Y - the end of history (and other stories)

'after every war

someone has to clean up.

things won’t

straighten themselves up, after all.

someone has to push the rubble

to the side of the road,

so the corpse-filled wagons

can pass...'

these lines are from the poem the end and the beginning by the polish poet wisława szymborska. 

'now and then someone

will dig up rusty arguments 

from under the bushes

and take them to the dump.' 

this stanza is in dubravka ugresic's the ministry of pain, heading up a chapter where the central character is reading her ex-father-in-law's self-published autobiography, an account of his struggle as a teacher to build yugoslavia. but it is a country that has since fallen apart and from which the daughter in law is now an exile. 

horsemouth apologises. he is a little distracted by events. two years ago he was bargaining with coronavirus now he is kvetching about the invasion of ukraine. events have somewhat overtaken him again.

is horsemouth to suppose that the glorious end of history  is now over? that history is back on again? or is this one last pointless strike from hell's gates by ideologues defeated by the true and just forces of economic liberalism and democracy? (horsemouth is being sarcastic here)

horsemouth feels great pity for the people of ukraine - they are now stuck in a proxy war between the US and a dream of a revived russia. it is beyond even the kind of civil war in syria and the former yugoslavia.  the more they fight the more of them will die.

for having waltzed them to this position europe and the west is going to do exactly nothing to help them. (that is the russian calculation and the west has told them as much).  we will return to the cold war (except the iron curtain will be at the eastern polish border - er. assuming the tanks stop there). 

the clock of history is being wound back (as if any 'gains' were only temporary, as if the years between were illusory).  and all over eastern europe people must be feeling that chill. 

the dubravka ugresic encourages horssemouth to think  about the long term consequences of the war and about the refugees from it. in her book he central character is not in exile from the former yugoslavia, it is just that when she returns she is no longer comfortable back there.  

horsemouth's suggestion that we re-read bulgakov's the white guard (aka. the fall of kiev) is looking increasingly stupid and specious (literary and pretentious), he may still do it. in a bit horsemouth will look at the newspapers and listen to the radio (online). 

------------------------------------

it's a bright sunshine-y day.

yesterday horsemouth went for a walk (up the valley of the agapemonians) to walthamstow (st. james' street oxfam)  in search of books. he returned with michael rush's new media in art (world of art series - one squid) and guy de maupassant's a parisian affair and other stories  (penguin classics - one squid, containing boule de suif and the horla  etc.). 

the walk tired him out. in the afternoon he sat and read - the ugresic, the rush. 

today (as usual) he has no real plans. horsemouth tends to want to dally with the kind of rusty arguments that are not so dangerous they have to be taken to the dump (pre-war blues music re-imagined as instrumental guitar music for example).