well, that’s really something. . .
More than once I read in the blogs about the book The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, and lately I downloaded the book to read it at long last. I'm ridiculously late, for the book was published in 1999, however, better late than never. Reading it I’ve been disappointed. Nothing special is in this book. A boring parable, designed as somewhat scriptural which is provincial. The author makes advances either to young people or to the islamites. The book was translated in 41 languages, and published in more than 110 countries, it was # 1 in bestseller lists in more than 15 countries-- :roll: --all this makes me shrug shoulders. It’s nice that the download is free. Being somewhat inspired I’ve been delivered of my own parable. It’s not a parody. Take the small essay kindly, please:

*Gardens*
It was a warm autumn evening in the Garden. A gust of a wind like a slap in the face--one more summer had been lost. The leaves aroma and fresh air served people a trick, and they felt giddy and saw fanciful visions. Bizarre images rose in the coming darkness. A form of a man with a gun appeared from nowhere, he passed by and went away to nowhere. Nobody asked questions. Silence and nature; nature and silence. At this bewitched place you realized: vanity and darkness were not compatible. All synonyms were abolished. There were neither two men identical with each other nor two words nor two moments of time. I noticed a campfire. The tongues of flame pointed towards the sunset. It grew dark. The thick lines of trees went to the campfire in the secluded corner of the Garden. An old man was sitting by the fire; some garden instruments were beside him, he has a straw hat on. The old man was muttering something below his breath. I felt curious: night, an old man, a campfire in the Garden in the center of Copenhagen. Having nothing to hurry I approached, and without asking permission I sat down beside the old man. The old man took no notice of me; he kept on muttering. For some time I could not understand what language he was talking; he seemed to speak several languages at the same time. His intonation sounded like a prayer. Some of his words were Greek, some English, a part of the words was in Slavonic languages, but the phrases, which I understood, made sense. This is what I heard:
“…I mustn’t close eyes. Once I doze for a moment, a burning log will be saved by the trees, and only ashes as symbol of vain expectations and mockery at mankind will be left… Few men guess that trees can think. Many men don’t know that trees were initially designed as universal philosophers. Non-resistance to evil, the theory of the perpetual circulation, asceticism--this is some of the conceptions which the mankind has got from the branchy thinkers. Now we can laugh at the beliefs of our ancestors… An idle man has no fate; his life is boring and monotonous. Work, way home, supper--this is the first circle of hell which the poet passed over in silence out of compassion to the majority, for the defectives don’t want to know of their defectiveness. The trees, on the contrary, care about your opinion of eternity, but unlike the silly humans, they never show that our fate is in their embrace… Imagine for a moment the mankind without trees. The world would suffocate from its own ambitions. The fewer trees on the Earth, the more evil amidst humans. The popular wisdom says that a man has to plant a tree besides all the rest. The true sense of this wisdom is concealed from a modern day man. In the dim and distant past there were enough trees so that only one seedling would be demanded from a man. This popular wisdom sounds especially absurd as a proverb spread amidst the forest peoples. What for one should plant a tree if he lives in the forest? The answer is: it’s senseless to understand wisdom by yourself. Sages are in charge of wisdom. Who can be wiser than those who have been designed as philosophers? The ancient people told fortunes in another way than the modern charlatans do it. Every man had his own tribal tree. Every tribal tree was treasured. Lines of a tribal tree were put on lines of a hand, and only then the fortune-tellers set to open the gates of time… The seeming immovability of the arboreal world is deceptive. There are many places on the Earth where there is no a single person and where the green giants reign. Trees can grow on stones. Trees grow at cemeteries. Only a narrow mind can suppose that trees cannot grow at the desert. The truth is simple: where trees grow, there is no room for a void. Subjects determine a space and not vice versa. He, who understands it, never loses his way in the wilderness… I know, the Elysium Fields where the favored of the gods enjoyed perfect happiness, and the fields of Aaru where Osiris ruled after he became part of the Egyptian pantheon as well as other final resting place of the souls are surrounded with trees, for a paradise can be only among trees and not among mountains, books or art galleries. The Garden of the Hesperides where the immortality-giving golden apples grew … The Cedar Forest as the glorious realm of the gods of Mesopotamia is one more mystical connection between a human and trees… Scientists have not discovered the genetic modification of a human-tree prolonging a human’s life by many centuries. A 700-year-old mortal is not a myth of the past but a forgotten possibility of the future. Any kid knows what the circles of a tree’s cut mean: the years of a tree’s life. Trees are a mysterious mechanism akin a clock in which the circles are years of life and all the rest elements are we, humans. The great Protagore said that a human as such is not a sufficient value, he is but a measure of things around him. Everyone has his own measure; someone’s measure is seconds, someone’s--minutes, someone’s--millenniums. And only the woodcutter with an axe in hand, like an executioner, rounds off all measures of time, leaving the sum for not bright statisticians: number of felled trees always is in proportion to number of died humans. According to the popular beliefs of many peoples, souls of the dead go to the Underworld by boats, but the priests pass over in silence where the boats come from, and where the forests of the planet go away… One judges trees by their fruits, and a man--by his deeds. There are two analogies in this identity: the first is on the surface, the analogy of fruits to deeds, and the second connection between trees and humans is more profound, more significant…”
The old man muttered about many things, telling about the Druids, about a unbloody war between two great tribes at backwoods, about the great migration of peoples; he told about curative qualities of trees, how trees can cure, how trees can kill, and much, much, much more… Some time passed, and I did not noticed how morning had come. The old man became silent, and I understood that his reasoning had come to an end. I rose and stepped aside. The old man’s speech fascinated; I wanted to say something but nothing wise occurred to me, but: “And this our life exempt from public haunt Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones and good in every thing”. Now I looked down underfoot. There was trace of cloven hoofs imprinted on the ground. This discovery seemed to be a specious excuse for beginning to talk with the gardener and asking about the animal that left the weird trace here. I turned to the campfire, but there was not the old man--he disappeared. The trace went right towards the campfire that had died down, the place where the old man had been but just. No logs, no firebrands, no embers were at the place of fire, only the ashes, over which the Roman numerals LXIV were written, and the air smelled either of gunpowder or sulphur.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
new adult fiction:
http://stores.lulu.com/store.php?fAcctID=935938
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

taking a detached view
What is platitude? How shall I put it? In my view, platitude in literature is the situation when words jar on you, and you feel ashamed for the author of the words. An indecent or offensive joke is not always a platitude. Jokes offend me sometimes, but I never feel ashamed for their authors; I just feel like destroying the author of the joke, or dissecting his joke, no more. Indecency or a foul language may be a crime but it is not always a platitude. Nabokov cites the short story Death in Venice as en example of a pure platitude as his compatriots used to understand it. I don’t agree with him. The story is aesthetically beautiful, and Thomas Mann is sincere telling it, and the author’s sincerity saves and justifies all. However, Nabokov never found any acrid words for commenting the movie Death in Venice. Another great writer, Chekhov struggles against platitude in his stories and plays. Reading his stories I suspect the platitude in his stories implicates a drab existence and ignorance mainly. What platitude means nowadays, I hardly can define more precisely--may be it’s some kitschy things which I dislike and which are platitudinous enough?--but the things simply irritate me, no more. I really don’t know--am at a loss.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

graphomaniac unbound
This is a word for word translation of my two poems--latest and not so latest:

*the primrose path*
O, white September with blue eyes,
you smell of coffee that I spilled
today at lunch. It was my agitation.
You and I are satisfied--today.
My feelings are unveiled,
admixing in my blood
with waves of endorphins, which nice.

O, hot December with your power,
I’ve changed indeed.
To give myself to you
I’ve given up all hope.
So, that’s enough. Forgive me. For I can’t--
I hardly can survive without you
just warming hands in someone’s arms to spill
black coffee once again.

Stars are so distant. Months so close:
September and December.
Don’t come in. For it’s not time.
It’s summer at my place, so tear your calendar.
Never fear. Sit down for the road.
Forgive me for the rubbish, which I’ve said.
Go now. For ever, ohh, for ever. Don’t forget
the sun-flecks of the parting in the springtime--
part of my life. And you-- you are my king.
For ever. Leave my hands, and--
greetings, o December!

On the face of it, the poem seems to be about two men, named September and December. Not exactly. The poem is about my journey to the seaside resort in December, where I’m about to bathe in the sea and take the sun. However, the September well may be a man who I know, and December may be an older man. Who knows? Only the author and fate.

*decadence*
I felt someone’s come.
It’s opaque sense of someone’s presence.
I expect you are reality?
Speak nothing
even though you are reality!
You can’t say anything what is equal to the moment
when I felt your presence.
May be you suppose I’ve heard you approaching?
But I’ve heard nothing of the kind.
My ear was full of music, I was full of music,
and now suddenly I felt you.
If it were the eve of All Hallow’s Day, but no…
and I’m not hungry and not abed.
Ahh... is your name Dio?
Yes? No! Don’t answer.
Approach!

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*