who knows? it might be safer to stay here today in this once-living yellowed office room…to remain disguised inside this sticky word…in this tear…to prevail un-said like a proto promise…to be included…mmm an exquisite inclusion to be preserved inside the sticky “O”…uv degradation…golden tear…golden wall… golden hello…I saw them before…on the other side of the window…moving their mouths talking about liquidity…the ruins of their obsolete language…drooling between their gapped teeth…convictions too ripe to be harvested…sick mouths exudating…I won’t do this again tomorrow…call in sick? and I have to stop using promise as my only idiot go-to word for every possible future…for every possible future that is inside my skull thrilled to exist... right now! as I talk to myself! as I hear myself! they will think I am a pompous fool…maybe the best is to not move…to not be seen…to not be heard…can I choose? I will always choose exhaustion over preservation…but today I find myself inclined to sit and wait…I have tried flying for too long…it didn’t work…and I am ready to do a 65 million-years commute if that’s going to get me to the brightest version of myself…an insurmountable and shiny self…shiny and chromed…that’s what promises are about... right? like magic! under the spell the room is only present…it stays the same at every minute…maybe time commuting...maybe…maybe I should leave! or should I stay? maybe one day…or one evening…
“O”
only idiots can see through the glass they said…the warning said... a handwritten warning on a wrinkled napkin they passed around...with a smile on their mouth but not a word…it didn’t arrive to me…because if it did…I would have known! and not again to…to make a fool of myself whilst spending the whole evening flying against the window…flying against the glass...making drawings and making a fool of myself in front of everyone…drawing with the fat from my forehead…my own fat…my grease…my excess…on the glass…spread all over the surface…I have spent all that fat and all that time flying against the glass and still I didn't see it! the rest of the office was drinking and staring and laughing…taking photos and shushing…team-building-activities…they said…at the end of the night…they thought I needed to know and I needed to know…yes! tell me the secret! they told me…they enjoyed…I thought that was mean…said like this…in front of everyone…so mean! not my fault…not my choice…and I will never again trust their promises! promises supposed to bloom in pink and white out of this room…promises blooming like almond trees…out of this room…this yellowed room…the closest spring…the closest future…the closest tomorrow…on the other side of the window…how am I going to reach that? long efforts…efforts involving neck muscles…I sure need a ferryman…do I? do I? or...or I stay? stay…here? no! they will stare at me! staring at me from the past and from today and from tomorrow and from the day after tomorrow…what’s the difference? they will wear me out with their eyes…great sky opened eyes…train-station cappuccino opened eyes…transudation trophy opened eyes…eyes opened with powder milk…sticky tree opened eyes…trapped in their eyes one more time…although…I am not sure…I was not sure then and I am still not sure………maybe it’s not an eye...but a mouth? yes! with a cold breeze passing between their gapped teeth…trapped in their mouth…but never again to fail foully holding on to their promises…their mouth is casting the promises…my promises…future proof promises…verses for encouragement and strength served on the daily…or maybe it’s not a mouth but a word! I learned you need to breathe out to spell a word...so there has to be a way to get out of here...to be breathed out of here…out of here...but not again…to believe that I am flying away…out of here…although all I am doing is to stutter…to stutter the same old discipline worship with my body…stuttering with my forehead against the glass…a wall I can’t see is hard to penetrate…right? stinky sticky room…office mouth room with nicotine stained glass teeth...
kids eat candies and don’t brush their teeth…I heard…and their teeth break and fall…can we do something from that? we will take the shards of the broken teeth from the floor…take the shards and use them to scratch the time out of the room…use them as a blade…remove the dead skin from the world and get back to the time when the wood was green and not grey! far in time…as usual…I remember in that time there were no cigarette burns and no marks from wine or coffee on the table and now…there is not even a table…this place used to be something…used to mean something! a life affirming bureau or a life transforming bureau…I can’t remember…but it was something…with plants and tables and chairs…slick chairs…but now…now I don’t see anything or anyone…only wrinkles…at least on this side of the glass…do they see me? the fest is long finished and what is left? the echo of their promises and the bodies of the flies piling up on the ledge of the window…cousin flies...stutterer flies…who is going to eat all those flies now? I don’t see spiders around so far…thank god…I don’t like spiders…after all…not to be eaten is the hidden purpose of our existence…right? preservation…eaten by spiders or by age…what’s the difference? I do feel inside of a mouth...mouthed…ah no…it was a word…I said…I am inside a word…and the word is part of a promise…right! should we try to describe it? mmm…perhaps later on...I am already tired of myself…but it was a word and I am sure that it started with an “O”...
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
fragile in the morning I woke up and I gave myself a minute to listen to the word…to catch my breath and to listen to the word…what was it that I heard? ah! the voice of a worldly word…no…a worldly world! wait! it isn’t worldly! it is a highly designed and highly engineered world…the voice of a perfect world…full of promises…endlessly crumbling…under an untroubled great sky…yes! that’s why the city exudates...I guess…big drops of resin slipping down a skeleton of beams and columns…sticky tree…sticky sick tree with very transparent windows… and there was a bridging sticky tear I felt running down my cheek…in the morning…I think… from the eye to the mouth…from the past to the future…and I wished we could rewind the tear back to the eye and spit it into the socket…this time mixed with the fresh breath of the candies and a bit of blood from my gums…or someone else’s gums…fortune frog…toad in the hole…I don’t know where that would take us…I mean…I know…to yesterday…but I don’t know if I want to be there anymore…yesterday feels so long ago…maybe years! this must be a scientifically known medical condition related to the brain...I am no doctor but I call it cell degeneration…that’s common…nothing lasts forever…unless it is carefully wrapped to be opened by future people: the bloodsucking words and the unfulfilled promises we leave behind…they leave behind! like fossils…
Omen is the script of an audio piece, part of a site specific installation with the same title for Bologna.cc, Amsterdam 2023.