My maternal grandfather was a carpenter – a tall and handsome man, but always a little crooked to the right. For as long as I can remember, he wore a plaid shirt like a Canadian lumberjack and that big triangular graphite pencil behind his ear. TOZ – it was written on it in golden letters. Pencil factory Zagreb. Before surgically drawing the lines on the tree, he would always lightly lick it. Although I wasn’t quite sure why he was doing it, I often let my black ink heart melt on my tongue when no one was watching.
For a long time now, I don’t measure time in minutes or hours, but by what I remember, and what is no more.
And there isn’t that much. Like those ink pens. I tried to get them at the bookstore. The saleswoman has been blinking in confusion since she was an adult. “We have a pen,” he said, pointing to the glass case. I waved my hand away. That’s not it. What did you say, fat …? Ink pens, I repeated. Masti… typed into the computer. Does it have another name perhaps, she asked. Not that I know, I replied. An ink pen is an ink pen. Do you know who makes…? TOZ, I said. She blinked again. It doesn’t matter, I said. “I’m really sorry,” said the child. It’s me, too, I thought. Try somewhere else.
Gladly. But there is no other place. And no ink pens. Because they don’t make them anymore.
And I think that memories, like some old fallen fighters, deserve at least paper and pencil. A plain little notebook on lines with a thick cover. And dim light. And stale air. I think that memories require special attention. And that’s why I’m looking for a damn ink pen, to lick it so that everything runs out of it – every forgotten word, action, thought. Let me transfer to paper an entire life that we have pushed under the rug in the meantime. To write down everything I remember, everything that deserves to be remembered. To go to Save as before someone else goes to Shutdown. Or worse – to Delete.
Read also… Duda Alapača- Only…
Because it’s all beautiful, my children.
And the fact that you lie down and be connected to those mobile phones, that you don’t believe us when we say that life existed before them at all and that you are tied to that router with an invisible ribbon, but it’s not nice that you don’t you know what to do with yourself the moment the battery runs out or the power goes out. And that you can learn so much – but you don’t want to. And why would he – when someone else knows everything about you? When someone else can do everything for you. He reads a book, retells reading, writes homework, written, whatever. It is not nice that you follow the line of least resistance and that you will bend like a bundle in front of the first real obstacle that appears in life tomorrow. It is even less nice that sometimes I have the impression that you hate everything “from before” and that you are ashamed to admit that your grandmother bathed you in a trough and watered you with a pot, and your grandfather drove three or three of you in the civets.
I’m ashamed that everything is krinj.
And that you start and end sentences with ALOOO, and in between you flap your hands because you fail to find the right word. I am ashamed that it is easier to reveal your navel than your feelings, that you curse your mothers so lightly for each other, and that you love each other so hard. I am also ashamed that it is becoming increasingly difficult to reach you. I’m ashamed that you turn into those little armored mammals, armadillos, covered with some kind of horny shell through which little passes. I am ashamed and afraid that you grow up like that in our guard, always with your hands at eye level, always in an offensive position, curled up in a ball. And that you will, chances are, grow into a lonely species that shares neither itself nor its lairs, much less its prey with other adult individuals.
Therefore, before before you completely enchant us, before you deviate from everything you ever called your own, and forget what we remembered, before you completely discard your own language, and make any system that doesn’t go with your hair meaningless, kill somewhere on your hard that there used to be ink pens, that your great-grandparents from four grades of elementary school and a few trades went to some Germany and America to work, and they did all their lives, all those jobs that you hate today – to keep you that a two-room apartment in the center that you have no one to share with today, and which you will have no one to leave tomorrow.
And therefore, sometimes remember us ink, by the way – in the race between two jobs, two coffee drinks, two failed relationships – so come by.
Sunday lunch. We have everything. And an appetizer and soup and a rinfleish and a cake at the end. We have old picture albums and a handful of talk time. We can listen. And we can also say which one is smart. We love very much. We hug even tighter, hoops. We hug so that even the hardest armor cracks. And don’t refuse us calls, don’t say “I’m in a meeting”, don’t force us to leave you voice messages, because we can’t speak in vain, don’t go to Shutdown because – here we are. WE ARE HERE. And ink us, maybe you can turn it off. But not delete.
Note: This article has been indexed to our site. We do not claim ownership or copyright of any of the content above. To see the article at original source Click Here