Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

by Olga Tokarczuk

Oh yes, the human body is most definitely inhuman. Especially a dead one. Wasn’t it a sinister paradox that now we had to deal with Big Foot’s body, that he’d left us this final trouble? Us, his neighbors whom he’d never respected, never liked, and never cared about? To my mind, Death should be followed by the annihilation of matter. That would be the best solution for the body. Like this, annihilated bodies would go straight back into the black holes whence they came. The Souls would travel at the speed of light into the light. If such a thing as the Soul exists.

this short space of time a metaphysical divorce had occurred. The end.

Anger makes the mind clear and incisive, able to see more. It sweeps up the other emotions and takes control of the body. Without a doubt Anger is the source of all wisdom, for Anger has the power to exceed any limits.

Here the winter does a beautiful job of wrapping everything in white cotton wool, and shortens the day to the utmost, so that if you make the mistake of staying up too late at night, you might awake in the Gloom of the following afternoon, which—I frankly admit—has been happening to me more and more often since last year. Here the sky hangs over us dark and low, like a dirty screen, on which the clouds are fighting fierce battles. That’s what our houses are for—to protect us from the sky, otherwise it would pervade the very inside of our bodies, where, like a little ball of glass, our Soul is sitting. If such a thing exists.

I could feel an itching, pulsating energy seeping into my muscles—just a little more and it would blow my legs off from inside.

Sometimes, when a Person feels Anger, everything seems simple and obvious. Anger puts things in order and shows you the world in a nutshell; Anger restores the gift of Clarity of Vision, which it’s hard to attain in any other state.

Sometimes I feel as if we’re living inside a tomb, a large, spacious one for lots of people. I looked at the world wreathed in gray Murk, cold and nasty. The prison is not outside, but inside each of us. Perhaps we simply don’t know how to live without it.

Finally, transformed into tiny quivering photons, each of our deeds will set off into Outer Space, where the planets will keep watching it like a film until the end of the world.

As I gazed at the black-and-white landscape of the Plateau I realized that sorrow is an important word for defining the world. It lies at the foundations of everything, it is the fifth element, the quintessence.