| You think you’re going to experience something, and you may even actually experience it, but then suddenly you realize that you didn’t experience anything, and it doesn’t bother you at all. It doesn’t bother you that you can’t remember anything about what you didn’t experience and what you experienced. It doesn’t (...)
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| | Down Garwolińska to the end, then hang a right onto Makowska along the railroad tracks toward Olszynka. Sometimes all the way to the roundhouse. The street looked like a village road; on hot days it would be lined with guys sitting and drinking. Branches of fruit trees reached over the fences. (...)
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Joanna SzczepkowskaExtracts from the Life of a Mirror
About the book
As I entered the room and found myself in the middle, uncertain what to do, my eyes fell on that box. Tiny, made out of cardboard with some Turkish design, it was sitting on a book shelf. To be honest, it had always intrigued me. First, it had no label, which was strangely out of character; second, it always failed to respond to my attempts at gauging its energy. As if it lacked aura or as if it locked it inside, completely shutting itself off from the outside. Somehow I never dared ask Mark what was inside.
Now I felt its extraordinary power of attraction. It became saturated with light so that the rest of the room faded. Yet I was unable to budge. I felt like an idiot to have yielded to a petty weakness at such a dramatic moment. I was approaching it, stopping at each step as if I were climbing over invisible hoops. The most difficult thing was to touch the box. If Mark were around he would let me know whether I could do it. Nothing is happening. Slowly, I lift the cardboard lid.
The box contains four letters, one postcard, and a girl’s photograph. I am unsure whether I will read them, but I want to take a closer look. I sit down on the floor. One of the letters is much older than the rest. The handwriting on the envelope captivates me with its clumsy letters and I clearly sense a female energy. Of course, I might be merely influenced by the photograph. But, after all, people send Mark pictures of their relatives all the time, and it isn’t necessarily the author of the letters.
The picture is in small format, as ID or passport photos. The girl’s head is leaning abnormally to the right and her face isn’t pretty. She can be nineteen years old, there are still traces of childhood in her features, a certain chubbiness, lack of character; her eyes are the only sign of maturity. As if they belonged to someone else, they are marked with sadness and experience. I place my hand over the photograph. Mark was long teaching me how to learn from objects imbued with someone’s energy. I attain basic levels of consciousness and unite with my spiritual guide. To this day I am not certain whether my conversations with the guide are not projections of my own thoughts, whether he is not make-believe. But I have witnessed so many times Mark’s exceptional talents. So many times was I at his side when he could see things and events at distance; so many times did he repeat that each person can develop this ability that I finally started believing that the voices I hear in my thoughts do not emanate from me, and even if they do, thought is precisely the force I seek. Mark would always say: “Thought is energy. We must not destroy it. With the help of thought you can achieve anything you wish. Mind contains everything.”
But now I am unable to think. Or not to think. No “peace” comes over me and I cannot alter my “state of consciousness,” so the spiritual guide won’t appear.
The only way to find out, then, is by opening the letter.
Actually, it’s already open. A piece of paper torn out of a notebook sticks out of a discolored envelope. The date on the stamp is barely visible and I have to get up (I should have taken off my coat, but that’s a waste of time) to go over to Mark’s desk and take a magnifying glass. As soon as touch it, I am seized by vertigo. It was only momentary, and I managed to steady myself on my feet and hold to a corner of the desk. A mistake. I shouldn’t have thoughtlessly invade the space of the table top. This is Mark’s territory, filled with his thoughts, work, concentration, emotions; wheras I extracted the magnifying from it as if I were uprooting it. I should have done it gently, tame it with my thought and memory. What’s done is done. I sit back on the floor and, applying the magnifying glass to the envelope, I can clearly read the date: 5-5-1986.
I did not know Mark then, yet. I had no idea I would come to live next door with my aunt Stasia. At times, when I dropped by to have some of her apple pie, I saw people hanging around by the neighbor’s door. My aunt had informed me that they were waiting in line to see the “thaumaturge” whose apartment was too small to contain everyone: “It’s no wonder they’re coming, my dear; he’s a genius, you must meet him. He lives like some hermit, doesn’t even have a TV; cured my glaucoma in three sessions, and healed the nerves of that woman who feeds the cats in the neighborhood, you know, the one whose husband left her for a stewardess; and when the grocery store was robbed, he only had to touch the sales lady’s neck, after they had put a gun to her head, to know that the criminals are in a cellar by the intersection.”
I was always annoyed by these stories and the mystifying tone in which they were told and which was supposed to indicate that I am admitted into a magic circle known only to lonely women. I was 25 years old at that time, happily married, living in a spacious house inherited from the family; I loved music, horse-riding and poetry; I was writing my dissertation and life held no mystery: everything depended on the creativity of my day filled with movement, plans, and goals.
Translated by Ela Kotkowska
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There are more than 31,000 publishers registered in Poland. However, the market is highly concentrated. The 300 largest publishing firms still hold almost 98 per cent of it. More »
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