Hopin’: Nine Excerpts

Puneh Ansari

Artwork by Puneh Ansari

Darth Vader is such a cool figure!

so tragic, ridiculous, wretched & evil

After he became evil for decades being bad to everyone and taunting, he watches impassively for 30 seconds while his son gets tasered up before he gives himself a shove anyway via his civil courage a. transforms the emperor into a lightning bolt that he smashes pissed off into the air like a paper airplane
& after that no-one gives a shit

The bad guys are gone & there’s a pagan celebration





hi!

i’m looking for work again still maybe someone needs me for something

i could bring flyers to bars for eg?

You’re all artists and stuff like that always printing flyers (for whatever reason in 2015 when everyone’s strung out on Facebook, maybe to roll filters at the club or for the kitchen as fridge decoration under the fish magnets)

I’ll get your shit out there!

Otherwise you won’t have time for it anymore

I can give piano lessons glockenspiel lessons i can alphabetize people unfortunately the State locks down all these masses of potential income sources for itself (schools) and then gives you a dumb look when you show up

I can make fancy gaudy cakes for you (srsly) one takes 1 working day and therefore costs 100 euro minimum

:)

(y)

I can watch your nerve-racking kids!

i can bring your shunted-off grandparents all their stuff when they forget it, unlock doors for them when they lock themselves out in this lonely era of senescent isolation

But maybe i should do something decent which thats profit)able

Drug trafficking, human trafficking, arms trafficking



*

the Inuit got it right

i’m sad

i’m getting old

these “home remedies” just don’t work because cell division has shut down

the raw onions, healthy nutrition all in vain

everything that breaks from now on stays broken from now on

i cut my finger ..  doesn’t clot bleeds 50 years ..

i bust something .. 50 years a splint

i get sick .. 50 years a sore throat

50 years coughing

50 years sniffling

50 years hoarseness

where are the delightful times when i partied hard with 50 C fever for 3 days not batting an eyelash full power from the TU roof to uni from cafe drechsler to the embassy just bambambam all in one go like a God

in other cultures i’d be left behind in the snow to die so I wouldn’t be a burden to them

but here i have to, like i said about 50 years cirka you don’t die, that’s what it is .. struggle through with bandages from the dm drugstore and the pharmacy junk at the end of the day. added together those are expenses too .. gauze with everything, let’s say 10 euro a week, betaisodona paracetamol and salt etc. easily 10

makes 80 a month

960 / year

48,000 Euro in total until The End



*

i’m just imagining myspace as the backdrop of an opera

madama butterfly would be set in the ruins of myspace her house the halls of myspace full of fading pain the memories of a half-built life the half filled scaffolds of profiles in its midst simply left behind when everyone buggered off to facebookistan and only madama butterfly is still there alone and is torn from sleep by the sound of her breath



*

i’m pleasantly surprised

These Korean noodle soups at Spar. i didn’t think they’d be this fierce, especially since they don’t even have a matching chili on them with a sombrero waving at you from a throne of brown thorns of dried Asteridae, surrounded by arid fire and preserved pain, concentrated sharpness in its desiccated seeds. a stinging-nettle-god of jocular peyote countenance with a mega-smile. it’s just light green the package it opens on an appendicitis-noodle soup with chamomile tea included in case something perforates so nada burns ;) 

but it’s really hot! wow

like not “hot” for people with a tic, but hot-hot, so you no longer notice anything of the actual taste and the real world

it gives you a rush in your temples gets me wide awake and confident i want to tear myself loose screech farewell go off into tomorrow’s storm and cause a dazed ultra-fuckup with a bell jar over my head and return with my blissfully numbed body with a cool cherry-wood walking stick and an eye patch return from my bullshit-fairy-tale-adventures and report on the “Hurricane of the Century in Vienna, Nov. 30th 2015 15 degrees C drizzle”





we went for a walk in the forest and were suddenly unintentionally in Germany the policemen thought we were illegals haha

(that was in Schärding though .. also a kind of whatever city with a central fountain so they can exact subsidies as a cadastral municipality.)

And please who travels to the end of Civilization somewhere where there’s no postal code no cartography no human language anymore, only humans who run around like Neanderthals and expel barking sounds, with a mobile .. and then calls people up to ask where is there an inn early Sunday morning?? that’s paradoxical.

When you want to take part in human culture you don’t travel away from it. If i’m looking for a psychiatric establishment why am i searching for it in the forest?

When i obviously want to go out for a meal with people why would i climb into a hole in the ground with the dead and call up Life from the grave on my mobile

Why does one search anywhere for a fucking nail studio at whatever time, when one can’t articulate. It contradicts this entire hierarchy-of-needs pyramid. i’m sitting in the straw with a cudgel in my hand unwashed, and mouldy callouses 4 months no contact with anyone neurological blackouts semi-lateral paralysis of the tongue and instead of starting a bonfire so a mountain rescue service can come i deplete my phone battery to ask if there’s a tropical fish store in the area because one is thinking of a gift for a grandkid. It’s ultra-crazy what people do in shock





Should i window-garden in my death-hole?

Should i grow vertical-eggplants?

Or a robust winter root vegetable of straw, that grows best between nutrient-devoid barren stone fissures in war zones. it’s enough if you kick it 1x a month, then it develops a lot of extra vitamin C

Funny like with the basil .. ever since i stopped giving a shit in frustration and told it to “ok die already” you can’t force anyone .. it stands erect and is as green as a legion of ghosts sentenced to death coming to avenge their former lives among the still living because they’re bored in Eternity

Is something like this possible without a mess of tarps? and is there a harvest in it that’s at least -20 % in relation to effort and not -300 %?

Just the fact that one is hypothetically mulling over something this absurd is an intellectual death sentence,

that you’re grown-up now

You ritualize day-to-day life with easily managed minor things in order to cope with your awareness of what life really is and simultaneously deflect from the fact that the other which never was will never return except in your imagination and delusion but that’s also something .. now everything is imagination and delusion but you know that simply you’re no longer convinced you put a jasmine blossom in a vase and sniff at it in passing to comfort yourself. if only enthusiasm were a muscle you’d train so you could walk again





Should i subscribe to a newspaper?

Which one should i subscribe to?

Something substantial and of high quality but entertaining, i don’t read. With relevant themes you don’t need to blow up every bullshit about some new toll charge in the federal provinces and turn it into an article. Nonconforming to zeitgeist because the zeitgeist is deranged,

an intellectually profound magazine but stylistically hip

Doesn’t necessarily need to be in tune with the times

They can’t be conservative anti-socials merely reinforcing their own image of society with pseudoscientific articles “MRI Tomography > Women’s Brains Are Different .. Here’s Why,” but you also don’t need deep social concern and leftist solicitude smeared in your face with every 2nd sentence

Simply a good newspaper, not a bad newspaper,

A clear newspaper

A newspaper without a toupee, a newspaper without grand emotions, but not a cold newspaper

A newspaper in other words which appears to have been written not by mortals but by God



*

Muesli is supposed to be very healthy

If you want to drink it in the morning without your teeth or insides getting lost in an open hernia, you can either float it in lukewarm piss-milk into a crumbly mush

or simply soak it overnight, in the fridge

Then after the bedazzlement of a clearing swipe it conjures up a creamy risotto-gruel off the shelf like a rabbit out of a top hat and it smells like a field of grain with sunflowers in it that , that swims around in the scorching Fata Morgana of rabbit hutch with fresh hay and sliced fruit

Brown-welted sliced bananas soft pears starch protein & chancre

A waxy earplug-sludge that winds itself around all cells like a cocoon and protects them. From the pneumatic-hammer-park each day early in the morning, the entire days of Life

translated from the German by Genia Blum