The Physics of Sorrow

by Georgi Gospodinov

A long chain of secrets and lies that made us a normal family. Like all the others. That was the greatest trick of the whole conspiracy—being like the others.

Later the myth will transform the child into a monster, so as to justify the sin of his abandonment, the sin against all children, whom we will abandon in the future.

If you put some effort into appearing normal, you can save yourself a lot of time, during which you can be what you want to be in peace.

If we draw the line, it turns out that nothing organic is suitable for collecting. A world with a permanently expiring expiration date. A perishable, shriveling, rotting, deteriorating (and thus) wonderful world.

To forget a relationship, some try promiscuous sex, I tried promiscuous geography. I picked cities at random, usually travelling by train, I changed stations and hotels,

I looked like a person who wanted to abandon his own abandonment around some corner. Like someone looking for a distant and unknown place to release the cats of his sorrow, so that they would never find the way home. Do you know how hard it is to get rid of cats? They possess an incredible homing instinct, astonishing memory.

The ideal hotel room should not recall anyone’s previous presence. Cleaning the room after the guest checks out is above all about erasing the memory. The bed must forget the previous body, new sheets must be put on and stretched tight, the bathroom must be shined to a sparkle. Every trace of a prior human presence—a hair on the sheet, a faded lipstick stain on the pillowcase, is a disaster. Only oblivion is aseptic.

the cheaper the hotel, the more furious the fucking.

First, you forget what happened yesterday, the most distant, out-of-the-way stuff is the last to go. In this sense, you always die in your childhood.

The most oppressive thing about the labyrinth is that you are constantly being forced to choose. It isn’t the lack of an exit, but the abundance of “exits” that is so disorienting. Of course, the city is the most obvious labyrinth.

The years are a rushing river, flowing day by day In its currents youth and childhood are swept clean away . . . The years they are like song birds, flying south in fall But unlike birds the years will never return to us at all. (9) We grew old before we grew up .

In the end, old age has made everyone equal.