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Tomas S. Butkus kesmerioshkhin karfik
If you ask what determinant factors
influenced my career from the early adolescence, I will answer: lessons on military training (I remember the „civil training“: shooting with a „makarov" handgun
the mattresses that we later used for stretching, exercises for flexibility
and high jumps. At that time, of course, I knew nothing about explosives and
demolitions; „diedovshchina” hierarchy: you had to learn, learn, learn, and learn (and afterwards to obey your
superiors who finished the required cartesian school earlier. I was an
eternal first-former with no experience in the area of community activities,
no master's degree in linear logic like others, etc., etc.); and finally, the school of truth, that is, life, which
at that time was like a training of continuity with a pitiful close. So, the training. Wishing to be a
modern man, I started to attend optional classes in a relativism club: I
defuse the most complex bombs of
agreements, detonated various hydrogen games, or just took a walk in the
polygon of self-destruction theory. Then, I remember, there was a boom of nuclear reactors (one of them wore out
for some reason and exploded not far from my home), new constructional plots (I’ll have more
intimate contact with them later), and “playing war”. This game was the latest modification of hopscotch. We did it this way:
a band of guys pull an anti-tank rocket capsule (some say that goddamn thing
was left over from World War II) to the beach, write down “iprit” on it and
leave it under the sun. Very soon coast guards come and encircle the area. Some days later come the
experts who inspect and test the object. They take it out and neutralize it.
Then, to everybody‘s disappointment, they take striking photos in the
background of their findings. Don’t know why,
but I also felt an attraction to constructional plots: wastelands full of
lumber, crapped blocks and raging brats. Carbide! It was my first lesson in
chemistry, which went on for several years. After fizzing puddles, came
gunpowder sticks, stunning us by their hiss. We‘d bind the sticks in bunches
(I burned one of them in my kitchen... and had to change the linoleum). Later
on I switched over to producing small magnesium bombs. Yeah, those were my
first alternative art exhibitions. How many facades have changed their
colour? Better not ask. I could count more gains in the area of military
education, but enough of that. I should say that my achievements fizzled out
because of just one reason: a total disarmament was declared in the country
and lessons on pricking mattresses shifted to lessons on good manners. It was then that I
wrote my first poem. Of course, inspired by good manners, the peculiarities
of national literature and something else. It happened in the outskirts of
the city, on the roof of a rebuilt monolithic building. I was sitting and
dangling my legs, amazed by the panorama of the evening sky... I can’t
remember where exactly I wrote down four quatrains called “hollow”– on the
roof or somewhere else. Because local police drew in with sirens, disturbed
this repose of mine, and blocked off all the ways out: name
surname...whata hell what a hella you
doin’… – IIIII’m an architect – I babbled to two
awful-trust-worthy cops in green uniforms. Whata hell ya swipin’, stealin’
cables cab less - hah man? – III’m an architect, inter-rested in the
building const-ructions. Laughter greeted me. The cops asked: Do you
want... I said… to get a thick head? They wagged their heads. Hah,
to get a thick head… Then they received an urgent call and disappeared...
A little later I
wrote my first poem. Its main character was “playing war” and losing, then he
confessed that he had exploded the three blocks of flats in the central
district, made several attempts to assassinate several presidents (one of
them was killed accidentally), licked another poet in the civil war and
poached his identity document… But it’s true, it
was then that I wrote my first poem. I shrugged off the vanity of a teenager that cost me skin
excoriation, a five-minute fright, and a fist-size piece of stucco on the
neighbors‘ balcony. I took up the obvious things that help to release inner
vigour. Yes, I know other ways to release the desired vigour: stretching and
excercising, staring at the barrel of a „makarov“ handgun, watching the
sunset. But this knowledge, as many others, does not work in all cases. For
example, in mine. You would say: what’s the sense of projecting bunkers (I’ve
been designing bunkers or, „buildings“, speaking in the language of business,
for about fourty years)? I know from my experience: things have a double function.
Inside the bunker you can make your doodoo, write down „Katya was here“ or
your last poem. Of course, you can explode the bunker. But what is the sense
of one and a half million shivers when silence is buzzing. It’s too vulgar,
too primitive. It‘s even not human. That is the reason why military
aesthetics are respectable: a tank, bulging in a swamp with bird’s nests in
its caterpillar; a cartridge-case packed with kids‘ chewing gum; camouflaged
cops playing handball on the beach beside the shitty bunkers. And there is
not a single poet who would explode this paternal peace. Translated by TS, A. Fomina, K. Sh. Keys („Paraliterary career“, „International writing program“. Iowa city, USA.
2002 © Amber-Chamber studio, MMIII |
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