . . . . But is it
indescribableness that really matters? With no
doubt I work slower now yet this is not the
point – and this is nothing surprising (at least
shouldn't be, but I am surprised though not
taken aback) although I should work faster and
faster since I have less and less time. Maybe
the point is that there is too much of everything, and will be even more,
definitely.
Oh, probably the point is that I
don't know what the point is.No. BIGGER AND BIGGER UNCERTAINTY . . . . . every day bigger . . . . . That's the point. Being the result of deeper and deeper awareness of enormous complexity of everything? Probably yes. Is it something wrong? No, of course not. September 2015 This book appeared by surprise. Absolutely unexpectedly. I hadn't been thinking of it. Nor I had been planning it. Which doesn't mean it dropped down from the sky or moon. Or was blown here by a wild gale. Well, suddenly one book transformed into another. That's all. As if a pupa transformed finally into a butterfly. Or a larva into a pupa? I'm not sure. "Monodrum" or "A Fractale about Wood Chopping" turned into "6/7 of A Treatise on Wood". Very short treatises, indeed. There are books, which can change their bodies without changing their souls (if body-soul distinction has any sense – of course, it has, it's easier to write and talk about some things and to imagine these things, though it's not more true then). Monodrum had changed its body once, not changing its soul. And suddenly it changed totally. There is no more DVD now, nor pictures, nor drumming. A book-record became a book-book. I wonder what will this book-book transform into. What does a butterfly transform into? Monodrum was to be a drummed book. A book-concert. It was not to be a book-record, but it became just that. An idea to write a treatise on wood chopping-hacking-cutting had appeared in "Łysopisy", so much earlier than an idea to play a sort of monodrum. It was to be a fractale (according to the following equation: fractal + tale = fractale), and when it was finally ready it was a sort of DVD box, a cover for DVD, and this DVD was to show the dance of hands above the drums. Everything has mixed up. Now the monodrum is the monodrum (and will be – if I ever play it again) and the fractale is the fractale. The butterfly has flown out from the glass-box. January - February - March 2015 When nine (nine?!) years ago I
displayed my books in this window, I arranged a
special exhibition – old typescripts and
typewriters, first printed copies, notebooks,
different versions of each title.... And I wrote a
special text.
Now,
this time, I prepared nothing. I just brought the
books. Many more books, though only the most recent
versions of them. And there was not enough room for
them. I didn't write any special text, either.
There's nothing to explain, isn't it? Well, also
partially because the proposition surprised me and I
had time only to print a few copies of lacking
titles. That's good.
Yes.
There's nothing to explain. It seems so. Is there
any better place for books than a window in a book
shop? Of course there is – reader's hands.... But
let's come back to the window. It could seem the
dream came true. It could seem so.... So many times,
when I enter a book shop and see so many different
books around me I think: and just here, among all
those books, there should be mine? what would they
look like there? would they fit? they are strange,
bizarre, so different.... So, where would they fit?
Where is their place? Only here? In Liberland?
August 2014
It
was quite nice day in August, though in the
morning clouds were swarming wildly above our
heads and that day could easily be not nice at
all, when we opened a reading room in the loft. At
last – the idea to have somewhere here a place
where somebody could freely, not hastily, not
disturbing us and not being disturbed by us, spend
some time and read my books, and maybe in a moment
of delight, rapture and madness buy one of
them.... yes, we had been thinking of something
like that for really long, but only now we
succeeded to transform a part of the attic in such
a place. There was the opening ceremony and party
(or a kind of ceremony and party – I'm not keen on
both ceremonies and parties), but nobody could
learn anything about this event neither before nor
after it. We invited only friends. In terms of
promotion it was sheer absurdity, nevertheless
such choice gave us one big advantage: we had to
explain nothing. The chosen strategy of minimal
promotion, it means just to give a concise
information and let it be heard through the
grapevine, not necessarily must be a bad one. It's
not that hard to notice we have less and less
time, so we shouldn't waste it – we should spare
it. Of course, expecting that a lost and confused
reader can find this site seems extreme naivety.
However this madness, like any other madness, can
be a method. What method? I don't know. Maybe
finding this site can be a kind of initiation, rite
de passage, or rite de venir (rite
of inbound)... We are thinking of printing
leaflets. When we think this issue thoroughly
through then maybe we will print them in the
beginning of winter. Well, you know, if on a
winter's night a traveler...
A few
days before the opening a big bough of the old
apple tree broke off due to heavy rain. On the
leaves still fresh and green I wrote with white
paint:
przez piekło burzy do nieba poezji a potem na stos ach cóż to za los co niszczy i nuży It means, more or less: through the hell of storm to the heaven of poem and then to bonfire a fate to be admired which destroys and bores Finding this poem, learning it by heart and then reciting – this was the ticket to the reading room. Of course, nobody controlled the tickets, yet some guest felt really happy to get such a ticket. Then I played a concert with my friend, Mieczysław Litwiński (a fiddler and singer, also great book reader), on the porch, and on the occasion of our 118 birthday (he is just one month older than myself and the opening day was just between his birthday and mine). June 2014 We have created a profile on Facebook. For a few days I have been thinking what I should write in it. Today morning I thought I knew, but when I set to writing I found I didn't know. Maybe I will write I don't know what we created the Liberatorium's profile for? We are supposed to set up an author's book gallery – if I have neither interest, nor strength, nor money to go with my books to various fairs, festivals and exhibitions, it means to go with books to people, let's make people come to us, to our books. But this intention is only an intention. Who will come here? Who will want? Who will dare? Who? We have begun to tidy the garden, to tame and civilised this incredible jungle. Will we put benches in dusky green tunnels for stray readers so much astonished these bizarre books can be read? June 2014 I was asked to make the
bibliography of my works. I did it. This
bibliography was to contain also works which were
not known widely. It contains them. I understand
those who asked me meant books which could not be
found on Liberatorium website due to various
reasons. For example works which are unique and will
never have any edition (because they must be
unique), or works which are typescripts and will
remain typescripts (because they must remain
typescripts – they are not worth publishing). I
thumbed them through. I was a bit surprised they
existed for they should have been destroyed. Many
years ago I made a kind of stocktake. I had read all
these pre-books (or proto-books) and found in them
nothing that would justified their existence. They
did their job and they could sink into oblivion.
It's much easier in the case of music – if it is not
recorded, nothing is left. Nothing is left after
hours of painstaking practising. But manuscripts and
typescripts are left. So do cripple sketches and
drawings. Requests, begging, orders or last wills of
the authors not to publish (exhibit) them
posthumously have no power at all and usually are
not respected. It's good then to tidy up everything
earlier. And I did so. However it turned out I
hadn't tidy up everything. A few copies of
typescripts I found in my parent's library when I
was closing their old apartment down. For quite long
I was pondering how I might use them. Especially
those describing my early and crazy journeys. To
overlap old descriptions with new commentaries?
Finally I found such ideas not really good. They
seemed underpinned with stinking sentimentalism.
Nothing wrong will happen if they disappear.
Sometimes amazing, sometimes hysterical, usually
unbearable descriptions will disappear, that's all.
The images I keep in my memory will not disappear. I
have checked this. They are there. Clear and sharp.
Enough clear and sharp to describe those journeys
once more. Better. One day when I can travel only
through my memory. And if I can't travel through my
memory either, nothing wrong will happen. Supposedly
entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity. So
far I have multiplied enough entities... And in a
beautiful June morning I transformed the pile of
yellowish paper leaves into a pile of black ashes.
It's better fate that to be tortured by someone who
would like to solve with their help the mystery of
my bizarre books.
I have left two
typescripts. The most early ones. I was thinking
to leave maybe only one, but I considered them
somehow related. They are important, because they
are bizarre. The very first text and at once
bizarre. The very first text and imagined as a
whole, not as a textwork but as a bookwork: the
leaves are seamed not on the long side but on the
upper short side, the text ragged right and
left... This text was to flow like a river, it
was to be a river with banks covered by bushes
of drawings.... Drawings were not made. But
right after (of before) this river-flowing text,
another one was written – a text with a train
going across it, because it was to be a train
travel.... Fortunately both texts are short. The
river turned out to be a brook, while the train
arrived its destination quickly.
April 2014 "A Chromatic Concerto" – what a strange book it is: finished, completed, and as if not finished, not completed. All my books are finished and completed. With no “as if”. Closed. Even if they have errors and mistakes, and have a lot of them, I can correct some of them here or there, provided that I find it and it is correctable. Even if some of my books got after a period of time a new “body”, their “soul” is the same (Hasa rapasa has been transformed from square triangle into pentagonal trapezium, while the third part of Non-description of the World has three versions: accordion, sand-glass (dos-à-dos) and calendar – only the latter one is being produced, the previous ones, especially the first one, are too complex and time consuming to be made now). I completed, printed and bound the Concerto and at once I thought that it should have been different. It is not what it should be like. I began to ponder what it should be like and I keep pondering. For example the problem of vanishing text. Of text being depleted. How should it be solved? Less and less sounds = less and less letters? How can I push the story into silence keeping on talking (loudly) at the same time? Now everything what happens in relation to this book will not be as it should be like. The first public presentation of the Concerto was not as it should be like – I don't know when, how and why everything went in a wrong direction, in a direction it shouldn't have gone. Not as I imagined it. Maybe I shouldn't have imagined anything.... Like I shouldn't have expected everybody would boast or criticise the Concerto loudly. There should be no silence, while it is silence.... But it should be silence. A Chromatic Concerto like any other concert ends with silence. Can't end any other way. Provided that something like silence does exist... July 2013
Not so long time ago, a month
maybe, I found I could print covers for my books. Up
till that very moment I was sure it was impossible –
I was so sure I didn't even try to imagine how this
could be possible. Finally, and as usually
accidentally, I discovered this possibility. It's
very easy, really. It's so easy I wonder why it took
me almost four years to find this option, why I
didn't notice it at once. Of course, the covers are
made of colour extra thick paper, so I can print
only my name, a title and the logo. Which is enough.
Absolutely enough. Ascetic aesthetic – that's the
point. Minimalism warmly welcome. I like more
printed titles than the stickers I have been using
so far. However printed covers need more simple
logo. The present one is composed of too many
elements, there are too many thin lines in it. The
logo must be simple and black. No doubt. So, I have
come back to the letter B. A supine B.
A supine B is something much more than just
a letter that has tumbled down. It pretends an open
book. But you can see in it many other things. For
example: the outline of the non-described hill.... A
few years ago I used to stamp the supine B
on the wooden slip-cases for my books. So, it's not
a brand new logo. I have done no revolution. Instead
I have found a new B. Very interesting one.
Having much better look. You can see in it even more
things. That's good. Now I must make a small
“reBranding”. Very nice one indeed.
April 2013 I took part in a small, very local book event. A literature book event. A kind of fair. Only poetry and prose. Only a few local publishers and writers. Due to unexpected coincidence I was alone in a room – the rest of participants were in the adjacent one. Maybe it was so because my books were bigger and more numerous, and needed more space. Such topography helped me to realize how different my books were, in spite of all my efforts to consider them not-different. Yes, they come from a different world, no doubt about that. From Liberland. Now I can give lectures on history and essence of Liberlish literature. January 2013 I have decided to write a novel..... Or: a novel has decided I would write it.... It means: a novel has entered my head and has been staying in it so far, doesn't want to leave it, so writing seems to be the only way to get rid of this insolent novel.... OK. Let it be so. It has chosen me. Thus the problem is not mine. I'm afraid the novel will regret this decision. It is, or it is to be, a normal, ordinary novel, while I can't write normal, ordinary novels, I will never learn to write such novels, so I won't even try to learn, for this would be but a sheer waste of time and energy. I will write this novel, and then it will turned out this is not a normal, ordinary novel, this is not a novel at all, as usually this is nobody-knows-what. And then this novel will go away to look for somebody else who will write it as it should be written. Most probably the novel would be titled “A Chromatic Concerto for Piano”. Or “A Chromatic Concerto” only. It will tell a story of a man, who decided to play all possible scales. He starts practising with the chromatic scale, and then he eliminates, deducts the succeeding notes, one after another. But this won't be one more novel being a recipe how to organise one's life, how to spend one's life and not make it boring, to pretend it has any sense. This will be one more tale about a man, who is not worried at all that his (and anybody's) life has no sense, as well as looking for its sense has no sense at all. He just likes practising. He loves practising. This will be a story about the beauty and magnificence of practising, about the left hand chasing ceaselessly the right hand (and vice versa), about the right hand running away from the left hand (and vice versa). Or maybe about the ecstasy of practising? Or about something totally else.... Of course, we should not expect that when he masters all scales, he will die, or reach the state of enlightenment, or the world will end. Nobody knows what should be expected and what should not..... So, what's the point? To create a masterpiece as gorgeous and ravishing as useless, needless and unnecessary? This is what his concert (or practising) would be like – this is what my book will be like. What an astonishing, almost ecstatic consonance.... Anyway, the very first sentence goes like that: In front of me seven octaves, eighty five keys, thirty five black ones and fifty white ones. June 2012 A dozen years ago I visited an artist, who used to turn into books everything he created. Sketches, drawings, notes, poems, prints, written and painted commentaries – he combined them into cycles, into series, stitched and glue together assembled in portfolios, sometimes made from them installations and objects. He applied various formats and techniques of painting, graphics, even ceramics, however the overwhelming majority of texts was written with an ordinary pencil, quickly and easily but surprisingly legibly, what made me a bit jealous. He used various materials, though looking around his studio I didn't feel like encountering chaos, like entering a dump. There was a method in this madness and probably this method caused that his works, seemingly so different, fit each to the other like pieces of one jigsaw puzzle. Almost all his books (or almost-books) were one-off, unique, and there was more than one thousand of them. Their number horrified even the author, because he suddenly made a vague gesture indicating the fully packed shelves and asked a question, more himself than me, a question which he probably repeated at least once a day: what shall be done with all these books? After a while of thoughtful silence he asked next question which was rather a supposition, or maybe a kind of uncertain statement: sometimes I've got a feeling this is just one huge book, and I'm but adding next pages to it, more and more pages, I can't complete it, I don't know how all these pages should be assembled, I don't know what this huge book should look like... In those days it might seem to me his remark in no way referred to myself, but now, a dozen of years after we met I begin to feel the same concern. If a book is a library where books are letters, words, signs printed in this book, and if a library is a book where letters, words, signs are books collected in this library (and I don't see any reason why it couldn't be so), then what book is the library of my books? And if the library of my books could be but one sentence only, a tiny, haiku-like poem (well, I will never catch him up, even if I was living thousand years or longer), it's interesting what this sentence would be like? Is it possible to read anything now? Provided that it is not just a random, chaotic set of words, not large enough to compose itself into a poem. And if it composes itself into a dull dictionary of cripple phrases? The possibility of such a solution can not be excluded. It may turned out that I have done so far only punctuation marks, some brackets, periods, commas, semicolons.... Yes, it may turn out so.... March 2012 An artist visited me. A book artist, mainly, but certainly not only. For some time acquainted. He is a lecturer at the Academy and is going to be a professor in the future. Well, to become a professor he must write a number of papers, and one of them is going to be about my books – this is the reason why he came here. He asked a very interesting question that nobody has asked me before: your books are very “rich” inside, but very “poor” outside – why is it so? (Of course this remark does not refer to those books of mine whose covers are simply the result of the entire structure and construction of the book – it does refer to the books which have regular codex form, and could have “richer” covers, not so simple and primitive. The accuracy of this remark is astonishing especially in the context of what we can see now in bookshops: the overwhelming, absolute majority of them are “rich” outside and “poor” inside, or is “far richer” outside than inside.) He surprised me. I was thinking for quite a while, then I said: As usually there are a few reasons. Since the very beginning the covers have been a problem for me. It seems that mainly of technical nature. A cover must be quite stiff. Thick. Much thicker than pages. For long time I used to bind my codex books hard. Home computer printers can't print on hard linen covers, not they can print on canvas alone. At first I had tried to glue on them a kind of cut-out symbol-title, but soon I stopped. Only the colours remained. The material is not important, can be any: extra thick paper, cardboard, canvas, linen. The colour does matter: this book must be green, that book must be brown, or black, or blue, or red. The colour is important, because it is symbolically, semantically, aesthetically related to the pages.... Well, it's strange, but I have never thought of dust jackets – I could print them easily, yes, no doubt, but I couldn't coat them with laquer... However, the non-technical reason is more interesting. I have never known what should be put on the cover, as well as whether putting anything on the cover would have any sense. Empty mind – empty cover.... To some extent such robust covers are an afterimage of those old books which had but a title and author's name printed on the cover, if they were soft bound, sometimes with a decorative frame, and if they were hard bound, then the letters were debossed.... Well, it looks like that's all. Can I add something? Oh, I will tell you a story how I wanted one of my books, an hour-glass bicodex, to have the cover inside, and how I didn't succeed... January 2012 At the opening ceremony of the book art exhibition in Płock I met a friend of mine, a graphic artist and designer, who from time to time makes also books. I do appreciate what he makes due to a special purity and delicacy of his works. The book he presented at the show was of that kind. As usually his book had no words at all, except for the title. Also he was interested in my latest books – we meet rarely, once a few years. I told him I had come back to drawing lately and made quite a lot of sketches, mainly landscapes, although not as many as I would like to; in my next book there would be as much drawing as writing, and maybe finally I would make a book which would have only drawings and sketches, however with haiku-like titles. He reminded me, a bit mockingly, that years ago, visiting his exhibition in the capitol city I stated, a bit dismissively, that a book with no text was not a book.... Well, I can't deny.... But I mean a drawing which is like writing. Drawing which is writing. Which is text. To make it so there are no differences between drawing a view from my window and describing it. Anyway, the next book is going to be a map. A written-drawn map, like it is in the case of maps. Sometimes page-maps appeared in my books. Yet I have always been dreaming of a book-map. Probably it will be titled "Flattering the Flatness". December 2011 – January 2012 Each of my books has its beginning in one of my former books. A word, phrase, thought, page layout, graphical element, or any other part of a former book can be a germ of a new book. Then the germ, like it is in the case of a germ, grows, fast or slowly, sometimes it is in dormant stage for quite long, gathering forces, accumulating energy, getting mature. And then it explodes, sprouts, blossom and a new book appears – like those freaky plants which can wait so long under the ground surface until great fire cleans the place, then they start growing like mad to do everything they need before other plants appear, carried by winds and in birds' bellies, to colonize the fertile wilderness..... Having been so satisfied and delighted with such attractive comparison I must shake off and ask a standard question: where has the very first book come from? Unlike it is expected the answer is very easy: from the abundance and diversity of my primordial writings, which have never turned into books and have been preserved, or not, in old copy-books and manuscripts, however it might happen that the germ of the first book had never been written down but had been only spoken and it is gone like galore of spoken, or only thought, words and phrases which preceded those written ones – a hypothesis that a scribble made by the not yet skilled hand had been more important than any word can not be excluded as well. If this is really so, then my new book is not mine, because it has no beginning in any of my books I made so far. Finally the exception has proved the rule. This book appeared unexpectedly. Absolutely suddenly. From outside. It was not planned. It was not supposed. It had no germ, no seed patiently maturing inside me, accumulating energy, waiting for its time that would come inevitably. I haven't been thinking of this book at all. One day I saw on the screen on my monitor some sumi-e paintings made by Venantius. They showed dancing people.... It's interesting, but I couldn't explain why I saw just these very paintings, why out of numerous drawings, paintings and sketches made by Venantius just these ones appeared on the screen. It would be rather stupid to suspect the event was the result of sophisticated and extremely complex intrigue. Nor it was a result of our encounter which had taken place a few years ago, lasted a few hours, and during it we had not been discussing dance, ballet nor butoh, definitely not. Solving this riddle could be a nice topic for a spy story which would probably be printed and sold in edition of many thousands, not just in a few hand made copies..... Nevertheless I won't try to solve this mystery, because some other, much more fascinating issues are waiting for me. So, I saw the pictures, and a while later there was a book ready in my mind. CorrespondAnce. About the correspondence of mind and body. Image and text. How the mind keeps dancing with the body. How the text keeps dancing with images. It was supposed to look like that: in the beginning texts were to be distinguished very clearly as texts and images as images (drawings as drawings, paintings as paintings). On each following page this distinction was to be less clear, less obvious, less sharp – the text was to look more and more like drawing, while the drawings were to become more and more the text, until they, texts and drawings, would merge into oneness. It was to be like that, but it is not. Well, it is like that only partially. Which means I did not succeed, as usually. The fact I didn't succeed indicates undeniably this book is mine, as well as this book is a germ of other books to come – I wonder what books.... Venantius Pinto in an Indian artist based in New York. I would like to express my deep gratitude for his talent, for his open mind and open heart. Thank you, Venantius, thank you one hundred times (as people use to say in Poland). September
2011
Something what could and should have happened long time ago has happened finally. Finally I have got a reason to be proud and really glad. At last somebody wanted and tried to steal my books. With no doubt I would be even more proud if the theft was a success, for both "Road Nonsigns" and "Treatise on Pageography", the books which were to be stolen, can be made quite easily and the production is not very time consuming, so the sorrow caused by the loss would not be deep enough to overcome the feeling of satisfaction. It happened at the exhibition of my books during the three-day long “confrontation of arts” in a culture centre. The lost books were found in the adjacent room, a kind of chill-out space. They were brought there by two young participants who maintained they had “wanted to read them a little in a less noisy place”; however they didn't say they were to bring them back – what were their intentions? what were they going to do with the books after reading? We don't know. It's hard to suppose they were going to destroy them, tear into scrapes and burn down. More probably they would bring them into even “more quite place” to end reading. Nevertheless these are but suppositions. By no means not unpleasant.
May 2011 They say that
history likes to repeat. Maybe it does like, but it
does not repeat. The second copy of NOrWAY TO KVIKAKO
arrived where it should have arrived. It will remain a
mystery why two weeks later than the first one, since
they had been sent together, at exactly the same time.
Maybe one day somebody will write a book about it....
Maybe myself?
April 2011 I haven't been writing for a year. A several very important and serious conclusions can be drawn from this very simple, even trifle fact. For example: this blog (if this is a blog – well, this is called a blog, but names not necessarily tell the truth – probably I won't exaggerate writing that names very seldom, if ever, tell the truth) belongs to the most boring and awful blogs. The truth is, the life of books is very boring, so how could the blog describing the life of books be exciting? The overwhelming majority of books spend the greatest part of their lives standing motionlessly on shelves. Even the process of creating a book (although itself very fascinating – how a cloud of vague thoughts hovering inside the writer's-artist's head gradually or rapidly materialise) is boring, too; if somebody would like to make a film honestly and straightforwardly telling the history how a book has been created, nineteen twentieth of this film should show but a writing writer; of course, he could do some others, more or less dramatic actions, like phone calls or drinking a cup of tea, or getting furious or delighted, but first of all he would be tapping the keyboard or scribble something in a copy book, depending on his likes, habits, needs or necessities. Unfortunately, books don't write themselves, and the quantity of letters and words composed of them and needed to make not so bulky book is really enormous. And adding some editing-composing-designing actions... forget it... However sometimes a fluctuation really inexplicable can happen. But because such fluctuations happen very seldom (much more seldom than entries in this blog), they should be mentioned also very seldom – of course it is the other way round since people are deeply convinced that just such rare events are extremely important and make history, so only they should be described. Moreover, these rare events are used to build of them extraordinary constructions, and houses built from playing cards seem strong and solid like Egyptian pyramids when compared to them; strange, but very logic and easily explicable, those constructions are more durable than the pyramids – well, they are not flogged with sandy whips of desert winds... And here is such an event. After toilsome and boring, as usually, and absolutely fascinating, as usually, process of creation, I finally made a few first copies of a new book NOrWAY TO KVIKAKO. Because I had promised to send it to where the idea of this book had been born (but not to the place described in this book, because this place is a bit somewhere else) or to Mundal in Fjaerland in Norway, I did so. I decided to send two copies. Each copy was carefully packed in exactly the same way, on each envelope I put exactly the same address, I paid the same money and I glued the same stamps. I don't know if the seals were put in the same places - I didn't notice, and I should have done it, since it could be the reason of what happened next. And thus two twin letters went-flew northward. (Why did I send the books separately? I am not so sure about it. The financial reasons were not so important, although I was informed that sending them together, as a parcel, I would pay more, which was not right, I checked it later – could this be evidence of deliberate misleading? rather not, because since the very beginning I wanted to send the books separately.) I was expecting the books would arrive to Mundal together, it means in the same time, though maybe not in the same minute, as they were sent in the same moment. A few days later I got a message informing me that only one book arrived – at once I remembered a history from before five or six years. I also sent two books packed and addressed identically, but to another country. Southward-westward. Two street-books. And only one arrived. Because the street books were already bought and paid, I sent the third copy replacing the lost one – and it arrived with no problems at all. To my utmost surprise, a few weeks later the lost copy was delivered back home by a postman. Neither he, nor anybody at the post office could explain what had happened – it looked like somebody working at the post office saw the twin letters and decided it was too much, just a redundancy, that a sender made a mistake and this mistake had to be fixed... Will the history repeat? We shall see. Now I have to send the third book to Mundal. Maybe this is the necessary condition to make the second one come back home. And what it is doing now? Is it flying somewhere? Going? Lying in a repository waiting for rescue? Somebody is reading it?... Or maybe I should issue also a “warrant”? A book of mine has ran away. To nowhere. Anybody who seen it please send me a message. April / May 2010 With a small delay, and also with a small satisfaction, I'd like to announce, that "Hasa Rapasa" won neither any prize nor even a honorary mention at the 50th competition for the most beautiful book of he year organised by PTWK. Discussing their choices at the meeting with the participants the jury said they didn't understand at all what was the point of this book and why it looked so bizarre. We proposed they should simply read the book to understand it, but the jury replied sharply they did not read the books submitted to the competition. Further conversation, as well as any attempts to explain the rules of magic-and-bizarre geometry (the book has a shape of pentagonal trapezium) had no sense at all. An interesting fact: discussing the book which presented the collection of unique colour diapositives taken in Jewish ghetto during World War II, the jury explained that this book was only mentioned, not prized, because the pictures had been taken by a German and Jews in these pictures were smiling. December
2009
I noticed that
my books had been transforming surprisingly. With no
doubt some of these transformations are caused by
technical conditions – I use better machines which
are more skilful. Myself, I am more skilful, too –
at least I hope so.
Here is the
book which has right now a form of a wall calendar.
Before it had a form of a sand-glass bicodex, and in
the beginning it had had a form of monstrous
leporello (a paper accordion made of 365 leaves is
really monstrously unhandy) – but the essence of
this book remains intact: its structure... day part
and night part... number of pages and the layout of
every page... all stories it contains..... And here
is another book: in the beginning it had been a set
of loose rectangular paper sheets, then it was a
square triangle, now it is a pentagonal trapezium –
but the essence of this book remains intact: its
structure... this mysterious, magic geometry... all
stories it contains, although pages have been
redesigned, but each one is still a puzzle composed
of the same pieces..... Are they still the same
books or maybe they are now new books which should
have new titles? Or maybe they like to change
clothes? Or maybe they keep metamorphosing: they had
been like larvae, then they were like pupae, now
they are like imagos? ...... All the time the
problem of identity tormenting every being with the
lack of solution: everyday I am somebody else yet I
am still myself ....... Whereas some of my books do
not transform, nothing has been changed in them
since the very beginning. Maybe they were born old,
old and mature? Maybe paper butterflies emerged from
my head, flew out of my hands at once and ready?
November
2009
Oxford. Brookes University. UK Fine
Press Book Fair. For the fourth time. But after a
few years break. Nevertheless once again I had the
stand number 55. I was not forgotten. It was nice.
Very nice. Many people I knew – now much older and
more grey. Many people who knew my books and didn't
forget them. As usually many conversations, a lot of
talking. It's a pity (little bit) there was not as
much purchasing as talking.... well, you can't have
everything. And as usually a lot of doubts: is it
really the right place for my books? in fact they
are not pressed fine, they are not letterpressed,
they are printed just nice..... It seems they would
feel much better, or even the best, at the Semantic Press
Book Fair. However so far nobody has organised such
fair.
September 2009 I haven't been writing for quite long. This can mean there was nothing I could write about, nothing interesting and worth my attention happen in the secret life of my books. Or there were so many events I had no time to write. Or both. Or neither this nor that. On April 1, 2009, Krystyna registered LIBERATORIUM as a normal publishing house. An excellent date. The best coincidence I could imagine. You need to be really a fool to set up a publishing house right now and right here. But maybe madness is the only method to succeed. From our point of view there's nothing mad in it. Well, just some chaos will be transformed into order and some order into chaos. The books will get ISBN numbers. New gorgeous machines bought for the EU grant will give us a chance to print faster, better and cheaper – the prizes of the books will decrease to a reasonable level, although it is a sheer madness to expect that people will start to buy things they don't need at all. The whole studio and the library will be moved upstairs, to the attic, and the living room downstairs will at last become a living room... Besides, nothing will change. The books will remain crazy labyrinths, they will be like they are in my visions and dreams, not like the people want them to be – unless the people want my books to be just like the are in my visions and dreams ..... Well, I can't help it. The world is like it is, not like the people imagine and expect it to be, or would like it to be. And this is how it is with my books. Must be like that since my books are but next parts of NONDESCRIPTION OF THE WORLD, and nondescription is not a description, it is being like something that is to be described.... October 2008 I have found my very first book. Probably I shouldn't use the word “book”, but I don't know how I can call it, how I can label it. “Text” is not the right word, either. It is something more than a text. IT. Well, IT is a tale about time flowing, maybe about travelling too, so a bit more than twenty pages of typescript have been seamed on the top, like a calendar hanging on a wall usually is bound. The construction referring to a wall calendar probably was to be a metaphor of time passing by – with no doubt there was another reason: the text flows more smoothly when the pages can be turned topward, when my eyesight doesn't have to jump from the bottom of the just read page to the top of the page which will just be read, when the line is not cut brutally by turning page leftward. Just a sheer intuition prompting: if life is flowing, if time is flowing, then a tale should be flowing too ....... That is why the left margin is not straight - I wanted my text to look like water in a stream – both banks were to be covered by dense bushes of drawings, but my brother couldn't draw anything, so they are naked and barren. He said he couldn't draw anything because he could draw only when he was guided and led by his hand – any commission, and even my request was a kind of commission, used to destroy this very subtle relation - I understood him very well so I didn't insist ........ This was happening in late autumn of 1976. Later IT was presented to my aunt who WAS WRITING. She had already published a small collection of short stories. The aunt read IT and said she didn't know how to judge IT, because she didn't know what IT was. If she knew what IT was she would know what could be said about IT. For example, if IT was an essay she would criticise IT as an essay using the suitable criteria. Alas, I couldn't help my aunt, because I didn't know what IT was either. Now, after so many years, I also don't know what IT is, and writing frankly I'm not so much interested in finding it out. Everybody can see what IT is. IT is what IT is, that's all ...... Well, probably I won't be brave enough to read IT now. But maybe IT is just what I will use in the future to make a book: an old text written by myself many years ago placed in the centre of the page – the page size A4 or maybe bigger to have large margins around the body text giving enough room for various commentaries – so these commentaries will be a bit like the bushes full of fantastic creatures my brother once didn't draw - - - just me-old reading SOMETHING written by me-young - - written as if by somebody else, by a stranger, by an author not well known to me - - - anyway, me-old and me-young, we are not the same person, are we? - - - - - - - October 2008 Krosno. The Public Library. I am presenting, displaying, exhibiting, demonstrating, explaining, telling, performing, showing. My books and hypertexts. For almost two hours. I can see two dozens of listeners (mainly various library workers, I suppose) are neither tired nor bored - I don't suspect they can pretend in such a perfect way. Your books, they are fascinating, aren't they? but how can we catalogue them? - says the head of the library. Yes, that's a problem, however such books make a librarian's life fascinating, don't they? - say I. September 2008 Płock. The Art Gallery. I display
"Road Non-signs". I can display nothing else because
all my books are imprisoned in the white room with
semitransparent walls. We printed Polish non-signs
with the plotter and they are the size of normal
road signs. They hang in a row. They fake a road (I
wanted them to fake a town, but there was not enough
space on the mezzanine). Or maybe they do not fake.
At the end of this fake-not-fake road near the wall
there is a chair and a table and the book is on it.
A road to the book – or something like that. Or a
road from the book. No – to the book, with no doubt
to the book, because the stairs to the mezzanine are
at the other end of the row ....... An enthusiastic
man approaches me and says he's an actor and the
non-signs can be and should be performed on the
stage, absolutely, what a fantastic monodrama this
will be, he can see the props, stage design, whole
performance, he can hear these texts swarming and
whirling in a frustrated driver's head ...... I
didn't say: no. I did say: we shall see.
Working on this book I didn't think of a frustrated
driver. Well, I didn't want a frustrated driver to
be the main topic – a frustrated driver could be
hardly visible somewhere in the background. This
work was to belong to those never ending
dissertations on a picture superiority over a word
or vice versa.
Then
I remembered that in one of my early books I printed
in the beginning a note where I forbade to stage any
of my books: oh, people would like to stage even
the traffic regulations - I wrote (was I
frustrated or indignant or both?) ..... Well, what
shall I do now? I shall wait patiently. I shall
observe how semiology transforms into a drama.
September 2008 Kielce. The Public Library. A brand new building. A very big and very empty space which is supposed to be a store in the future but now is a kind of temporary art gallery. I make a smaller room in the centre – to give visitors a chance to sit down comfortably in the armchair or at the desk, take a book from the shelf and read. I use semitransparent white material for the walls. I cut squares 90x90 cm and on each square I write one letter with white crayon. They make a sentence which can be read while walking around the room: A DOOKOŁA KAŻDEJ KSIĄŻKI CICHO SZEMRZĄCA LŚNIĄCA PUSTKA and there is whispering shining emptiness around every book Forty six letters, seven spaces and two squares lacking for the entrance. There can't be more. That's good. Nothing more is needed. Is there anything more I have to write about? ....... I was to write one sentence more. A very long one. On the floor. Close to the walls. It would run all around the hall. It would tell something about an empty wall, a blank wall. Or about the most important moment in this long and tortuous process of book making, when what fills my mind must get out of it and appear somehow on a sheet of paper or on sheet of something else ....... But I didn't write it. Because of various reasons. Maybe that's better. Since this very moment is not the most important one. It is as important as any other moment. Well, maybe it is more intangible and elusive than the others. Like falling asleep is. After the opening a library worker who helped me a little to assemble my room approached me and said: I really do admire you – wow, making such things in such times... (He meant my books, not the exhibition itself.) He could add: and in such a country – but he did not. While myself I could answer: It's not that bad – both the country and the times could have been much worse. But I said nothing. We went out. We left the emptiness in the gallery. Let it whisper and shine silently. January 2008 Gdynia. „The Second Book Revolution”. The conference. Why „revolution”? Why „the second”? I don't know. Well, this is not a good reason to be upset and worried. Titles and names can be strange. My lecture (if it was a lecture) had a strange title, too. Very strange. MAKING TEXT A SIGN. MAKING SIGN A TEXT. What a bizarre thing it was. I wanted to tell something about relations between text and sign. I wanted also to present my recent book – "Road Nonsigns". Of course, what I was telling was not exactly what I had prepared and expected to tell. This is usual that what I tell is not exactly what I want to tell. Frankly writing I shouldn't have opened my mouth. I should have shown page by page on the big screen behind me. Maybe it would have been better if I had clicked through "Emeryk" – maybe a hypertext would have been perceived as more revolutionary than a signtext. But I didn't do that. I was to read a lot in the train but I only snoozed a lot. A gale could pushed me into the see but it didn't. So, it was not that bad in Gdynia. And I found some new ideas for Liberland. However the most important was an illumination. Yes. I experienced an illumination. I had brought there ten wooden slats almost two meters long to hang on them ten nonsings (A2 size) and thus transform a part of the lecturing hall into a road-like path. Afterwards I didn't know what I had to do with them. I was walking along the street like a primitive hunter carrying a spear or javelin. The wind was roaring, rain was slashing. Rage and despair. And suddenly an illumination: neither a spear nor a javelin I'm carrying in my hand but side faces of the boxes for my books! For five years I have been cutting them out off large pieces of plywood – always askew and twisted – what a toil! rage and despair! - and I can just buy slants! - slants can have different sizes and they are always smooth and even - - - - - I needed five years and five hundred kilometres to get this idea! A revolutionary idea! This is going to be a real revolution! Next revolution of my books! December 2007 For two months several dozen books made myself will be displayed in glass cases in the main hall of the National Library in Warsaw: shut, open, folded, unfolded... Is there any better place for books? Yes. Certainly yes. The reader's hands. September/November 2007 It happened what had to happen,
because nothing else could happen and I would be
extremely naive expecting anything else to happen.
When in spring 2005 "End of the World according to
Emeryk" had been
released on CD I was wandering which bookshop's
shelf one could find it on. There was no hypertext
novel shelf in any bookshop here for nobody had
written and published hypertext in Poland until
then. And now my curiosity has been satisfied. An
audiobook shelf has appeared lately. And there, to
my utmost surprise, although I shouldn't be
surprised at all, I found "Emeryk". Of course not in
every bookshop, only in very few – in majority of
bookshops it is not available. In the biggest
online bookshop one can find "Emeryk" among audiobooks,
too. So, hypertext lovers and hunters had almost
no chances to find it. However, we don't need to
bother about it. There are almost no hypertext
lovers and hunters here. That's why enitre "Emeryk"
can be found
in Liberatory since now on.
July 20, 2007 My friends were reading aloud my
books in the BWA Art Gallery in Kielce. At night.
Frankly writing I shouldn't have accepted the
proposition, because all my books are banned from
being read aloud. The reasons of aloud reading ban
are obvious and clear and don't need any
explanations. However I said yes for I thought it
would be a chance to show my books were after all
for reading although with no doubt other than aloud.
Many people are convinced my books can only be
looked at, because they are unreadable at all.
May 2007 I have changed LIBRO2N. I
transformed leporelloes into codices. Now the book
is more handy. A friend of mine who got recently the
leporello version informed me that he had succeded
to open and unfold the book, However he mentioned
nothing whether he had succeded to fold and shut the
book. I'm sure he will succede. He is a great book
lover, so he will read it carefully and carefully
will fold and shut it.
May 7, 2007 The City Library in Krosno. Me on
one side of the barricade – two or three dozens of
teen pupils on the other. The barricade of books,
liberature and hypertext. I'm telling them stories
about something they don't know and I don't blame
them for it – where and how could they learn about
it? I'm telling them about things they don't want to
learn about because these are absolutely useless
things and this is more difficult and annoying. I
can only hope that many years later one of them, to
his or her utmost surprise and horror, will wish to
find the answer for this tricky question: can sharp
and angular things be described with round letters?
April 25, 2007 Edinburgh
World Heritage. 5 Charlotte Square. Two hours long
presentation of Liberatory. Very good response,
even enthusiastic. So enthusiastic that nobody
will think of making something more. For example
to make a new edition of "Sienkiewicza
Street" (the day
before The Demarco European Art Foundation
purchased the last copy). Or to proliferate any
other of my books absolutely not miraculously.
Myself I still have not enough courage to ask.
Anyway, the situation is much better than, for
example, the lack of enthusiasm or perfunctory
commendations for politeness sake or indifference
and disgust.
Books are supposed
to live their own lives. If so, they should take
care of their business themselves. But it may happen
they simply don't like to push themselves forward
too much. What then?April 2007 Bristol Artist's Book Event. In
fact I shouldn't have been there – my books are not
artist's book. My books are writer's books. However,
so far I haven't heard about any writer's books
event, what seems quite strange since there are
quite many writers' books. Nevertheless my presence
here is not unjustified – in fact I am also a bit of
an artist; sometimes I make a drawing. I could
really easily take part in any musician's book
event. Unfortunately such events occur even more
seldom than writer's book events... It's nice to
meet good old friends whom I haven't seen for a
couple of years. Very nice. I wonder if books have
such friends, too. It's nice to see some new places.
I have never been in Bristol before. I wonder if the
books are pleased, too. I wonder if they can see the
same as I can. I wonder if my eyes are their eyes -
not necessarily it must as it could seem.
January 2007 I took my
books from Białko Art Gallery and Ha!Art book store
back home. They spent there enough time, I think
really enough. They already experienced what they
were to experience. They were already seen by those
ones who were to see them. And who was to buy one or
two of them has already done so. Quite likely. At
least I think so. There is always some hesitation
and uncertainty: maybe just the very next day
somebody came and wanted to purchase all books?
Well, if so he or she would be determined enough to
contact me while nothing like that happened. So now
the books will travel a bit. And relax at home.
October 27, 2006 I am in a gallery of contemporary
art in the town where I was born. This is to be the
beginning of a collection presenting the
achievements of various artists living in this
region. Among many pictures hanging on the walls I
can see two my books. They are imprisoned in tight
show cases. They could easily hang on the walls of a
musuem of Nature among various butterflies and other
bizarre flying creatures. Maybe it would be
better... The showcases have been made specially for
my books and they are neat and nice - the books look
pretty. However this seems the most awful fate books
can experience.
October 14, 2006 I'm telling about my "Treatise on
Pageography" at
the IALS IV Conference [Institute of English
Philology, The Jagiellonian University of Cracow].
Just telling – not lecturing. And even this “just
telling” is transforming gradually into “just
showing my books”. As usually. It could seem my
presence among philologists, theoreticians,
researches and academics has no sense – we are on
two sides of a barricade. It could seem so, but it
should not – this barricade is made of books that
I (non)write and they (non)read.
September 2006 Nondescription of the world continued... After a few years break again in
the Book Art Museum in Łódź. An
exhibition-reading-room. Tidy, precise, clear,
without anything unnecessary. And I succeeded to
complete my new book: LIBRO2N. I almost completed it
- the CD with pictures was not ready, but I don't
suspect any visitor to be so inquisitive. Well, to
mislead a visitor's attention I hung on the walls
the prints showing how the Norblin gamadelt was
created.
September 14, 2006 I show my books at the Library in
Płock. I talk for almost two hours. Like mad. Can't
shut my mouth up. I keep promising not to talk and
tell since I'm fed up with this constant explaining
why I make so bizarre books and why they are so very
few and then I talk like a wind-up toy. A few
listeners buy "End of the world according to
Emeryk". They are going to wander through the
wilderness of hypertext. It may happen the
intentions will suffice. They look like people who
wouldn't replace easily the noise of turned pages
with the clicking sounds. However the look may be
quite confusing. They may be daredevils and madmen
in disguise of ordinary citizens.
Summer 2006 Andrzej Metzger
second hand book shop in Kielce. The shop window.
Notes. Sketches. Copy-books. Manuscripts. Typescripts.
Old type-writers. My first dot-matrix printer. My
first inkjet printer... An attempt to show the process
of book making. Well, to show just a scrap of this
process - I couldn't unmount my head and put it
there... Also an attempt to show the relations between
technology and the ultimate shape of a work... Yes.
Just some attempts. Nothing but attempts. Indicating
the problem. Drawing the curtain a little bit back.
And I had to place there shelves with my books. And I
had to hang there the explaining-complicating texts.
And I had to put in the background some drawings. The
shop window is not so big. But it is astonishingly
deep. Really and metaphorically.
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