When Volya was little (comment, Tanel Rander, September 2022)
NOTES FROM THE APARTMENT
6th of July 2022
Yesterday’s visit to the apartment. It looked like under construction. Floors were covered by industrial paper. On the left hand (in the corridor) there were two doors, probably bathroom and toilet, they seemed to have secondary importance in this piece. To the right there was a table phone, where visitors have to call, in order to get inside. After a few steps you had to turn to the left and you reached the kitchen, which was narrow and thin, parallel with the street. Also the window was oblong, wide. A view to the Selver supermarket. An old (from the early 2000s) X-ray of lungs was attached to the window. That is all I remember about the kitchen. My picture of it is an abstraction. There was a bit of mess but I cannot articulate how it looked, any details. The things on the kitchen table do exist in my memory, while their meanings haven’t unfolded yet. Between the kitchen and the corridor there was a closet. Someone had written “Forget” on it. Inside of it there was a screen that was supposed to show the video “Forget” by Jan Kaus and Sander Saarmets, but in that day it didn’t work yet.
That day I walked directly to the livingroom. There was a gramophone, making a bleak sound. The sound of Inga Salurand’s installation was a bit like this, although it had a soothing effect. In the middle of the room there was an armchair, golden-green. On top of it there was a white pillow with a red dot that might have been blood. As if someone had coughed into the pillow. This pillow was definitely a traumatic symbol. Next to the armchair there was a small table with “Species of Spaces” by Perec. The book was surrounded by elderly sugar cubes. There was also a plastic number “34” that might have been taken away from a door.
Something sad was in it. As if someone’s birthday had been celebrated. Or death day. Of someone who died at 34. Perec’s book and sugar cubes are there to soothe the pain. And blood is being coughed into the pillow. I also noticed a white thread hanging from the ceiling. As if someone had exercised making a loop. On the windowsill I noticed wings, left by dead butterflies. Someone had tried to fly with them once. Next to the wings there was an old photo album with nothing to show. When I let the cover of the album fall, it made a blow and the wings flew away.
Next to the living room there was another room. It seemed to represent asceticism and suffering. As I stepped inside, there was a sleeping place in the left. The mattress was extremely thin, I wasn’t even sure it was a mattress. Instead of blanket, there was bed sheet. The pillow was maybe smaller and thinner than the one with blood on it. To the right, there were some sort of crumbs on the floor, fallen from the wall where someone had scratched “IM MEMORIAM”. Someone must have died there! In the opposite wall, a bit further from the sleeping place, there were pieces of plaster on the floor. And naked wall of concrete or stone was grinning above it. Few steps more and I reached the balcony with a view to the backyard. Two guys were installing a swing. Its handles were made of metal and its base was made of concrete. Something that was supposed to mean “freedom” in Ukrainian was carved into this. Freedom carved into concrete! A swing in the backyard.
Back in the corridor, I stepped into the last room. Or actually the first room, if I would have turned into right immediately after entering the apartment. There was a glass table with an old worn out map. The map of Rakvere’s surroundings. In the other side of the map there was a handwritten text. In order to read it, you had to lay down under the table. The text said that someone (a soldier) got this map from a wounded man and kept it in his pocket in the 1940s. This map had good influence on him. He also wished that this map will not be given to someone else on the expense of blood. But then suddenly I noticed another text, a similar handwriting but written with different energy. It said that someone is the third owner of this map, which has good influence on him. I immediately thought that the worst had happened and blood had been spilled. If in the beginning there was a wounded man and then the main guy, then eventually the third person had appeared. Maybe from the red army. Still, the handwritings were too similar. I hope there was no third guy. I hope there was no blood.
Inheritance and shed blood (comment, Tanel Rander, September 2022)
7th of July 2022
Yesterday I came to the apartment just for a moment. To see the video “Forget” of Jan Kaus and Sander Saarmets. When I arrived, I went into the closet immediately, where I watched most of the video. Then I met someone and I needed to go to the living room. Things had changed there. The armchair had no pillow with bloodstain on it anymore. No idea if it had been brought to another room or thrown out.
Things that never existed, for example: life (comment, Tanel Rander, September 2022)
9th of July 2022
In cafe he sits close to the door.
When he drinks coffee, he puts a sugar cube into his mouth, then takes a sip.
He pretends that he has something important to do.
(Okay, it was Perec)
The truth is that he drinks coffee with sugar, he doesn’t smoke and he thinks about his reader. He has no story to tell, his life has always been one and the same.
One things still comes to his mind...
At the door of the same apartment nr 34 there is a neighbor with a bottle of vodka in his hand. Both the bottle and the man were full of vodka. Vodka helped the man to stand up. Alcohol was his spine. Alcohol brought him further, when he thought there is nowhere to go anymore in this life. He was radiating threat and the smell of vodka. But he expressed extreme humility. He asked permission for saying “Hello” next time.
REMARK: This all has happened somewhere. Tartu apartment and renovation. Neighbor in Kärdla, behind the door.
I remember landscapes, but my own life has been within it like an empty room.
A couple of banal pieces of furniture that you can find everywhere.
Day and night that change.The light of different seasons.
Wallpaper that slowly bleaches.
“Border state” by Emil Tode
REMARK:
life in the apartment is like
the empire of imagination
that opens up from the nest
of a sand martin.
