The City Diaries

by Attila Bartis
The non-writers think that each writer has a notebook or diary ? such as spies and talebearers have ? to put the suspicious images of the world down into it. In fact, not so many writers have a notebook of this kind, and if so, it is often empty or lost. Writers have notebooks of course but they do not put the images of the world down into it for they keep these images in their mind instead. They take notes of what they see in their inner self. Mainly feelings, words and phrases which are not to be forgotten because on their soil – at home – there will be a great novel built up. Or if this novel was not great at all, it would be large enough to contain everything the writer knows about the world.
I represent one of the few exceptions. I have a notebook in which I collect spectacles of the outer reality. This reality will never get into any of my novels because if it happened it would be a proper remark from the critics that I have lost my sense of reality. I keep gathering the sort of reality that somehow flies above imagination. I get myself accustomed to something. This something is hard to explain. This something is as incomprehensible as infinity or God. However, it is originated from human existence. To be exact: from big city life human existence. Those days when I received the invitation to write this speech I just moved from an average Central-European capital to the back of beyond. Anyway, the location is not so precise since the back of beyond means that a region, physically and spiritually, could not be farther away from us. The centre of the world indeed is always where we actually are. Nevertheless, the location and the spiritual feeling of the back of beyond can sometimes cross each other’s way. These intersects finally result in centres of the world in the back of beyond. Like Paris, Shanghai or New York – definitely when we are in none of them. If occasionally we were in Paris or Shanghai or New York, we start to think about rain forests, deserts or prairies. This feeling is called longing. And longing is such an illness of the human race like love. And their origin is also the same: reality and imagination crosses each other. Anyway I moved to a village, to the fringe where I am surrounded by trees, bushes, dogs, cats and mosquitos which make me think of defencelessness, mortality and human genesis all the time. On the other hand, the house is comfortable enough to provide an active refrigerator and an electric razor in it.
Saying “No” to the question whether any comfortable cities exist would be totally absurd. More than half of the Earth’s population lives in cities these days. We are pressed together in 7% of the places that are suitable for human life. And we are not under duress; we do it of our own free will. Rural circumstances would afford a more comfortable way of life than the one can be lead in the city. One could find a job, would not have to freeze to death in subways, would be able to get food, water and firewood for winter. The city still remains the one and only place for us indeed. In one and a half decade from now there will be no more cities existing but one extremely great city, the name of which we do not know yet, nowadays we still call it the Planet Earth. In this future city everybody will own one hundred and fifty square metres – this is the statistical data. By the way, reality arranges square metres in another way. If one was sceptical about the future, he or she could be persuaded by citation of the past. By the end of the world’s biggest massacre, the Second World War, there were one hundred and seventy-five million more inhabitants on the planet than on the day the fight began. More people live nowadays in Hiroshima and in Nagasaki than before the nuclear bombs exploded.
We can say that cities have become more and more comfortable from the ancient times on, since they have met more and more people’s claim. And we all know well what people’s claim is. In the nineteenth-century Europe we built so massive blocks of flats the cellars of which were strong and deep enough to save people’s lives during the bombings in the Second World War. Let me go further: the walls of Jericho can be seen even today, though the demolition of them was made by God himself. It is certainly not accidental that in Hungarian the difference between the word castle (vár) and city (város) is only two sounds. Homo sapiens’s most important claim is safety. Or as we call it nowadays: comfort. And one feels comfort and safety among other people. In the crowd. The mass. Which we called some ages ago simply a horde.
However, city provides safety and comfort. Or some sense of security. A horde surrounded by huge walls. Who has the same angst – except for some claustrophobic nuts – in a cheerless hotel room on the thirty-second floor and in the skirts of the forest where shadows move and the wind blows, where the bush trembles of sparrows and the lightning strikes a tree nearby? The faith in the city and its walls is nothing but a demand on a good and tranquil sleep, as well as the certainty of the awakening tomorrow. This faith is stronger than any religious faiths that say there is no problem if we never wake up again at all.
So, as I have said before, those days when I got the invitation to write this speech I just moved to the countryside. I have never thought that I could use my notebook collection at any time but now I have the intention to offer a bunch of observations from it.
ZOO
One morning the caretaker, while making his daily round in the zoo in Leipzig, Germany, found three dreadful creatures in the cage of the brown bears. These monsters had wrinkled grey skin, and they were partly hyenas, partly aliens, partly the Devil itself at sight. The caretaker stared at the beasts, and then he drew back to the office. Not even the doctors could have told how come the three bears lost their entire fur in one night’s time. Some scientists said that the phenomenon bears a resemblance to evolution when apes turned to be men.
BIRDS
In Hongkong the birds made their nests of wire. There were no plants in the surroundings, so the magpies gathered steel wires from the nearby building site. One of the nests fell upon the head of an old woman. She reported the case to the police. They, having no suitable tools trusted the fire department with the removal of the unstable nest. In other districts of the city the danger possibly still exists.
THE MUSEUM
This tree, which can be found under the main dome of the museum, was chopped down by a student of the University of Silviculture three years ago. He wanted to count its annual rings for his thesis. The tree turned out to be four thousand eight-hundred years old. Despite its invisibility for the naked eye, according to our instruments the tree still shows signs of life.
THE TAXI DRIVER
When the taxi driver realised that it is impossible to reach the hospital, stopped at the side of the road and conducted the childbirth. The most important thing in which the reporter was interested, whether the driver washed his hands, and whether he takes the responsibility if either the mother or the baby were infected. "I didn't wash my hands and I do not take any responsibility. I am a taxi driver", said the taxi driver.
DISASTER RECOVERY
The flood drifted fifty two boars to a Bulgarian town. They knocked over cars, attacked shop windows. The problem was solved by fifty two aimed shots by the people of the disaster recovery. The carcasses were tested, the animals proved to be healthy. The game was offered to the Twilight Home. The institution accepted the offer.
NEON
An artisan was found dead after fifteen years in his workshop in the cellar. The light was on, therefore the company who made the neon tube, intends to use the case as a marketing strategy.
THE COLLECTION
The owner of the country's biggest teddy bear collection died yesterday. The neighbours found the dead hundred-and-two year-old lady in her flat. She has no inheritors, and since the capital doesn't vindicate the collection, the thirty-two thousand teddy bears will be destroyed.
THE MARKETING EXPERT
According to a marketing expert nothing justifies the placements of advertisements in churches. He thinks, the churches surely could be persuaded, but the attendance on the services does not reach the level, which could guarantee the profit.
THE LIBRARY
The world's largest library was built in Alexandria. For the second time as well.
Well, there are such things in my most useless notebook. And no matter that I know, that this is a part of my reality, I will never use these notes when writing a novel, because I don't want my sense of reality to be questioned. No matter that I know, that the library in Alexandria will be built for the third time too. What's more no matter that I know, that soon the Alexandria library will cease to be necessary, because a micro computer, which is smaller than a human heart, will be able to store everything that can be known of the world from the primitive techniques of how to light fire to the war of Troy, from the structure of anthills to the landing on the Moon and from the ten commandments to Raskolnykov. And no matter that a horde is more dangerous than a shadowy fringe of the forest, I am still more afraid of the thunder than of a flickering television screen. I could go further and further out of the city, into the countryside, I will always bear the little seeds inside of me from which cities have grown.