The post posttruth journal
All your favourite distortions from here, there, everywhere and nowhere.
Sigrid needs money. She tries different things: Standing on a street corner with a clipboard: Hello, what do you know about the plight of deaf children? Starts off swimmingly. After two weeks of training she learns to smile warmly, look at strangers like she’s known and loved them her whole life, and tap into that old, weather-worn skill of disabling own you safe-person navigational system and creating illusion of warmth and intimacy to get agreeable results: Four sign-ups on her first day in Margate. The newsletter they circulate dubs her their ‘charity fundraising femme fatale’. Things go downhill from there: Only one sign up outside a bet shop in Surbiton that doesn’t clear. So she tries writing, translations. Another game, some overlapping rules. The rich boyfriend of her friend needs his posh travel website translated. Sophistication is so easy to fake, just like warmth. It comes down to word choice: So many expensive things are ‘marvelous’, aren’t they? Or, if you’re 19 and pandering to the bougie and tasteless, ‘breathe-taking’. You’d have no idea she was the granddaughter of a felon from the Hungarian slums, would you? In the game of upward-mobility, rule number one is: erase all traces of the past. What about that boxer, Attila, with your family name? No idea who that is. Anyone here with family friends who smuggle cars? Nope. Hungarians are famously masters of illusion. Forged documents of nobility were all the rage in the 19th century. Nowadays it’s all around delusions of lost grandeur. Who robbed us of our own fantasies that had us lose every war we ever got involved in? The answer changes everyday. Sometimes it helps to shake your fist at a stone that’s looking at you funny. Jo, the cold-blooded Norwegian in the family, was prudent: She knew that art was a game played between rich people, chucked her flute out, and followed in her father’s bootstrapping journalistic footsteps. They used to test each other on long drives in the car. What was the capital of Nigeria? When did the Tiananmen Massacre take place? Who was Gorby? Rapid-fire velocity, just like when they’d play whist and rumi together. First rule of journo club: Just know more. No one can erase the facts you have in your head. After a shaky start, she learns to write the chutz-pat of a middle-aged man, and is respected for it. Everyday at the keyboard is a performance of punchy and clipped copy. She draws people to her that see the play, not the performer. Play: Jo knew her judge of character was shaky at best and thought it prudent to take up self-defense classes. Performer: Jo hated violence. Jo had always felt a strange pull to the world of flying fists. She discovered, quickly, that, on the mat, people saw her. The performer. Saw how she moved and what this said about her mental state. The mistakes she made, the risks she took. Her compulsion to protect, to disarm, to grapple with those algorithms in this specific context. Here might have been the first place she’d been to in a long time where a forced smile and a fancy word was not a prerequisite for being included. Watch people. Her coach said. Everyone has patterns. The trick is to find the flaw in the pattern and exploit it. One day, he stood in the centre of the ring and instructed her to put on a helmet, and must have instructed her friend and sparring partner to go all out, particularly blows to the head. She was certain she’d outsmart him, but as fists rained down on her she found herself immobilized by her own rage and feelings of betrayal. A few moments later she stormed out of the gym, knowing full well that this was exactly the training she’d signed up for. That maybe she needed. Her sparring style changed. At first she was all about the charge. Get ahead of their first move and make them dizzy with offensive maneuvers. Like a news story. Who.What.Where.When:Why. KO. It’s very rare that you’d win by gassing out your opponent. Her coach said. I like to trap mine. The clinch against the cage. First. you have to goad them into position. There are two types of fighters: Movers, and blungeoners. Movers read you like a book. Blungeoners have raw strength and unending persistence. Her fighting style changed when she started to see sparring partners as fellow performers in little plays they were acting out in real time, that felt, thoroughly real. Two people speaking about things they don’t really know how to talk about but can somehow explain to each other now, some kind of connection coming out of that makes fake smiles and fancy words completely unnecessary. And that, despite whatever has been seen or shared in that little play of real, unspoken things, they’ll be an end-of-class amicable head nod and a See you next time. ResearchA few years ago I fell in love.
With two perfect angels. And when I say angels, what I mean is rats. Beautiful, charming, sensitive, energetic, intelligent, emotionally-complex rats. One, named Hermann, was rebellious, introverted and contemplative. The other, my gregarious and handsome Kotti, was a real party animal who just loved making friends, and having his photo taken. (...full speech incoming mid-August-ish.) She likes to sit on Jo's bed since she left. Scan the room. Remember. Wait. Dark pink linen curtains. Swaying slightly. Shimmering midnight sun beams on the wall that some years ago after Sigrid had crept in Jo told her were the old gods staring at them. Look, there’s your friend Loki making all his twisted babies. Like Fenrir. Yeah. He’s there. And there’s Baldr. Which one’s Baldr. What’s he look like? Baldr’s the one everyone likes. What happens to Baldr. Oh he dies and then all the gods get mad and kill each other and the world ends. What Loki too? I don’t know. I think he messed up or killed Baldr or something. Anyway he was cool. Nobody could tell him what to do. Just like you. Silver music stand. One sheet suspended sideways like a freeze frame image. Solveig’ song. Pencil markings: SOFT!!! It’s sad isn’t it. Yeah it’s supposed to be. Downstairs when a door slams. Jo wraps her arms around Sigrid and gently leans her chin on the top of her head. One photograph pinned to the wall. The garden. Long grass. Squinting Sigrid in pigtails, mickey mouse shirt. Arms wrapped around Jo at the waist. Jo in a white sundress, puppy Fenrir in her arms. Why wouldn’t she take this with her? A dark wooden desk, empty and clean except for a black jewelry box. Sigrid wanders over to open it again, as she has done multiple times these last weeks. A little ballerina spins. She closes and opens it again and again, there her mind's eye sketches Jo’s frozen grin.
No flute. She knows nowhere places. Places with no sea, no cool waves, no sand. She knows the never ending roots of a nothingland tree, the serpent that eats itself, the missing eye. She knows war. The pauses of breath that last too long. The clicks of imperfectly oiled keys, that silvery sound sharpening despite diaphragmatic resistance. She knows bloodsoaked places, sees over all nowhere worlds, knows mistakes before she makes them, knows that e to d flat, e to d flat, e to d flat still won’t get that fourth finger moving without a lag when it’s crunch time. Knows that body betrays mind regularly, and that mind rarely forgives. She watches a gentle god bleed, and the venom of winding serpents drip down majestic walls. She tastes wolf mauled giant flesh, sees the nowhere tree shudder, hears Odin’s endless questions that are met with no comforting answers. What if he had never asked the old witch how things would go wrong? The nothing gods shoot barbs into her darting knuckles as the fingernails of the dead float like blurry notes on the page. Does she know why are they always so far away when she needs them? She sees hot stars tumble, a blackening sun, an unleashed wolf, and an old witch hang her head and sink into oblivion, pulling the whole nowhere world with it. She knows nowhere places, but she knows somewhere places, too. Places with sea and cool waves and sand. Places with this tree, and that tree, and they all stand tall and smell good, and offer shelter. Places without self-eating serpents, but tiny little wobbly green blobs your sister finds in the garden and gently places on your nail, and you shudder a little bit but she tells you they don’t bite and that one day they’ll explode from a cocoon looking really cool. Places with simple major scales and arpeggios, and all the old songs you once learnt that flow so effortlessly despite all the wars you once waged against them. Places with loud, incessant barking, and a wolf’s tail that wags so enthusiastically it nearly capsizes you. Places where a door slams shut and a girl screams, ‘I’m never going to get this right’, and then an old witch rises from the earth holding Odin’s dripping, missing eye (it was probably never really his anyway) and says; “uff da. Better luck next time”.
Jo prepares for her flute recital, inspired by old norse end of the world myth 'Völuspá and the Red Army Choir Crowds heaving. White smog floating, stinging. Ding. Shattered ticket machine. Kale salad and pumpkin seeds. Enter. Ctrl-alt-delete. Enter. Canisters and bricks on disgorging streets. Sun’s lacerations. All you fight fans. Ctrl-alt-c. Ctrl-alt-p. Ctrl-alt-delete. Gleaming structures, towering shadows, shuffling reflections. Shadow boxers and entwined torsos. Toes darting, ropes bouncing, bodies capsized. Mouthguards in. Me against me. Arms up. Thuds and tussles. Taste of metal. Tap. Purple elbows. I said tap. You against me. Two. One. Three. Three. One. One. Don’t let him take your back. Psshh. Clanging barbells, swinging bags, bloody knuckles. Keep moving. Psshh. Psshh. Gloves dripping. Dash. Sandy sweat, glittering water, swam so far everyone’s a speck. Dash. Adapted to survive hostile environments. These coffee rings, I just can’t read. Meat cleavers? Ctrl-alt-c, ctrl-alt-p, ctrl-alt-delete. Bleeding Newsfeeds. Ding. They just like to play. Crazy baby girl, there ain’t nothing. Parry. They use us to play each other. Dash. Catch me if you can. Me against me. tap. Bodies in motion. sideways. Sprawl. Sprawl. Hands off his t-shirt. Sinews gleaming. Tires hurtling. Get him to the ground. Plates crashing. Me against you. Keep it Simple, Stupid: don’t take street fights to the ground. Better go now, curfew in an hour. Ding. Philosophical questions: What’s a red line if it only wobbles? What is another word for fear? Dash. Ghosts layered on ghosts layered on ghosts. Dash. face so pretty you don’t see a scar. Which proves. Ctrl-alt-delete. Dash. Ding. Easy. Oss. Head high. One two. Fake. three. Push kick. Push kick. Stop. Hold. Swivel. Side mount. Trap his ankles, trap his ankles. Fingers wrapping forearm. Forearm pressing bicep. My boa constrictor body. Elbow pushing elbow. And squeeze.
Tap. I said tap. Tap. This gorgeous, gleaming, electric city. And everyone got what they paid for. Inspired by that Hong Kong summer, 2019 Once upon a time, Sigrid went to school. She didn’t really like it very much, mostly because it came with the sensation of having something that lived inside her that would press itself violently into her chest at random and without provocation. Once upon a time, Sigrid watched her sister through the small window on the door of the music room. She thought she might stop to say hi, but that thing inside her told her to keep walking. Once upon a time Sigrid’s mother was sent a letter prohibiting either of the girls from bringing the family dog onto the school premises and to consider putting him through a ‘behavioral readjustment’ program that might curb his enthusiasm for biting minors. “Uff da,” said Sigrid’s mother, pushing her hair behind her ear and watching the letter fall into the bin.Once upon a time Sigrid found a pot of paint in the janitor’s closet which smelt very strong and nice and made her dizzy, like she was diving into nowhere. It made the thing inside her stop doing its thing for a bit. Once upon a time, there was a Sigrid before the Sigrid we are hearing about now. She lived in the same town as Sigrid does now, however this Sigrid lived a couple of generations before our Sigrid, long before there were hazy classroom hours and easy-to-access cans of paint. We do not know much about this Sigrid at all, just that she was very bad. She had more babies by more men than anyone was supposed to know about. In her photograph, she wears a dark corset and high collar. Her hair is pinned up high on her head, pulling tightly at her forehead. She stares straight into the camera, her hand rests on her sister’s shoulder. If she had her own thing inside her, it was also invisible. Once upon a time Sigrid lay down alone between the oars on the deck of her little boat in the middle of the fjord, took in the misty snow-capped mountains and jet black sea, and closed her eyes listening to the gentle lapping waves. This felt good too, like freedom. Like diving. Once upon a time, Jo rolled her eyes as she brushed her hair, watching an oil-splattered Sigrid trying to work their grandfather’s old chainsaw from the window of her bedroom. Once upon a time, Sigrid knelt down and looked straight into the eyes of the dog as if to remind him that best friends don’t hurt each other. That was good, too, knowing that he saw her and understood. Once upon a time, Sigrid went to school but failed all her exams and didn’t feel like going back. That thing in her chest made her write down all the wrong answers. Looking back, there were only two things she would miss: The way the janitor left clementines for her by the tins of paint he knew she was tucking into, and the sound of her sister’s arpeggios spilling into those echoing hallways whenever that soundproof door opened and let the outside world in. Like Sigrid, Jo had discovered diving routes of her own. Lucky for her, her method of transport was one that met widespread approval.
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Sarah KaracsA personality cult, but even more extraordinary. Archives
July 2024
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