Selections from FM GALICIA
26.11
I’ve understood for a while now that every person needs to be in possession of a very detailed knowledge of two or three landscapes. That provides enough concrete landscapes to enable one to think. Because a person cannot think without having placed certain pictures onto the landscape that has been fixated forever in one’s mind. Moreover, these varieties of terrain suffice for the combination of dreams. Dreams always take place based on a very dear, fundamental, landscape that has been fixed, along with language, in the earliest days of childhood. The alchemy of dreams comes from the endless other fragments, witnessed at various times in various places, heaped onto the background of your fundamental territory.
I very often dream of my hill in the mountains, the house, everything surrounding it, the nearby forest, apexes, and abysses. Actually, my place grows, it becomes filled with all kinds of strange details, additions, new trees grow; the rooms get bigger, as do the number of entrances, exits, and corridors—new paths of combination become possible. Of course, all this becomes inhabited by a large number of people who, broken off into groups of interest, do their own thing. Most often, I walk from group to group.
Another typical motif—I’m home alone or with someone who is very close to me. It’s nighttime, it’s cold and quiet. And we know that surrounding us—in the ravines, behind the trees, perhaps already by the walls—are some sort of armed enemies. We keep the lights off, listening in. We grab makeshift weapons lying nearby—knives, scythes, ropes, pitchforks. Sometimes there’s one old-fashioned musket for the two of us. In such dreams, we’re almost always able to leave the house and its surroundings through one of the exits that don’t exist in reality and, moving past mute figures, make it through the orchard in the direction of the forest. One time, in order to do this, it became necessary to shoot the pneumatic rifle through the glass straight into the eye of the attacker, who had attempted to look into the dark window by pressing his face against the glass. While today, for example, I had a real nightmare. I walked out at night to have a smoke, stood by the wall. Suddenly, a car came out of the darkness and flew between me and the nearest tree. And this kept repeating. And then everything became clear—I noticed that while I had been gone, a transnational highway had been laid out through my orchard. Right through the orchard. Once a secluded house by the forest, it now found itself right by the road. This was worse than hundreds of attackers with rifles. This was the nightmare in which my world came to an end. Waking up, I said a prayer, asking not to live to see such changes. To die before our world changes in such a way.
Translated by Mark Andryczyk