Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

by Olga Tokarczuk

Now it looked calm and satisfied, as if the spirit were pleased to be finally free of the matter, and the matter were pleased to be finally free of the spirit. In 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.

That’s why I try my best never to use first names and surnames, but prefer epithets that come to mind of their own accord the first time I see a Person. I’m sure this is the right way to use language, rather than tossing about words stripped of all meaning.

With age, many men come down with testosterone autism, the symptoms of which are a gradual decline in social intelligence and capacity for interpersonal communication, as well as a reduced ability to formulate thoughts.

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.

Only a piece of machinery could possibly carry all the world’s pain. Only a machine, simple, effective and just. But if everything were to happen mechanically, our prayers wouldn’t be needed.

Nothing could escape this register—as diligently as a chronicler the snow recorded the footsteps of Animals and people, and immortalized the infrequent tracks of car wheels.

I’d amuse myself like that for half an hour—playing the game of crossing the border. It gave me pleasure, because I could remember the time when it wasn’t possible. I love crossing borders.

In a way, people like her, those who wield a pen, can be dangerous. At once a suspicion of fakery springs to mind—that such a Person is not him- or herself, but an eye that’s constantly watching, and whatever it sees it changes into sentences; in the process it strips reality of its most essential quality—its inexpressibility.

Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion.

There’s no hiding from this pain, there are no pills or injections for it. It must hurt, just as a river must flow and fire must burn. It spitefully reminds me that I consist of physical particles, which are slipping away by the second.

We have this body of ours, a troublesome piece of luggage, we don’t really know anything about it and we need all sorts of Tools to find out about its most natural processes.

The only coarse and primitive Tool gifted us for consolation is pain. The angels, if they really do exist, must be splitting their sides laughing at us. Fancy being given a body and not knowing anything about it. There’s no instruction manual.

It’s a very cowardly attitude to mock or belittle everything, never be committed to anything, not feel tied to anything. Like an impotent man who can’t experience pleasure himself, but will do all he can to ruin it for others.

“Its Animals show the truth about a country,” I said. “Its attitude toward Animals. If people behave brutally toward Animals, no form of democracy is ever going to help them, in fact nothing will at all.”

Maybe it means that he who suffers has special access to God, by a side door, he is blessed, he embraces some sort of truth which without suffering would be hard to comprehend. So in a way, the only person who’s healthy is one who suffers, however strange it might sound. I think that would be in harmony with the rest.

Without any thought but with religious zeal, young people believe in statistics. It’s enough to give them something expressed as a percentage, or as a probability, and they take it in good faith.

Here things were quieter, the forest was like a vast, deep, welcoming refuge in which one could hide. It lulled my mind. Here I didn’t have to conceal the most troublesome of my Ailments—the fact that I weep. Here my tears could flow, bathing my eyes and improving my sight. Maybe that’s why I could see more than people with dry eyes.

Life is like an extremely demanding testing ground. From now on everything you do will count, every thought and every deed, but not for you to be punished or rewarded afterward, but because it is they that build your world. This is how the machine works.

The psyche is our defense system—it makes sure we’ll never understand what’s going on around us. Its main task is to filter information, even though the capabilities of our brains are enormous. For it would be impossible to carry the weight of this knowledge. Because every tiny particle of the world is made of suffering.