Olga Tokarczuk

clamour of fading falls

I’d like to leave, but there’s nowhere to go.

It took them a long time to notice I was gone, which meant I was able to make it quite some distance.

For no human heart is capable of bearing so much pain. The whole, complex human psyche has evolved to prevent Man from understanding what he is really seeing. To stop the truth from reaching him by wrapping it in illusion, in idle chatter. The world is a prison full of suffering, so constructed that in order to survive one must inflict pain on others. Do you hear me?

Winter mornings are made of steel; they have a metallic taste and sharp edges. On a Wednesday in January, at seven in the morning, it’s plain to see that the world was not made for Man, and definitely not for his comfort or pleasure.

‘Drive your plow over the bones of the dead,’ I said to myself in the words of Blake; is that how it went?

It made me feel sad, horrified, for even someone as foul as he was did not deserve death. Who on earth does? The same fate awaits me too, and Oddball, and the Deer outside; one day we shall all be nothing more than corpses.

Devilish creatures are always recognised by their feet – they stamp the earth with a different seal.

In this short space of time a metaphysical divorce had occurred. The end.

Anger makes the mind clear and incisive, able to see more. It sweeps up the other emotions and takes control of the body. Without a doubt Anger is the source of all wisdom, for Anger has the power to exceed any limits.