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19 AN APPRENTICE’S GUIDE TO THE GIFT OF THE GAB
I AM A SUN-WORSHIPPER in garden restaurants, a drinker of the moon reflected on wet pavements, I walk upright and in a straight line, whereas my wife at home, though sober, keeps doing things wrong and tottering, a whimsical version of Heraclitus’ panta rhei flows down my throat and every public house in the world is a group of stags entangled by the antlers of conversation, the great inscription Memento mori that emanates from things and the destinies of men, now there’s a reason to have a drink sub specie aeternitatis, the Olšany cemeteries, Pankrác Prison and St Bartholomew’s Street police HQ likewise, hence my being a dogmatist of allergy in a fluid state, the theory of the oak and the reeds is my driving force, I am a human cry of fright undermined by a snowflake, I’m in a constant rush so as to be able actively to spend two or three hours a day in inactive daydreaming because I know that human life is short and flows along like cards being shuffled, that it might be better if I’d been put in the wash, tossed about inside a handkerchief, laundered, my face sometimes seems to say that I’ve had a promising whiff of a million, though I know full well that in the end I’ll win the smirking square root of bugger-all, that the whole shebang started with a drop of semen and will end in the crackle of flames, from such glorious beginnings such glorious ends, behind the pretty face you’re making love to may be lurking the merry Angel of Death, I water my flowers when it’s raining, in flaming July I drag December’s sledge behind me, so as to stay cool on hot summer days I drink away the money set aside for the coal to keep me warm in winter, I’m constantly edgy as to why people don’t get edgy that life is so short, with so little time for doing silly things and getting drunk while there’s still plenty of time, I experience a morning hangover as a sample, not with no commercial value, but as the absolute value of a poetic trauma with a tinge of discord that demands to be savoured like a sainted bilious attack, I am a spreading tree full of watchful, laughing eyes that are forever in a state of grace and the coupled wheelsets of chance and mischance, oh, the joy of young twigs on an old trunk, oh, the sheer delight of the gaiety of barely born leaves on young twigs, my climate is the changeable weather of April, a spattered table-cloth is my banner, in whose wavy shadow I experience not only the merriment of euphoria, but the slippery slope and resurrection, that dull pain in the back of my neck, that terrible tremor in my hand, with my own teeth I extract from my paws the smithereens and detritus of last night’s shenanigans, each morning I’m amazed not to have died yet, I’m still in abeyance but may yet kick the bucket before I’ve had my fill of folly, I see myself not as a rosary, but as a snapped link in a chain of laughter, the most delicate bladdernut determines the strength of my profligate imagination, there’s something castrated about me, something that is and at the same time retrocedes into the past only to be catapulted arcwise into a future that keeps jerking further away from my lips and eyes, making me squint with the double refraction of Iceland spar, today is yesterday and the day before yesterday is the day after tomorrow, I am then a maker of rash generalisations, a taster and sampler of adulterated space, to me forgetfulness and dementia and the twittering of children are the start of potential discoveries, through playfulness and play I convert the vale of tears into laughter, I invoke reality and it does not always give me a sign, I am a shy roebuck in a glade of impertinent expectation, I’m a solid bell of imbecility cracked by a thunderflash of cognition, in me objectivity takes on a measure of extreme subjectivity, which I consider an increment of Nature and the social sciences, I’m an anti-genius, a poacher in the game enclosures of language, I’m a keeper of the game of humorous inspiration, a sworn guardian of fields of anonymous anecdotes, an assassin of good ideas, a water-bailiff overseeing dubious hatcheries of spontaneity, an eternal amateur and dilettante of moronity and pornography, a hero of thoughtful imprudence, an impulsive Augustinian of premature parallels who would fain eat a slice of bread buttered with infinity, who would drink from a pint pot of the cream of eternity, now, now and at no other time, so never, I consider misconstruction of the words of Christ to be the very charm of the writings of the Apostles, Brussels lace soaked in the saliva of an epileptic, drift ice on the banks of a stream in winter is my adornment which can do one an injury, I am depression and dejection and feeling down, preparations to dash headfirst into a wall are a constantly deferred experiment to see whether it is possible to live differently from how I’ve lived hitherto, I’m a nervous wreck who enjoys fantastic good health, an insomniac who only falls fast asleep in the tram and gets taken all the way to the terminus, I am a great presence of small anticipations and anticipated great pratfalls and bloopers, glinting on a grotesque horizon I see other horizons of tiny provocations and miniature scandals, hence I’m a clown, animator, narrator and home tutor, just as much as I’m a great putter-down of myself, an informer against myself, a writer of threatening letters, unsigned, I think of worthless reports as a possible preamble to my constitution, which I keep altering, which I can never finalise, in the design of a lightly sketched shadow I discern a gigantic edifice, though it is actually a baby’s grave long since collapsed, I’m a gent pregnant with youth, but already ageing, my mimicry and language are the mercurial grammar of an inner lingo, some hot meatloaf and a glass of cool lager have the power, in half an hour, to transubstantiate matter into a good mood, what a cheap metamorphosis and the first earthly miracle is born, a hand on a friendly shoulder is the handle that opens the door to that blissful state in which every belovèd object is the centre point of a paradise, the heart of nature is an accessible state of bodhi, in which it is possible to love in spirit the refractory and obstinate vagina, enfolded moreover in the most beautiful curves of flesh, verbum caro factum est, cannibalism dryshod with no priest or school-leaving exams, cows’ sad eyes rolling quizzically above the sides of lorries, they’re my eyes, an underage heifer on the way to face the butchers and their gleaming knives, that’s me, a blue tit, wings dislocated, pumped out into a bucket of cold water at the frosty end of the day, that’s me, a flame to which faithful wasps return only to burn to death along with the rest in their burning nest, that gives me a pretty accurate idea of a burning honeycomb ready and waiting for me alone, so I’m a corresponding member of the Academy of Rambling-on, a student at the Department of Euphoria, my god is Dionysos, a drunken, sensuous young man, jocundity given human form, my church father is the ironic Socrates, who patiently engages with anybody so as to lead them by the tongue and through language to the very threshold of nescience, my first-born son is Jaroslav Hašek, the inventor of the cock-and-bull story and a fertile genius and scribe who added human flesh to the firmament of prose and left writing to others, with unblinking lashes I gaze into the blue pupils of this Holy Trinity without attaining the acme of vacuity, intoxication without alcohol, education without knowledge, inter urinas et faeces nascimur, and our mothers as it were bore us straddling crematorium furnaces, or through the grass of overgrown graves, I am a bull drained of its blood through laughter, whose brain is being spooned out by someone like ice-cream.