A growling, murmuring voice mumbles towards the ground. My eyes focus on a boorish stature – in front of which, a long wooden desk awkwardly has been arranged. Unsure, whether the murmur was directed towards me – and taken caught off-guard by the unusual sight – I stay silent. A few moments pass by until a slowly arisen head meets my eye.

You now may want to tell me that I possibly could and should have sensed that – in fact – it was I, who the murmur was directed to. Nonetheless, I could not help but vividly be taken aback by the gestalt’s powerful glance. All-engulfing inevitability. This is what the stature’s gaze instantaneously had produced in me. And, as you may have learned just like me: People – most paradoxically – are dispositioned to flee from inevitability. I am no exception to that rule. This may explain me being so frightened as to making an unintended retrograde step. But let us now continue with what happened.

Likely, much longer than I would like to admit, I prolonged the quietude. Me, still ravelled in the process of analysing the exact meaning of this utterance, that so nakedly has been thrown into the air of the room. Most certainly it also had something to do with the subtle undercurrent lying in the air surrounding it. An undercurrent suggesting that anything ill-equipped is going to be pulled to shreds. To my detriment, it was going to take me a few more instances of time to ascertain that it was not above utterance, but me, who was ill-equipped for all-of-the-awaiting.

What most of all puzzled me about this obscure experience was the nonchalance this line was delivered with. Not the kind of nonchalance, that regularly accompanies that saying – as in the usual ways people humorously adduce that sentence under a variety of circumstances. But rather, a kind of sincere nonchalance: The kind of nonchalance, ice cream vendors are associated with when wanting one to make a choice of flavour. Only that I – in that instant – seemed to be obliged not to opt for chocolate & strawberry (an excellent combo, by the way, for many reasons): No, much on the contrary: I shall opt for something that poisons me, kills me. Luckily, whatever would be going to kill me, would only do so in the utmost of bureaucratic ways (which is what the way of deliverance ironically seems to suggest). Albeit this knowledge – for reasons that are obvious – would have been totally incapable of tempering my state of shock. Still, to this day, I am unsure, whether the notion of “being killed in a bureaucratic manner”, even is capable of carrying any genuine meaning. Notwithstanding, this is how it felt to me, in that moment.

“It’s always the same”, Bob goes, “you never are not confused”. “Your cluelessness astounds me”. “Here…”, the brute figure clad in undersized dungarees suggestively points downward towards the wooden surface. Once more, I am taken aback by the view of an array of sorts. Or more precisely, some kind of assortment of flasks weirdly reminiscent of a chemical student dorm room’s ornamentation.

Which may seem like a an oddly random interrelation my brain came up with, but it just seemed so unbelievably fitting to describe what I saw.

“Let me explain”. “You are at that point of your life you constantly have been awaiting in dread”. “It is time for you, to make a choice”. “And contrary to what you all think before coming here, no. No choice you make will bring you, where you want to be”. “With great naïveté, all along your lifetime, supposing there were “right” or “wrong” choices”. Bob sighs. “I am here to show you wrong; make you regret your senseless stupidity”. “Also, quit looking at me that deerish way Daniel.”

“It is time: Now choose your poison”.

The post Choose Your Poison appeared first on Blog by Daniel Vassiliev.

Two eyes are met by my visual trajectory. It seemed to already have been looking. There is no movement at all, mere stasis. And still, in this kinetic lacking, there is some type of instant exchange. Some hard to grasp primal feeling is what one cannot help but succumb to. Most would not assume much, though it is undeniable, these black dots want to transfer something to me. There is almost some type of inherent helplessness to the way these oval-shaped diamonds seem to look my way. Their inquisitive nature makes me wonder about the purpose of this uncompromising fixation. What is their intention? What are they saying? Or rather what are they asking?

Rationally, there is no answer to be found. But even without the need for inquiry, the answer seems to have been there all along. The plain on which it unquestionably emerged from makes it inaccessible to verbal description. In some sense, even if it could be accessed, the expression would be lost. The realm of the ethereal is dictated by laws incompatible with the want for understanding. In spite of this truth, the acceptance of the former – in some paradoxical way – still manages to give way to the transmission of some sort of inexplainable impulse. This exact impulse then, in an inexplicable manner, seems to surreptitiously transform and bend in an unearthly way.

Any remaining perceived distance is diminished into nothingness. If one – in this moment – could even conceive of the concept of inter-objectual difference, it would almost sound silly. Like the mention of an afterthought, like the remembrance of a painting consumed by time itself. Maybe this – for once – is an ultimate truth? Maybe all appeals before made to what we still think to be the fruitful mode of inquisition were wrongly construed? What if we have been foolishly ignoring something nature wanted to make known to us all along? What we take to be the simplest, the most minimalistically constructed, out of this new observational lens unequivocally demonstrates itself to be woven in an utmost intricacy of complex material.

Later I return to where I was before. The space on the stairs below – once occupied by the queer-looking creature – now vacantly provokes my eye.

I wonder: Where could the cat have gone?

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