Time Shelter

by Georgi Gospodinov

Past eras are volatile, they evaporate with ease like an open bottle of perfume, but if you have the nose for it, you can always catch a whiff of their fragrance.

The bright future gives me heartburn, he once told a group of friends. (That, of course, immediately got written down). Shortly thereafter Brodsky, if I recall, formulated it more beautifully, but it was the same idea: “My objections to that system were not so much political as aesthetic.” Nevertheless, I prefer Mr. N.’s formulation. His objections to the system were physiological.

We are constantly producing the past. We are factories for the past.

We eat time and produce the past.

This will be our final attempt to survive in the face of an impossible future, the chairman in blue was saying, we must choose between two things—living together in a shared past, which we have already done, or letting ourselves fall apart and slaughtering one another, which we have also already done. Both options are legitimate.