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 had freed him from the mess that was his life. And it had freed other living Creatures from him. Oh yes, suddenly I realized what a good thing death can be, how just and fair, like a disinfectant, or a vacuum cleaner.

Perhaps there were some angels watching over him; sometimes they turn up on the wrong side.

Long years of unhappiness cause a Person worse degradation than a fatal illness.

Now it looked calm and satisfied, as if the spirit were pleased to be finally free of the matter, and the matter were pleased to be finally free of the spirit.