Ever since I was little, the future was something dark and puzzling to me. I am surprised that I have lived so long, when I was around five (it was then, no question, that I got sick) I could by no means picture myself at fifteen and here I am, dear me, well past those days (trust me, it feels like it was ages ago). Virtually, so to say. But I still cannot fancy the future. What I can fancy is a black hole sucking me in and, once it has swallowed me, I can see myself baffled to be reliving the past. It is like repeatedly trying to open a door – you keep following the same routine and suddenly: bang! – you start from scratch again. Around that same age, around five, I mean, when I was myself a chip of the old block, I figured that people usually have a clear idea of what life is. Life is a flashing instant. Life is a plum (surprise!) on the branch of an olive tree. Life is a ladder to a coop – short and full of shit. Life is driving at high speed with no brakes. Life is a bearded woman. Life is the smoke of a cigarette. It is life, not death that ends up killing you. Life is messing around until you hop the twig (that's when life messes you up). Life is a bitch. Life is gorgonzola, parmigiano, camembert and the brewed mixture of cheese and mushrooms (for the lactophobic). Life is made up of mistakes. Life is a dream. Life is the one you live in America. Or in Germany or in Spain. Sorry. I always get a little off my trolley when it comes to life. Because I do know what I'm doing, although I don't seem to. I know what I'm doing now, I'm writing a novel in the maximum biased style called pseudoromglish, which I am about to invent, the first of a more extended series… – and I still have no sense of the time being. No moment should be postponed, but experienced – it says so in all the reference books. Life is the moment postponed.
Excerpted from The L@st Witch, Paralela 45, 2001
by Alina Nelega
