The main reason why I must write chiefly about things that amuse me and why I cannot take myself or what I write seriously is that for the whole of my life I have lived, and continue living, in comfort and enviable health. For my entire life I’ve been healthy and strong; I have never caught any serious disease or virus, hardly needed to visit a dentist or a doctor, never broken a bone or anything of that sort, nor have I seen a shrink or a therapist or a counsellor. It’s chiefly my enviable health that prevents me from taking myself seriously: how could I take myself seriously when I have never been properly sick or faced any hardship, when fate never subjected me to challenges that would make my knees buckle? In other words, how could I ever write anything serious when I have never experienced a single tragedy in my life? It’s then only natural that under these circumstances I can never ever treat myself seriously, whether I want to or not, because how could I, being healthy and strong all my life, and therefore pathetic, hope to ever write something serious? And this pathetic situation inevitably leads to hearty laughter, echoing and peeling laughter that makes Svetlana knock on the door and yell, Be quiet, please, which only intensifies my amusement and makes me laugh even louder, to her great inconvenience and irritation at this late hour. Just as my peeling laughter indicates, I promised myself to write about things that are not and should not be taken seriously by anyone in their right mind, for it’s quite impossible for anyone to take what I write seriously if they are right in the head, if they know, that is, that I cannot take myself seriously in the first place. It’s evident that if the author cannot take himself seriously, then the text cannot be serious either. Therefore it baffles me how anyone could take me seriously when I am nothing but pathetic; it never, I mean really never ever, no matter how many times this has happened in the past, fails to amaze me that people are capable of taking me seriously, when I am nothing but the opposite of serious; and on the other hand, I cannot fathom how anyone could take what I write seriously, because, as I said, an unserious author cannot write anything serious; so my writing is absolutely devoid of any seriousness and cannot be seen as anything other than unserious, meaning that who writes and what is written, all things considered, is most unserious, whichever way you want to look at it: whether you think of the author or the text; and so whenever anyone dares to take me and what I write seriously, I cannot help but laugh to my heart’s content at what I feel is nothing but an incredibly dull joke. So sitting behind my desk at night with my right leg tucked under my butt as canned laughter from Svetlana’s sitcoms percolates through the cardboard walls, I write about things that chiefly amuse me, which inevitably means writing about my family, because nothing else in this world makes me as unserious as my family, precisely because my family consists of people who take me extremely seriously, devotedly seriously, and never unseriously, as they should if they had any sense; in fact, one grain of sense, one mere grain of sense would be enough for them to understand that I shouldn’t be taken seriously. Bearing in mind the fact that I’m healthy and strong and that being healthy and strong is my ultimate punishment in this world, it’s outrageous that my family thinks that I need help when it is they who need help, because I am the one who is healthy and strong, but not they who, if they were healthy and strong and in their right mind, would inevitably see that I could not, whichever way you look at it, be taken seriously, or helped. Indeed, what chiefly amuses me about my family is that they seem to be utterly bamboozled by my enviable health, that is, my unparalleled skill in justifying my existence to myself no matter what happens in my life; just as they cannot understand how I can live happily through my strength like some moron or idiot who simply cannot despair in his enviable health. Yes, despair is so distant, so inaccessible to me that I cannot even conceptualize despair; I cannot even entertain despair, and quite naturally, such a preposterous notion as feeling despair is even more alien to me. I would even go so far as to say it’s nigh impossible for me to experience despair. That’s not a belief but the truth that goes beyond the pale; this idea of despair is simply beyond my comprehension solely because of my enviable health, which, in its last judgment, is also my greatest punishment. Yes, my family is absolutely beyond absurd in seeking to help me, because they are not aware of my unparalleled skill in justifying everything that befalls me in the best possible way, to my advantage, to my survival and my well-being, as we love to call it these days; they don’t seem to understand how I can be most lenient with myself and most draconian in my judgments of others, and how this can ultimately produce health within me and as unavoidably result in my unseriousness. One must bear in mind, however, that I am by no means frivolous: that’s something completely different from unserious. Unlike frivolity, unseriousness is a conscious choice. I must specify this before I really begin writing about what amuses me most—my family, my most devotedly serious family—for these folks seem never to learn, repeatedly falling into the trap of calling me frivolous. Had they at least one grain of sense, they’d know that I’m neither serious nor frivolous, which is the plainest truth about me, as clear as the sun shining in a cloudless sky—that I am chiefly unserious. That’s an altogether different thing: being unserious, as opposed to being frivolous, as my family members sometimes take pride in seeing me, which is obviously wrong, because I’m not that; I’m anything but frivolous, just as I am anything but serious. More than that, my health and strength result chiefly from being neither serious nor frivolous, and in associating frivolity with my name, my family attempts to weaken me, and by saying that I am frivolous, they want to make me believe that I am. Health and strength simply do not mix either with seriousness or frivolity, just like oil does not mix with water, and that my family attempts to do so is quite rightly the reason why I find it so amusing, the most amusing thing, in fact, to write about and laugh so loud that Svetlana must come at this late hour and rap her gaunt hand on my door and tell me Please, be so kind and make less noise, which I do, being a gentleman, until I cannot hold myself anymore and burst out laughing even louder once I hear her steps recede, like a reprimanded child who does not take his punishment seriously, for how could I when I did nothing wrong? My family simply cannot possibly understand me, no matter how hard they try, for the idea of robust health to them is as alien as an idea of despair is to me, alien through and through, that is, so alien that neither they nor I can do anything to understand what it means, leaving us completely devoid of the ability to understand one another. But the main difference is that they still have hope, or sometimes no hope at all to understand me, which is the same thing if you look at it closely, just as it is the same thing when they see me as either serious or frivolous, and not unserious as they should. That being the case, I saved myself from countless inevitably futile conversations trying to explain this to my family, for without a single grain of sense in their heads, I could not possibly begin doing so, as that one grain of sense is the necessary condition for even attempting to explain myself in a way they could understand. At the end of the day that’s precisely what makes it chiefly amusing to me: this gap between me and my family and what, on top of that, makes this incredibly funny—a whole other level of funny, I’d even go as far as to say metaphysically funny—and what makes me laugh so loudly at night as to make Svetlana come rap her bony hand on the door, knuckles worn out from all this knocking throughout the years I lived under the same roof as her, asking me Can you please be quiet, I’m trying to watch TV for goodness’ sake. And this laughter, this laughter that makes Svetlana come shuffling in slippers just as worn-out as her knuckles rapping on the door, asking to be quiet please, this laughter makes me cough and this cough makes me realize, suddenly as I cough, that my right leg tucked under my butt is entirely numb, as numb as numbness goes, entirely immobile and lacking blood circulation, as good as dead, just a flaccid piece of flesh, a phantom limb; this laughter and cough and numbness in my leg makes me realize that I simply cannot ever be anything but robustly healthy and strong, because even when I twisted my ankle a fortnight ago, I knew, just as suddenly as realizing how numb my leg was, that any setback was but a path to more health and strength, because I would inevitably get more healthy and strong, as in fact happened, because the moment you are sick and go through convalescence and recovery, you come out stronger and healthier than you were before, so even this setback, my badly twisted ankle, in the end led to health and strength, actually making me stronger and healthier, and of course, proportionately bolstered my unseriousness and caused louder laughter at this late hour tonight to Svetlana’s grave consternation. But I digress, for I promised myself to write about things that chiefly amuse me, and health and strength do not really amuse me, because I have not chosen my enviable health or rare strength, while on the other hand, my family I did choose, as strange as it might sound, for I chose what we say we precisely cannot choose, you don’t choose your family, we say. That is common sense: you don’t choose your family, we say, but common sense is just inverted logic, perverse logic; in fact, common sense is inverted logic that has forgotten its inverted nature; forgetfulness is thus what necessitates common sense to be common sense, what makes it. That’s the main reason why I decided to write about things that chiefly amuse me. I cannot talk about these things because talking belongs to common sense, which is only inverted, perverse logic; so quite naturally I cannot talk to my family, because my family consists of nothing but common sense and not a single grain of sense, which leaves with me no other choice but to write about them. Besides, if I were to talk to my parents about things that chiefly amuse, say, to my father, I’d be doing the impossible, not only because all he has is common sense and not a single grain of sense, but because he couldn’t hear me physically, as his ears are full of hair. Those bushy tufts, I am sure, must impede his hearing, for whenever I try speaking to him, he looks at me with eyes full of fear, like a cornered animal, as though my words stem from a parallel and totally incomprehensible universe; through those large ears of his, he can hear only common sense, and these bushy ears of his just keep growing larger each year and, I’m afraid, soon enough he’ll consist of nothing but ears, ears from head to toe that can hear nothing but common sense. Nothing but common sense can penetrate those bushy tufts sticking out of his ears. Spiritually, he consists of nothing but work, and because spiritually he consists of nothing but work, family does not exist for him as such; family for him is just a derivative concept, a concept derived from work, because that’s all he has; he has only work. Now my mother: physically, she only consists of her mouth, a mouth filled with common sense and not a single grain of sense, physically she’s but a mouthful of common sense, and spiritually she consists of nothing but family, so work is but a derivative concept, inevitably family work, and in this opposition, they make an excellent pair, my parents, because all they can hear and talk about is common sense through and through, despite occupying distinctly separate worlds, of work and of family respectively. In either case, family is but an aberration for both of them, just as it is for me, but for precisely different reasons than it is for them, and obviously, this metaphysically funny gap is what chiefly amuses me; our different understandings of why family is an aberration is what makes it so amusing. For my father, family is an aberration because all there is is work, plain and simple, everything that follows, that falls out of work, that is unworkable, is an aberration; now for my mother, family is an aberration because all there is is family, everything is family, work included, family work, that is, and family is an aberration because nobody else seems to see that family is everything, absolutely everything there is, indeed that’s her despairing notion, nothing but family exists and yet nobody seems to care. So, quite logically, once you operate within the common sense of my parents, when you use inverted and perverse logic, you don’t choose your family, because on the one hand, all there is is work, ergo no family to choose; and on the other hand, all there is is family, ergo you don’t choose. Now for me it’s crystal clear that you indeed choose your family, contrary to common sense. Obviously, they’d say, my parents would say, if I were to talk to them about things that chiefly amuse me, that I use perverse logic and once you have this word logic behind you and you say that someone’s logic is perverse, then quite naturally, all you can do is stop talking, and if you are me, start writing about things that chiefly amuse me, as I promised myself, laughing to my heart’s content and hearing how Svetlana, in her nightcap on her head and with aluminum spoon in her hand, drummed on the radiator, trying to shush me down. It’s my sister’s passing, her death from a glioma, a malignant tumor, just before she turned four, that resulted in my parents turning to common sense, and what resulted in me becoming robustly healthy and strong. My sister’s passing from a malignant tumor is what opened this metaphysically funny gap between my parents and me for the last twenty years, indeed what made us speak over one another, speak and understand nothing of what one or the other had to say, speak in completely different languages, bird languages, as I like to say. I loved Gabriela to the moon and back, to Neptune and back, if you will. Weeks before her death, as I saw her dwindling, diminishing before my eyes, already more than partially dead, with one foot out there, sleeping for sixteen to twenty hours a day, waking up only to hallucinate in her drowsiness, unable to swallow food or saliva and rattling like Death itself, I saw the gap open between my parents and me, an unbridgeable gap, a gap between life and death, I saw open between us. While I saw nothing but Death around me, they saw, in their common sense, nothing but life in the passing of my little sister. Of course, no one would have said that, looking from outside, outside my family, for it was only I, I only, who could see that they saw life in the passing of my sister and not death, as they should have. They called my stance a perverse logic, while it was obviously them who were the perverse ones in their common sense, saying that life must go on, we must bear it, bear this burden that came down to haunt our family, this tragic passing of my beloved sister Gabriela, and move on, move on, they said, we had to move on, they said, unbelievably, these creatures, my parents, said we had to move on, for what else was there to do but move on, they said, and they kept repeating this over and over, we must move on, they repeated, repeated until they started believing it, which to my sense was utterly ludicrous and had dishonesty written all over it, because they started believing it out of repetition, out of habit, nothing else, which is utterly perverse, to believe out of habit. To believe out of habit is as good as being dead, but for them, in their world lacking a single grain of sense, they who can only hear and talk common sense, for them that’s life. So what they are—my parents, my family—nothing else but dead people walking. The fact that my father had nothing but work and my mother nothing but family is the surest proof that they are dead people who pretend to be alive. So it’s not surprising they are chiefly what amuses my robust and enviable health, for how could a dead man hear someone alive, or how could someone alive hear a dead man? And perhaps it’s not incidental that I call them amusing things most of the time, because I cannot see them as human beings; in their common sense, they seem to exist in a universe where there is no spirit, no vitalism, and only mechanical laws that blind and confine them; they exist, in other words, as objects among objects. It’s not surprising, then, that all they possess are so-called serious attitudes toward work and family respectively, and that everything that falls out of these categories must be either squeezed back inside these categories or avoided at all costs, to the point of ignorance, as it is with me, just as with me, they try to squeeze me into brackets of seriousness or frivolity, though it’s quite clear I’m neither, and any such squeezing in would mean death on my part and murder on theirs. They seem to be quite intent on killing me; indeed it’s a decree by which they live, it’s a law they must abide by. They’ve been persistent for more than twenty years now in their attempts to kill me; in fact, to their dismay they might also be the sole reason why I’m healthy and strong, since they have been trying to kill me, and, as someone at constant danger of being murdered must always face the possibility of death, I had prevailed and have been made healthier and stronger by these creatures, insatiable creatures whose sole purpose is to kill me, just as, I am sure, they killed my sister, cramming her head with so much common sense that a malignant tumor grew in her brain and killed her. It must’ve been a physical reaction to the killing of one’s spirit, a psychosomatic response, her high-grade infratentorial glioma spreading and spreading until there was not enough space in her tiny skull, to the point that this tumor of common sense affected her vital functions and induced drowsiness, hallucinations, seizures, and eventually death. Death from common sense. Conversely, I am alive only because Gabriela died, I am alive solely because of her, I am healthy and strong because of her, I am unserious because of her, everything that I am is chiefly because of her. And to come back to the point of choosing one’s family, I chose Gabriela to remain my sister, even though they snatched her from me, my so-called parents, and in this I chose my family, in precisely taking the stance of negating them, rejecting their ties to me. They say but that’s not how it works, you cannot choose your family, they say, we are in this together and we must move on together, and so forth, they say in their inverted, perverse logic, while it’s obvious to anyone who has at least one grain of sense that they are simply wrong. No, we don’t have to move on, no such thing is a must, it never was or will be. And then they say, always, inevitably, the same thing. It always starts with It goes without saying, they say, it goes without saying, and of course they proceed to say, It goes without saying, you cannot choose your family, so we must move on together, even if all of us know it’s an aberration, family is. And this chiefly amuses me.
