&SHY; | Maru Mushtrieva – Landing Dragons

Landing Dragons

Maru Mushtrieva

&SHY;

1. SOUNDING FLOOR

birds are suddenly singing too loud.

I don’t know where to start with this story.

this story probably starts directly with you.

for a moment waking up in a square room that

is almost like a white cube feels

like a salvation.

feels easy.

nothing to stall your gaze on.

eyes are caressing the whiteness.

no matter how hard I try to hide from the fact that I am in love.

who can blame her?

try starting from depicting the word “reality” with a pantomime, dreamling!

so finally, I am skiing again in the mountains.

a friend owns the biz so she said “you are free to grab snacks in the restaurant”.

we are gliding down the valley, I am showing off and I slip.

I slid off directly into a mountain lake.

splashes of snow are not reflecting the sun anymore.

rocks are showing their tongues.

they are eager to lick the base of my skis.

I fly for a moment.

my ski partner is yells something behind me.

it’s spring.

and I see myself descending into this goo.

half-ice half-water. my skin is buzzing.

the only thing I think of is how to detach the skis as fast as I can.

I’m swimming out.

alive. It’s cold!

barely, barely, barely.

but then you need to get the skis out.

but someone is heating up sauna on the top of the mountain, so the lake is getting warmer. I walk around the edge that is not that steep and try to understand how deep it goes.

my ski partner is watching me in awe.

I need to get the skis out of the water.

I go deeper, closer to the middle, isn’t it always the middle where we meet?

and I finally find it.

I feel a kick from the hard wood of the skis that floats and bounces off.

and then I dive. the water is brown.

I hold my breath and dive in again to get the other one.

in deep shock of what I just did and while swimming back to the shore I realise that I should not date her.

I am.

good.

I’m just still thinking.

just taking a short rest.

Landing Dragons

Maru Mushtrieva

← &SHY;

Landing Dragons

Maru Mushtrieva

&SHY;

2. PLANE CIRCUMSTANCES

untouch the ground, lifting off!

we were sitting in the plane and for some reason were flying as a whole family of friends.

I was watching the ground through the window and said, the voice of steel:

“another plane is passing just right beneath us”. I said, “15 centimetres” and “we are falling”.

and we fell.

I say, “the ‘rememberers’ remember the right posture to take”.

my spine was pressing the seat and my feet were pressing the spine deeper into it.

we accelerated and the line started to shift swiftly and turns into a field.

I thought, “aha! now I finally understand the integral function from my math lesson”.

then it was getting very near, I mean, the ground.

we stopped falling.

the plane slipped into the air bubble, a little bit up and to the right und and then down, down, down and under the bridge.

we landed on the water.

I thought that we were flying somewhere that was supposed to be far away but we landed in a random hansa city, West Germany.

next morning, I am reading the interpretation in the dream dictionary: to see a commercial airline crash on the surface of water indicates your own self-image. The message is “you should not be concerned about how other people view you”.

clickable interconnected outlines of the bubbles. consider as if I made a copy of “how did I become a dancer” by Tracey Emin. I think I would turn into a vampire and then I would turn into a writer and then I turn into a transparent ball, ball, ball. and then I turn into a smart ass, fat ass, fat ass, fat ass ball.

that thing that is called an excavator of memory, audio forks depending on a geolocation.

I wonder what would happen to the sound quality if we are all transmitting the same waves? It might create a horrible echo with endless feedback. but then we can pretend that we live in the same city.

rub some milk and honey, Ruby!

this piece was produced by second eukaryotic settlement where AI-storytelling is used for growing housing structures from stories and archives survived in the digital banks of the Corporations era. they investigate telepathy and sonic based emotional transmission, creating ER installations of various kind.

I don’t know what was happening with me I was on the taxi, another block, another level, houses swiftly moving in front of my eyes.

my house is falling apart as the wall is crumbling behind the walls.

as he paces behind my walls,

and see spaces, behind my walls, behind my walls.

I see my neighbours and what are they doing

and I see how they’re watching TV

I see the hall over there and

I see how they are undressing,

they’re taking off their clothes,

the whole day again and again,

they are taking their clothes off.

the screen reflection is falling on my skin. I study it carefully. the light is moving and trying to tell me something. it is not consistent. I cannot see the image just the shadow. the shadow is not consistent. there is a bit of blue, but there is no yellow, no red. but it is mostly a non-colour. not really white, but somewhat invisible. the colour of light.

I was drunk on that Tuesday night

and I took off my top too,

I dropped it in the corridor,

between bathroom and the door to my bedroom,

I swiped it to the corner of the room,

and it sits there and is watching me,

this little bubble of dirty socks

it watches me and I see my hands covered in dirt

and I try to forget what has happened.

how do we approach the movement? imagination could be conceived as progression from internal to external. work on it with a lot of closing eyes in pairs. do you feel it? 10 minutes long. try to get infected by the state. feel your skin changing by encountering objects.

people can start to touch you, slow, very slow, the slowest imaginable. you can go with it or against it.

two inner worlds are meeting but (forgive me the pun) not melting. two countries of ice with their shattered borders.

gravitational junctions. bones and ligaments. would the structure work? or constantly shift and align the coordinates?

or explode?

martial art is not about being strong but rather knowing the softness of movement. one gives an impulse. another person is giving a series of impulses.

stop.

Landing Dragons

Maru Mushtrieva

← &SHY;

Landing Dragons

Maru Mushtrieva

&SHY;

3. TAG, OR THE CONTAGIOUS ONE

not an earthly life, just step by step

but what else to say,

oil, oil, oil, oil, gas, oil,

when you repeat it many times it still doesn’t make sense but at least starts to rhyme a bit and as we know, rhymes knock on the walls of understanding sometimes?

maybe it is when everything on earth befriends the ice, ice would be inaccessible.

burned in the fire of lively life streams, veins of life near the North Pole, Norilsk, in a bitcoin server farm.

chaos of longing goes slightly easier

on the skin routine than chaos of belonging.

what would be the way to synthesise

the questions that come up when I think of you.

maybe in pre-teenage years

to protect my family of girls,

the bathroom is a place to hide,

we all hide.

when my mom took it there to hide,

I always tried to find the roots

of aggression and

this inexpressible doubt.

three girls are crying together with the woman

who is taking a bathtub.

we rub her shoulders,

we wash away her freckled fair skin

that is getting red,

hot water hides tears in the redness of the skin.

she always was the scapegoat.

I was the bendable.

It is a rather scratchy passage to ->

game has started! Now!

who will be the one sent out?

who will get the measured portions of slaps and humiliation?

the order is always set, first mom,

then the eldest.

I blame the fact that the house we habitate

is built right in the middle of the pit.

all sinks.

all is absorbed into moist soil,

and it kind of roots there, boils, suffocates, repeats in circles.

the game starts. and it goes like dominos: all fall, one by one, you start again.

before and after.

steel in your hair cuts everything in half.

and birds just don’t shut up.

they sing too loud.

in the whirlpool of dark red rose petals.

black gold drips from the fingers of Ala; she does nail design that renders the witch’s nails from sleeping beauty.

I play a record on my grandmother’s old gramophone. I swing its rusty handle with all the force I have to start it off: the pitch goes doubtfully from male to female.

note: to become invisible, find a snake in the spring and cut off its head.

put three peas with black spots into it. and bury it at noon.

as the damp earth gives fruit, will it fruit?

but if it fruits three colours will be born:

the colours: yellow, red, and white.

just as the snake considered typically the wisest

(who said it?)

of all living creatures and crits of the world,

you’ll be the wisest to choose: red, white or yellow.

the red one: thoughts of others will be your thoughts,

the yellow one, you will be rich, but what is to be rich?

the white one, you’ll become invisible.

eat up and let the tongue touch the idea of having being able to have a choice.

at 3 am, thanks, babe, did it go through?

full moon shone bright like a diamond, beach – long walks, scooter – ride, 120 km of mountains, moss, rocks, trees, jumps, the round stones along the river, waterfall, swam – in a mountain lagoon, drunk – pastis, watched – the sun hitting our face, stepped – on the maquis, rocks, water and air, pétanque, heart of the island, heart of a revolution, and so we dropped the sweat in a mountain river.

I imagine that the river flows in both directions simultaneously. wouldn’t it be funny?

but there they opt for oil,

right,

humming,

wrong,

no,

not like that,

I wanted you to write not to expose family stories.

breweries and bakeries,

stinky industries,

is it a quote?

can they hear us, they can’t hear us.

they listen all along.

I cry.

dragons land on the rooftops of Moscow.

Landing Dragons

Maru Mushtrieva

← &SHY;