on nothing, but dreams and train smoke

last night, you see, i dreamed (in) srpski for the first time (small words don't count). this is all related, i'm certain to the fact that i have now, officially, learned the past tense ("perfekat," as it's called, which completely confuses me even though it makes, ahem, perfect grammatical sense). oh, the joy: now i can discuss at length my *favourite* subject. it turns out, though, that Ivo Andrić (more on/in him later; am working on a translation project) also, enduringly, kneels at the alter of the "setiti se [to remember]" and its "sećanjima [recollections]." truly, though, even if we use present or future tense as the *manner* of speaking, everything worth saying originates from something in the past. this is *not* to say that it's "been said" already! [note: i am not continuing in this vein. be thankful.]

in any case, dreaming in a donned language presents several points of varying complexity. yes, yes, the first is the hope-triumph inherent therein—that the language has begun to embody rather than impersonate thought, that this will continue until the dual existence has been smudged into indecipherability. but dreaming? in another language (if this can even be said, i don't know)? let us suppose, for a moment, that the (bleeeeecccchhh) "wish fulfillment" hypothesis holds—i think that this sort of dreaming is different than all others. the wish is, itself, only, simply: to speak. but that this, in the dream at hand, occurs in a roundabout way dregs up yet another wish, but one that *cannot* be fulfilled in the dream, because of the constraints of reality. and yet, despite this or (i would say) because of it, that is how it, undeniably, occurs (in the dream). does this undermine the original wish (because, to speak in a second language is to do so less fluidly)? i hold, rather, that dreams are the practisings of wishes, iterations of what we can say and do and know—but in the interests of something beyond the chalkboard. we never have language, but only borrow it. when i dream that i am speaking brokenly, it is because i do so from morning to night. it is also because i know that if i ever cease this halting speech, waking or asleep, my mouth shall never again open in any language.

leaving NB today, i desired to travel further east (this whole spherical-globe thing is narratively problematic) than i have before. though i could do so by walking from the city, away from the setting sun, this seemed a poor substitute for what had begun to take shape in my mind. instead, i went down to the train station and weighed all the options. upon deciding to head to Bukurešti/Bucaresti/Bucharest/ブクレシチ/that city in Romania, seeing that i had just enough time to run to the apartment for belongings before the next train departed, and calculating that returns are less than two one-ways (hooray for partial right-thinkingness), i quickly purchased the ticket. soon enough, with tent, rain fly, sleeping bag (sigh, my foresight seizes me in its hitherto unprecedented quantities), and food (of *only* non- and imminently-perishable nature that i could scrounge from the house in 7 seconds) in tow, i found myself sitting on a long, brown 2nd class bench seat, the kind with which i have been intimately involved during my youth. by which i mean, when i spent all but one of 15 consecutive nights sleeping thereon. the familiar numberings on the back of the seats is a remarkable statement about humans, as we exist under the gloss and how we wish to look upon the external world: the four seats (from door/aisle to window) read 86, 84, 88, 82. the train started moving, but in such a way that i feared for the original premise of my plan. that is: towards Novi Beograd, from whence i had just come. that is: decidedly not east.

before the dimness that lit the flat lands over which we travelled faded completely, but after stopping for a long time in a station just outside of Beograd for the copious unloading of the cardboard boxes and cellophane-reinforced square bags often found at markets: a knock at the compartment door. [enter, young-enough man, carrying 2L plastic beer bottle.] soon enough, we were carrying on the sort of conversation that looks eminently casual on its surface but amounts to severe contortions and tending-of-many-fires-at-once in my brain. our lessons (1. Hello, My Name Is, 2. The Weather, 3. I Speak Serbian, and 4. Working and Living in Beograd) morphed into lesson #5, a discussion about how individuals are just that, without the overlaid political and national distinctions about which so much is made. i wasn't in a position to critique this rose monocle incarnate—nor did i especially want to: indeed, the exhilaration of supposed (sufficient for its purpose) understanding sapped my critical nature in precisely the dangerous manner described at great length on 24 September. the man was ethnically Romanian, had been working in Srbija for many years, and was returning to visit family in a village southwest of Bucuresti. wiith great bravado, he told me that he had bought no ticket before boarding the train and—just watch—he would slip the conductor a few dinars and that would be that. just when i was figuring out how to say "if i knew it better, i would evade the system and put even you to shame," the arm of the law came around for tickets and, wouldn't you know, refused to go along with the proposal, instead making out a ticket for an amount that was greater than what i would have paid for a single journey between Beograd and Bucuresti, though this man travelled a shorter distance. with this derailment, what had earlier been merely background noise developed fully into full onset of that trait, so unflattering and so (pardon me this) particularly male, of not only *being* persecuted—but of deriving essential nature therefrom and, because of such, witnessing its manifestation in every action. i would be the first to admit that there are certain inconsistencies and corruptions in governmental systems in this widely-bounded region. perhaps i would go so far as to, once, use the word "mafia." however, to denounce (without straying from that single, flattenedly descriptive term) everyone involved, for the sole reason that what was hardly a fool-proof, much less Kantian, plan came to naught—well, this became quite wearisome for your faithful narrator. moreover, an earlier conversational specimen that was touched upon, regarded, and left as unvalenced statement of fact now became a focal point (unimaginably sticking, as the ovals were drawn): my journey, itself. he could not comprehend my visiting a place without friends, there, to visit. if this aspect was in some way related to legalities/logistics (i had simply said that i had a visa, not that i did not require one; he looked at, and was confused by my passport, anyway), the second was not and, perhaps because it could not be, soon swept the "most belaboured" title. that is: how i could possibly venture to a place whose language i don't speak and where i have never been before (plus the above, summing to: no one to show me around). he asked me again and again, challenging me to tell him what i would ask in a taxi upon arrival. how could i say that there would be no such, that my feet know no language and, as such, no bounds?

darkness was well with us when, at his behest, i took the pen i'd just finished with and, copying from his own passport, i wrote out his vitals on the makeshift customs form we use in these liminal times to plead our Kafkian cases. as he looked on, i know not whether his amazement derived from the fact that i could deduce from the three languages given (none of which was "mine;" have i mentioned before that were 209375516 represented, i would likely still say that?) where to place each relevant fact—or that i could write, at all. the carinik (official) paid her visit, we presented ourselves; my presence saved him from the usual border hassle, so he said, and immediately returned to the litany of incredulity that worked itself around and around, always the same in concept, origin, and phraseology.

when i moved from the compartment, later, it was as because understanding and being understood no longer had anything to do with word order. shaken loose, against my will, from linguistic normativity (but not really "free"—or, if so, only as much as from, say, gravity), i could scarcely think in the clamourous repetition that, in the wasteland, descended; i grew confused, shamefully, as to whether its loudness was truth or flew in the face of reality—either of our momentary and arbitrary enclosure, or the one which, daily and in the outline of my self, i live.

when i brought out my passport again, later, it was while i slept and with hands as deftly grooved by unthinking as my feet. sleeping, i dreamt again in srpski and, this time, it had become pared and slow, looked upon with immeasurable blankness though it was without flaw.