PROMETHEUS FROM THE FIRST FLOOR

My world begins from the first floor! I don’t care for the ground floor at all. Although it is dark stinking of urine and rotten potatoes, and the automatic lamp switches on when you pass half of the corridor. Until the “wush” moment when the light conquers the darkness I could have been attacked for three times, mugged and who knows what else. What a security!

Indeed there is parlaphone and visitors are let in selectively but only at a first sight. In fact, really, anybody who rings just have to says “I wish to enter!” and “Bzzzz” - the door opens.

I don’t use parlaphone and I don’t lie, I would like to enter because I have the key and I must enter. Everyday, except on Saturdays and Sundays.

Although sometimes, even then. But then I am angry and, as such, I am not productive.

After I break through the entrance gate, for which you must have especial technique of unkeying, the second – the so called internal door and finally the third one without the key– I have my own world.

The fact is I have chosen it only partly according to the rule if you have “two evils” choose the lesser one .However there can be no word for voluntary choice – not even in madness. It is more and necessity “by itself” as philosophers would put it- if I remember the lessons from the forth grade of high school…

After the successful entering into the bastion I have only to sign my hour and minute of coming as a proof of my lucky arrival. That is essential!

My inevitable world begins at a modern desk of “L” configuration which has been comfortably designed that I don` t have move to much. A turn on my typewriter stool and “hop” I am at the longer or the shorter extension of my “L” from it I have a view on two windows. The real one and the other one which is called “the window into the world” that is my computer with internet from which I can pick up the needed information at any moment.

First of all, I open my virtual mail, read daily quantum of orders and instructions and put it into my left side of a brain. Then I talk to myself and realize what I must, what I can, what I want and what I must not do… The screen of my “window into the world” , on the longer side of my “L” desk push itself into my face, blinks with invisible megahertzes and try to enforce sunlight which is coming through real window always after one o` clock if it is a sunny day. Then I pull on my yellow curtain but it makes sunlight stronger and I feel sorry for my computer. It has no chance in comparison with the sunlight.

Yeah, but my real window is in the second perspective and at the same point.

It is much bigger and, how could I say, massive! It is not a modern one and it doesn`t have any aluminum in it… It is a really old, old fashion window built in the time of secession! It has double glass wings in wooden, graving squares which becomes grey because of dirt and pigeons droppings. That window is my second, everyday take. In it I can see three lines of windows on the neighbor’s building, two balconies and the top of commercials plate for Havana tobacco and the bottom of the fourth line of windows on the top…

The first and the second window lines are grey and in a bad condition and I am a sometimes afraid that it will be the cause of death of some innocent passengers down in the street. There are private apartments and it is obvious that lodgers have lost their battle against pigeons, smog and capitalism.

The windows on the third floor are painted yellow, strange color with a grey, smoggy tone. That is a place where same firm “pissed” their territory – in yellow.

Over and there, from the inner side of the window there, pass some silhouettes and I cannot see their faces but I feel that – just like me - they have also their own “L” desks and computers and daily orders… I can feel their serious atmosphere and a lack of laughing… What, for heaven sake can be funny in that?

Every morning, exactly in eight and twenty, on the yellow window there appears a hairy and grey woman’s head. She gardens and waters one feeble and dry plant.

The plant is, also, grey-green but lady showers it every day and tries to keep it alive. Maybe her life depends on the plant’s life? Maybe the invisible “yellow firm`s ” boss irrationally wants to keep that plant alive? That is a very serious matter of that plant!

Often, I want to shout something to the lady but I know that she cannot hear me. The noise between me and her is Armageddon’s.

In the first row on the first balcony on the right side, somehow at the same time, comes out an old man in pajamas with stripes. His balcony is right above the Havana commercial plate. The iron railing is rusty and four sacks, full of garbage, occupy the place in the middle. In the corner, there is in a pot planted with agaves!

The old man always stretches his back, caresses his agaves and takes a look into the abyss. Maybe he thinks that, one day when he comes on that balcony; instead of abyss and noisy cars he will see the sea?  Maybe he dreams that one day when he comes out he will feel the smell of the sea and find out that his agaves have flowers?

He, somehow, looks like an old fisherman who in sunrise comes to hear the wind and sea streams and try to decide if is it good weather for fishing… sometimes it seems to me that he will, after he having appeared and communicated with his agaves and before he would go back into the dark whole of his balcony, that he will come again with a fishing stick and throw it far, far away over the balcony… no matter whether he sees sea or not!

While the old fisherman opens his balcony, full of hope, I can see another head in the second row of the windows. Slowly, very carefully that window opens… and the head fall down! The face is down and I can see only a dirty- green shawl wrapped up as a turban. That hat is on the woman’s hanging head without face. I can see only the nose. The woman’s head swings left and right and follows the movements of the old fisherman. Sometimes stops and fixes look at the lady with the plant on the yellow window above her. I am afraid that her turban will fall down although she put a lot of efforts to fix it on her head.. It becomes turbo- turban!

Through my secession window that entire scene, at eight and twenty, seems to me like a well arranged clock mechanism from which one every minute there appears one of those characters and they functioned harmoniously all together. The first – grey head with plant, than the Old Fisherman opens balcony and tries to reach agaves and, in the end, -“plonk”- head with turbo-turban… Everybody notices everybody and disappears at the same order in the darkness of their yellow-grey holes.

The harmony can be disturbed only if pigeons come into the scene, rotate neurotically their heads and think that they are seagulls or albatrosses…

…and than my “window into the world” tries to push itself into my face again, blinks and buzz… My secession scene stays in a foggy somewhere behind and I watch it and read from my screen in front of my eyes. What is important, right now in the world? I chose and chose and find what I want to find and feel that I am so cruelly tied to my “L” desk. I want a lot of things but I cannot reach them… I can see the endless blue sea and I cannot put my hand in it… I can hear the wind which cannot touch my hair and face… The flowers look so nice in the 3D technique but there is no fragrance… I try to remember the sounds, touches and smells in my right part of the brain… I try to connect things in front of my face and in my memory… On the end I realize, nobody will hear me even if I try shout loudly!

I cannot break the noisy and smoggy curtain in the abyss under my secession window… I cannot push pixels and calm down megahertzes in front of my face… I am tied forever to the rock called “L” desk!

The first and the second window mix up all the time and I don` remember where I saw the Old Fisherman, in Mianmar maybe, or the Head with the turban - in Afganistan?

Gods punished me and I am just watching, watching, watching…

My zoom is a little bit sharpening, a little bit foggy, than over again… I don’t ask myself why, I am just watching…

My world begins from the first floor! After the dark and the stinky ground floor, every single day I hope that today there will be something new! Like the Old Fisherman who expects sea! I hope that pigeons will be there… They will tray to fly, walk with three- finger legs and be – alive…