Wridding

By Nikolina Nedeljkov

Wridding is an exploration in the novel as a liquid genre. Told in an unorthodox aesthetic key, the oneiric quest-for-wholeness narrative reveals the characters’ transition from dark lands toward the territories of the reborn light, from erratic possibilities toward what they might become and / or who they are. Within a phantasmagoric journey through the whirlpools of the dreamscape and a fractured empire of chronos, the identities of the characters fluctuate as always already oscillating loops of disintegration and wholeness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Sep 9, 2014
• ISBN: 9781312417694

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Wridding

Wridding

by

Nikolina Nedeljkov

Wridding

Copyright © 2014 Nikolina Nedeljkov

All rights reserved

ISBN 978-1-312-41769-4

Publisher and distributor Lulu.com

Nikolina Nedeljkov is a reader / writer / scholar whose main interest is centered around the creation-remix nexus. Being a fusion of textual, audio, and visual expressive modes, the remix is perceived and practiced as a source of storytelling and critical remapping of cultural realities.  It is also a means of peaceful/peaceable resistance to multiple oppression, the postfuturist hi-fi response against noise. Evoking the question of cultural fragmentation, the approach suggests the lateral path for the remix of discourse and cultural realities, thereby making manifest the vital power of creation. Transforming a temporarily contaminated communicational tunnel into the green communication channel, it celebrates the wholesome sound of creation.

I ChapteR A: Who Knows the Reason Why One is Children

Dreams in Hiberspace: Prologue

I[1]

Cave. Friday Moondrops. Just a sound. A phantom-hand in the dark. In the dark. Melting. Half in the shadow. Dripdrip. Liquidized flesh. Like sadness buried deep under the layers of daily superficialities. Like insomnia that I miss so much. Timedrops. And the ptytsa of music. A secret dweller, otherwise hibernated. Occasionally leaves its non-space. Makes it a place. Waking me up. And this synchronicity never turns into bitterness. Or into happiness. Ongoing in-betweeness. Until the bird is set free from the haunted house. Freedom in the graveyard of forgetfulness. Self-oblivion of fantasy. Suffocating in in-betweeness. And daily superficialities. Until the ptytsa kisses me again. And hibernation turns into fermentation.

Adventure-time like an incurable disease of babylonian communication. In the world that believes in incurability. Baby data: I’m everything you are not. In a silent way. You know what I’m not. First I heard a buzz. Made me feel uneasy. Didn’t like the signs. It started like that. Still could see a bit of a shadow. A grasshopper invaded my dream. Noise…Couldn’t stand it. Tried to remain still. Managed it for a while, but then broke down. Gotta get out of this place. Easy does it. Moving slowly now. Through a dark opening. It’s always like that. Takes a while. Then I heard the buzz. Another tidal wave. Tried to ignore it. It shouldn’t boog me. Till I break down. Then the wave withdrew. Couldn’t pull myself together. Quite. Buzzing. Echoes of the previous attack? The upcoming one? Couldn’t tell. Volume increasing. Noise…Like a serpent’s egg. Thought it might remain like that  and never disappear from the frame. A lie. I could feel it come again. Different mix, same effect. A lie. Fortunately. Beair /Be Air / ibreathu /Feel my combustion chamber.

When I woke up this morning my mother told me about the dream she had the previous night. She dreamed about a neighbor being harassed by her late husband. Then in her dream, my mother was walking down the street, and my sister approached her marveled, touching her to assure herself that it was really her mother: Is this really you? My mother was even more bewildered for she didn’t know the reason why everybody responded the way my sister did. Of course it’s me. What’s the matter with you? But to herself she said: I didn’t even know I’d died.

While I was smoking in front of the building, I could feel the dampness of the autumn air sneaking in through the night. It struck me how my mother must have felt terribly lonely when she was thinking about me, and the fact that I don’t make her happy made me sad. And the silence made it even more prominent because she doesn’t like silence. But her absent laughter made it bearable, because she knows how to laugh. And she knows how to touch my hands because hers are always warm. Sometimes when we are alone in the room, I feel what makes us so different like a third entity…almost physical …And yet… her distant eyes make it bearable, because she knows how to see me. She learnt how to tolerate my silences. She can love a stranger.

In a Morpheus diving suit I dipped back into the oceanic solace. No oxygen penetrating the

ungraspable space. Shadowy encounters with hardly identifiable traces of rainy summer

days from a couple of decades ago. Quiet islands of freshness amidst the ecstatic noise of the

rising heat. Diving on, until the journey reaches the turning point and a shift occurs. Where the

dreamscape starts penetrating my whole body. My skin like a permeable membrane. My heart

like a core of a phantasmagoria-eater whirlpool. Dream as the ultimate.

First I thought I was suffocating, but after a warm explosion in my lower belly woke me up, I realized that you were sucking on my toe before you started massaging my tongue. Saliva pouring down my throat. Massive blow to my lungs. And a long exhale. Light sleeper. Fall in love with me. But then, I fall in love with so many things, you’d say…What kind of noises do you make? Do you take off that face then? Or  let go? Where do you put your hands? How long does the oblivion last? Do you feel awkward right away? Are you ashamed of fantasizing about simple things? Or big things? Do you measure things that way? Are you like that? Are you? Y. Are you caving? How high can you get? How long has it been since you woke up? Delicate rider.

In my dream I was eating a peach. Then you were licking my sticky fingers. Then we licked my finger together. Then you said. And I woke up. And the whole day smelled of peaches. And it was sticky. And I licked it. And then I fell asleep. And I met you again. Recognized the smell. You made me want to measure it with a pair of... Just in case…if I was going to stay awake…so I could cut the thick night air into eatable chunks. And a swallow. Came to my window. Put me back to sleep.

Should I feel intrigued? I said to the girl sitting next to you. And you turned your head. Looked at me. And I gave you a long silent kiss. Then you lowered your head. A tiny spot of contact of two skins. And you lowered your head. Then you licked my sticky fingers. And you said. A swallow.

Your face behind the window pane. Looking into my room. How did you find me? I asked. I know where to look, you said.  C’mon in, I told you. Shall we go out for a walk? you asked. But it’s raining, I said. No, it’s only raining in here, you explained. But that’s okay. How long has it been since you woke up? you were wondering. I don’t know…since I started digesting the air I smuggled from the outside, I told you.

You smell like a peach, you said. Your smell so sweet. You breathe like rain, I said. The rain in your room is not wet…No, because it’s the air. It’s a friend. Any people around? you asked. Maybe…out there…Wanna go? Maybe…but I’m not hungry, I told you. That’s OK, I’m not hungry either. Just curious…Are you a bird? I asked you. I was once, you said. I know what you mean. I know you do.

Act 1: Shadow Talk

Chorus

Night like any other. Or not. Also different. What for? Not that one can put a finger on it…An ordinary site: two shadows, moving along the wall. One of them carrying a diary. What were they going to talk about? The diary, how they spend their days, and how the nights can be told in two acts. Distastefully honestly, so it has to be acted out. Who are they? Strangers. How did they meet? By accident. Where? Far away from everywhere. When was it? Who knows. Why is everything so secretive? Because they are reading the diary. A journal, if you wish. Journalistic fiction. Full of mysteries, all of which can be solved through close reading. Closing it is not possible, however.

So the shadows open up! Speak! The wall is a screen on which newsflash is displayed - entries from the diary. The titles appear like headlines. The background is a minefield of videos projected to highlight the points from the stories – a kaleidoscopic, lacy, pixel flame, licking the edges of the wall, interrupted by short strobelight interludes. The whole wall is a gigantic sound system to which the shadows are connected and act as organic loudspeakers. Movements are rhythmical. Sometimes off-beat.

There is a forest behind the wall. That’s where they come from. The forest is dark at night. But the breeze is cool and gentle. In the morning it leaves soft imprints on the trunks. Sweet dew still folding the thin skin. Pearly dewdrops kiss the breeze every morning. This is how the shadows start their days. Lazy stretches follow shy movements of eyelids. They wake up to salute the arrival of a new story. Each and every morning. After the forest’s whisper announces the first words for that day, their feet are ready to touch the ground. That’s how their daily walks start. The rest of the day is spent in search for words. Stories do not approach the shadows. It is the shadows who have to find them in the forest. But, who knows…Because the stories can be heard and seen, the shadows are attentive viewers and fervent listeners. Only at dusk, when the hunt is over and the pieces of the fable are put together, do they process it. Only then, do the narratives obtain smell and become palpable. That’s when they get transferred to the other side of the wall – on the wall.

Till midnight the shadow-strangers are storytellers. After midnight they melt through the wall and return to their forest cots. Then they are sleepy backwoods creatures. Lead along the groves to their grassy mattresses, cloudy pillows, and starry covers. They dream a lot. That’s how they learn to walk. That’s also how they leave behind yesterday’s stories and clear their lungs so they can breathe in new ones. When the fire sun knocks on the foamy door of the dream to introduce a new day. Beair /Be Air / ibreathu /Feel my combustion chamber.

Act 1, Scene 1: How

Were you in my dream? Or is this a memory of my yesterday’s daydreaming? But your smell is here…Coming out of the cracks in my skin…How physical should I take it to be? A touch of an imaginary texture? I felt it too on my skin. So, were you there? Because there is no such a thing as just a dream. And that’s what makes night rites bareable and mournings glorious.

Because you know I would sleep forever to be there with you, you leave…making me cry…only to make me smile when I wake up. Thanks. Kissing you on the cheek, I felt the April sky gently feeding my dry skin – which, I know, felt different before. It makes me wanna kiss you till we drain the last drop from the long rainy day.

Amuirkey-style? / Sure – station to station.  / Time to build one. /  In the color of the four winds.

…and a friendly road…/ It might take years to do it. / And another to believe that one has actually done so. / Undoubtfully delighteful!

Act 1, Scene 2: Virulent

Small capsules, accommodating one person  at a time, are provided in an internet café in the neighborhood. The place is cozy: the sofas are soft, the legs of the coffee tables elegant, the colors are mellow, and the shadows of the objects friendly. Each of us was comfortably seated with various stuff on our laps. Absorbed.

How can I help you? / Small regular coffee to stay. / How would you like your coffee? / A little milk…one sugar. And hot. / Enjoy. / I will.

Back to the capsule. Smoky Arabic sound filling the room, thin stripes seeping into the capsules.  Gentle marimba drizzle.  Then distant shores of Ghana and the sound of light. And a bassline jet. Soaking me to the bone with viral epiphany.

Act 1, Scene 3: If No More

Intercultual. Intermediary. Intermission. Interlude. Intermolecular. Intergalactic. Interspatial. Interracial. Intersection. Internet. Intermediate. Interesting. Interrogating. Intercontinental. Intercellular. Intermodular. Interreligious.  Interstellar.  Interchange.  Interior. Interrogation.  Internship.  Inturn.  Interspace.

And what if not…?

Exterior. Externalize. Exter-mine-taur.

T –hes- aurus. T/re/aurus. T-re-asu-re.

Act 1, Scene 4: Crooked Beat

In a hidden corner of the wounded galaxy, I was sharing the apartment with a couple of strangers. The place was a mess, but I didn’t care because I was going to leave soon.  We didn’t talk much. Not that it  bothered me…just a feeling…Too many void passing by…On the way to the bathroom…my fantasies becoming audible, slipping through the gap under the door…and back to the bedroom…Or was it a living room turned into a bedroom, where we were all sleeping, pretending to have our own space? In our improvised place, we had a lot of pillows, but  my neck still felt stiff. My bones heavy. My body hurt.

Later, the lazy sun was stroking my cheeks. Nice people, I thought. But none of them could help me figure out the mystery of my birth. Nor will any of them be there when I die. Right people, wrong time. Place? But it doesn’t explain it anyway. Indifferent  passers-by. Hollow space between the paths that never cross…space that never turns into a place. Then I remembered how my brother often told me about streets, valleys, sidewalks, bridges, spaces, roads, walking, running, and driving.  Sweet, exhausted soul. And I wonder if he was talking about. I suppose he was. In fact, I know he was. How could I ever wonder, when we spent so much time crying over it…It’s just that no tear has ever been shed. But we looked at each other’s eyes every time we cried.  And it’s this innocence of the feverish flash in the pupil of his eye that helped me understand what it means to fear that your body and soul might be consumed by the hollowness of the surrounding space. His dark brown iris, blurred with tears thrown into ungraspable pits, taught me how to watch. And how to love his shaking hands.  But it’s also the purity of the fire in his voice and the breadth of his laughter that makes it possible to look at each other on a bright day and know that…

Act 1, Scene 5: The Rootes

I was digging a path, tearing hardened tissue – sweating while pushing my way through a narrow tube, smeared with liquids dripping from broken vessels. I was carving the fabric as my whole body ached pressured from all sides by the agonizing flesh – torturing me, hostile snaps anxious to catapult me out and a centripetal drag sucking me back.

My eyes burned, touching the pulsating jelly walls of the channel. My cranium was about to explode to the rhythm of the moving lenses, closing and opening at a pace almost impossible to follow. I begged the bloody cave to hate me more and shout me out.

The lenses then opened. Froze. And the walls gave it a violent jolt, vomiting me into the vastness of gluttonous jaws…Into unknown arms…cutting over spikey edges, pouring crimson substance, detonating the whole world with something I was involuntarily snorting through…

Act 1, Scene 6: Armsways: Smell of a Somersault

Yesterday, where southwest Manhattan kisses the Hudson river - leaking into the ocean - I heard silence. Just to invoke familiar warmth of earthly imperfection, it was sporadically cracked and frictioned by the sounds of the wheels of a surfing board rubbing the concrete, or a big baby dog, here and there barking, sonorously keeping at bay silly thoughts of being lost. Their echoes saturated with salt.

I used to go shopping with my mother. Then we decided it made no sense, for even with kinship, belonging is founded in a commercial contract. But she said that in the world in which temporality knows no continuity and where everything is but a discursive construct, she wanted me to be her present continuous tense. In the world where desire does not exist, sexuality abandons the body and is, instead, consumed through objects.  It seems that in such a world we no longer need sexuality. In such a world, I wanna be your laptop.

You can be my laptop…/ Good. Can you touch type? /  I can touch type unbelievably well…

Excellent. / Can you tape as well as you touch type? / You’d be surprised how well I can do that…/  Can you tape me while you are touch typing? / Absolutely…/ Fine, just try to avoid such words…and you’ll see why soon enough…/ Whatever…/ Can you sellotape me? / I can sellotape you no problem…/ Can you tape me while you are sellotaping me?/ Oh, nothing’s easier than that…Say when you are ready. I am ready. Are you?

Oh, yeah… / Can you depilate me as you are sellotaping me…nowhadamsayin…/ Absolutely…I mean…of course…/ OK, do my legs first. /I can do your feet too…/ Very well…are you a podiatrist? / Yeah, kinda…more like a chiropodist…but I can do your feet…/ So, can you do it all at the same time?/ Sure. Even more - I am also an otorhinlarigologist…/ Sounds like a rhinosaurus…T? / Yes, please… / How would you like your T? Milk? Sugar…? No, thanks…just straight…

Straight you will get…/ Would you like your T hot or cold? / Hot, please…/ Gimme one minute.

Take your time…/ Can you touchtypetape me while I am preparing the T? / I’d be thrilled to…lemmie see…I can only do your legs while you are standing…/  OK, do my legs. / Can you put some music on? Oh, sure…how’s John Cage? / Cave? / No, Cage…/ Cale? / No… let me play it for you …there you go…

Well? Go on…put the needle down… / I have. Listen…/ But there’s no sound…/ Oh, but there is…it’s just that it’s silence…/ Bullshit!/ No, no…listen to the process of fragmentation of microlayers of nothingness…/ Gimme a break! / Oh, yeah… breaks in the unconscious, whose only possible manifestation is silence…/ Cut it out! / It has already been cut up and incorporated in one of the recent projects exploring the possibilities of non-matter./ It doesn’t matter…let’s do something else.

But you are already depilating me…/ Yes, I am…and that’s cool…but I need to check your hard drive before I start taping…/ What? You didn’t start yet? I told you I want you to do it all simultaneously…I want to incorporate empty, homogeneous time in that act  to show a shift  from one paradigm to another--a departure from the concept of Messianic time…/ Oh, I know tattooed beat messiah…/ OK… I myself got some backseat education back in the day…but it’s not that…the act should show the disappearance of horizontal temporal relationships…horizontal temporal relationships…

Oh, OK…I don’t’ mind going horizontal…/ Glad you do not…coz it will demonstrate how contingency, manifested in arbitrary choice of events, testifies about their profound fictiveness. Then I will use it to prove the fictiveness of the very act. That’s why I have to keep on playing this record…sorry if it irritates you, but it’s not about me or you or…/ …anything really…/ Yeah, no…I mean…it’s about something…but not really…and also that something, as the story progresses, sorta eats itself…thereby underlying its fictitious character…Turning into something else.

Makes no sense…/ Whatever…check my hard…/ Good…lemmie see…looks like it’s all right…now let’s make sure we can go online…damn…can’t find your wireless…/ Nevermind…plug me in. / But then you are not mobile./ I am… a little…but the point is not that I am mobile, but that we have another parameter in the act…I wanna have the cable in the frame too! / No…you can’t have a physical cable dissolve in  silence…it doesn’t work…gotta go wireless…/ OK, I can go wireless, but I still want to keep the cable plugged in…we’ll get rid of it as we go…it will decompose when disintegration hits the climax, OK?

Okay!

Lighter, doctor. / There you go…/ Thanks. / Can I…? /  Sure. / Thanks…/ Your foot all right?

Miraculous…/ Keys? / Better than ever… /Anything else I can help you with? / Can you doctor culture? / I was made for doin' it… / No make up though…/ This was below the waist…/ Oh, well…/ I know…that's a secret… howboutputtingsomemusic, huh? / Sure thing…Any preferences? Wishes? Desires? / I dunno…Count Ellington perhaps…/ You mean Count Basie? / No, it's Shirley Bassey…/ It's Duke Ellington…right? Do you swing? /  I love swing…make it LP, will you? / I agree…otherwise is too short…/ Play some Marvin Gay…/ You mean Gaye?

No, straight……T? / Sure…some black T to keep me up…/ Coming…/ Here it is…the finest brand of rare Massachusetts teas…ancient plants from the other corner of the planet brought to and grown in the New World…home brewed…

Mamacita! Now…take a small sip and observe how it slides down the throat…that’s part of the traditional MA T ceremony…/ MAST ceremony, here I come! / It’s not exactly the same, but you can go on…so, take a sip of MAsT, allow it to slide down your throat, and follow the epigrammar of the liquid…it normally takes a minute till it