TO TASTE THE HEART OF A WOODEN DOLL (without ketchup or mustard)

22.09.04

I am so stressed with the dissertation lately. I come back home and I don’t have time to work on it. It’s really hard for me to be devoted to writing and reading after having spent two hours with the physiotherapy. I think I have some neurosis or something. How else can I justify my disgust towards this kind of treatment, which is actually a passive one? Every time it finishes I’m almost sad. I am gripped with the desire to swallow all the chocolates of the world. I blame myself for this attitude of mine. I have no reason to feel so bad. And yet, I get the impression that I’m losing my time with those treatments. Somewhere in the back of my mind I read the answer to my question: Why do I hate all this? Because I actually am the biggest coward out there. I’ve never learned how to struggle.

When I wake up in the morning I make a programme in my mind; I am not speaking of the daily routine but of a lifetime programme. I pack my future in boxes, either small or big. This helps me not to lose it. Every box contains my desires and ambitions. As soon as I close the small box, I put it in a bigger one and so on. My goal is to concentrate all the boxes in the biggest I will find. The point is that there are always bigger boxes than the ones I have at hand. This game never ends. Some times I wonder: ‘What the hell am I doing with so many boxes?’. It is when I remember my trip to Moscow. I think I was three years old when I visited Russia. To be honest here, I remember next to nothing from that experience. The only thing proving that this trip did happen is the wooden dolls (the Babushkas) with the different sizes; the one is put in the other exactly like the boxes that I described.

There are even more days when I imagine that I am in a lush green garden. I am neither lying on the deckchair nor on the grass. I am a steak that is being baked on the barbecue. Every now and then, some guy comes and says to me: ‘You are not baked yet, boy. I will turn you from the other side so that you change colour a bit’! I see a fat woman right above me. She is ready to put her fork inside me and swallow me in one single gulp. In the meantime, her mouth is watering to her chin! I have one last wish. If she is to eat me, may she eat me as I am. Without ketchup or mustard.