fragment (a dream)

I remember it vividly, part of my dream,
the sunrise spilled at the horizon, mixed with the indigo
of the sky, sipping through the loosely closed doors
of my eyelids. Colors whisper in silence, alive and vibrant,
sticks to my hair like a spring honey, pale-yellow and lustrous,
falling in circular silky waves to the floor, as the scissors
chew on it with a metallic, monotonous rhythm…

© 2011 by Nina K Orlovskaya

letters (happy holidays)

I raise my glass
to every lost soul on this planet,
it is I among them,
to every fortunate and unfortunate one
it is I one of them.

I raise my glass
to every soul, that vibrates
in the agony of life
and shines with glorious beauty
while burning into ashes.

I raise my glass
to every one of them.


© 2011 by Nina K Orlovskaya

letters (with you)

There was a night and a river.
Fireflies were dropping burning shoes
into the bonfire. I leaned on your shoulder,
my breath condensed me into a drop
on your skin…

A frozen particle from the tail of the comet,
I felt down, into soft pile of amber.
A striped yellow cat was purring
his cat song into indifference
of the last moment. And I decipher then,
life is full of surprises…
but not anticipated ones.

© 2011 by Nina K Orlovskaya

fragments (the choices, conclusion)

And, in conclusion, life is a routine. “Magical Beings’ (Castaneda), have no routines. In my mind – alive being has choices versus routine. If one doesn’t probe the fringes of his routines, how can one possibly know that he is alive? Who said “I am thinking therefore I am alive”? Not so fast. Let’s say in my dream I travel across the Galaxy, land in an alien world, interact with alien life – all extremely vivid dream/memory. For 10 minutes of real time, my mind thought and lived decades of a very interesting life. And I was not aware at all of my ‘other’ body, comfortably resting in the bed. It’s going to be like this every time until I will train my brain to split in two: let one wander and another to know better. It would be a mistake to try changing or to control oneself, evolution spent millions (?) of years to mold me into what I am, I cannot change anything and since I endured it all – I am perfect as I am. But I can change my immediate environment. There is a tricky thing about the environment – it resists any changes, sometimes violently. You cannot command it, you must trick it. One method I know – sudden change of routine, a detour, a ‘timebubble’. And it not only helps one to change the environment but also gives an assurance of being alive. Not to dwell too deep into a philosophic concept I will say, I haven’t seen any dead person to be alive but I have seen many alive people being dead.

letters (fractured...)

Fractured thought
freshly inked on to my skin,
snowflakes in black.
Words bleed like a dream.

Broken flowers
smell like death…

© 2011 by Nina K Orlovskaya

fragments (the choices, cont...)

As one of my friends emphasized my words about personalities that in competition to express itself as of a russian doll within a doll. I imagine it as onion layers. Peter Ouspensky referred to the phenomenon as a multiple ‘I’s’.

His writing, at least about this particular subject, was based on observation and intuition and perhaps it is a little ambiguous to the modern reader. Since his time we gained significant, but still limited, insight into physiology of our actions, and choices…

We all know now that consciously we are aware of only about a fraction of all information that our brain receives and process in a unit of time, in simple words our mind decides what information is important and has priority to ensure our survival, something one must be aware of.

A classic example when a gazillion bits of information every cell of our skin sends to the brain every moment about the shirt one is wearing, although one will become aware of his shirt only in the case of sudden changes (hot coffee spilled over your left sleeve), real danger of injury. But then, sometimes spilled coffee would not be translated objectively but rather will resurrect a memory of a past event or a fantasy from the future. There is a competing "I" in action.

Next, let’s stick with Ouspensky as he said, all depends on the magnetic center within our being, a core, a Master in a sense, something we develop, consciously or unconsciously, during our lifetime. Something we are born with and genetically vary from each other.

This is an extensive and complex concept, some people devote decades of their lifetime to understand it. I can say that this is a door and when I look through it I see that there is a vast number of things in the world one will discover during his lifetime, there is an incalculable number of things in the world, one will never be aware of and there are a few things one can create, and those are not the property of the World but the property of a Being.

And conclusion… next time…

fragments ( the choices)

On my way to work… Another beautiful spring morning in Detroit, in the end of December. There is nothing particular I like about spring, on the contrary, it is the dirtiest time of the year, especially at the beginning. I like the moment of spring in December, (I would love to see one snowy morning in July, never happened though). When inappropriate (meaning does not belong) structures appear in your environment, they have tendencies to sharpen your focus beyond your normal limits. In my Theory of Time they form ‘time bubbles’.

An inappropriate spring morning and, suddenly, I am in one of the April’s mornings. The landscape is recognizable to the last tree, to the last building, to the last shadow, and, not the memories, but a reality of the past suddenly flooded my being.

I think if I would have enough personal strength I would have an opportunity to change my future if I change something now, while I am in that time bubble.

How much strength one needs to change the routine of the moment? I am taking the next left... side roads instead of the regular one. Sure enough, within a few minutes I am escaping a car accident by a split second.

Aftershock of adrenaline surge… my hands still shaking… regretful thought ‘ why are you always messing with things you have no or little understanding of?’. The thought is regretful but not remorseful. I will do it again the first opportunity I get.

We make our choices and take our chances. Being bored and boring is worse than being weird, trust me on this one…

letters (something real)

I want to write about something real and tangible. I hold a glass of red wine;
it reminds me of blood, gushing from a small but deep cut
over the little child’s forehead: fear, scream,
thick dark liquid over the transparent sclera of the eye.
I tried to stop the bleeding; he wrestled me to the floor,
both covered with blood that dried quickly over our hands and faces…
He tries to run away with the flow, I try to restrain it.
The pain, mine –emotional, imagined, his- physical and real,
erased by the surge of adrenaline.
His panic disappeared by the moment when the fire truck arrived
with sirens on, followed by the ambulance.
We both are cured after the nine fancy stitches over the left eyebrow
and a few red popsicles.

I have a sip and observe the drops lazily sliding back into the glass…

In a flash I see an English man in the hospital bed.
He arrived two days earlier here, in Detroit,
to meet his online girlfriend for the first time.
On second thought, he may have followed his destiny through distance
and time where his life could be spared.
He felt ill for no reasons at all.
He was turning ashy in front of my eyes.
The violent wave of vomit was leaving his body with his last breath.
A friend of mine, intercepting the trajectory,
was covered by blood instantly from her hair to her toes.
He lived after surgical emergency. And her…
she was taking a shower,at first with her clothes and shoes on
and then in the nude. She cried all the time,
with hiccups, chocking on her tears,
trembled like a little bird, when I dried her off.

Then I saw something I never saw before,
a man on his way to his final destination.
I am a little girl, a viewer of his Path, among thousands of others.
He dropped his heavy cross and kneeled to pick it up,
when our eyes briefly met.
Two tear drops fell, mixed with the dry blood and sweat on his face
and slid over his cheeks in two pinky stripes.
He cried for me. I knew…
Don’t ask me why and how.

Heavy droplets trapped in the glass, real and tangible.
...I can see through it...

© 2011 by Nina K Orlovskaya

letters (A perfect world)

Five trips later to the local Walgreens
and I hold in my hands the perfect post card
that was made just for the occasion.
There are two famous cartoon characters
sitting on a fallen tree, I assume in the meadow,
I imagine in the middle of spring,
the buzzing bugs camouflaged by the yellow flowers
into the fuzzy carpet accentuated by the occasional white butterfly.
one of the characters says to his friend,
‘ how nice for you to be you and not someone else’.
I looked at it for a while and thought
it is a magical world where you are you,
me is me and someone else is someone else.
I would never want to live in a world
where things are different and you aren’t you.

© 2011 by Nina K Orlovskaya

fragments (I hesitate)

The stars wrapped
into heavy clouds,
erased by the darkness
into invisibility.
Silence slips
through the crevices
of the broken chimes,
runs with the wind,
breaking the peak of the sound.
Fluidity of melodic waves,
wishful whispers...
Black silk of the night
draped the pine tree.
The form reminds me
of a spacecraft:
powered, trembling with impatience,
ready to depart for a long journey
on my mark.
…I hesitate…

© 2011 by Nina K Orlovskaya

letters

A word… lines, curves, circles
inked into the virgin body
smudged at the edges…
fading, molecule by molecule,
into an abyss of time.

A name… an electric shock
through the synaptic gaps,
vanishing immortality of the moment.
… echoes… whispers…

© 2011 by Nina K Orlovskaya

fragments(The Owl)

She stays longer when the lights are on,
even so it should be irritating
for her nocturnal eyes...
I talked with her last night
briefly, when the glass of the window melted
under the pressure of the winter cold
and then we flew in silence, until
she dropped me into the dark waters.
I didn’t swim out this time.
I drowned.

© 2011 by Nina K Orlovskaya

fragments (more fragments)

in the darkest hour of the night
i gaze at the stars.
i look at the puddle
under the street light.
…i see your eyes
that never blink.

© 2011 by Nina K Orlovskaya



cold… stable, persistent…
all that is warm is destined to perish,
burn alive in agony, know the flesh,
be an object…
subject in an experiment, discarded,
disposed when purpose served…
cries contained,
frozen into the filaments of light,
erased by the darkness…
cold… dark…

© 2011 by Nina K Orlovskaya

fragments(trapped)

Trapped by the peaks and valleys:
restriction, structure, limit, sinfulness…

The gates of dreams
shrouded by the breath of the moment,
free and invisible. One step to exit…

I left them behind,
children of the draft and flames,
prowling shadows, guards…

one more step and a touch…
bare feet, cold grass, the bride…
the sun outlines the silhouette.
Swarming bees carry the nectar of the memory
drop by drop to the amber castle.

A distant call short circuit.
At first, sweet and soft, but then
loud and destructive…
fine structure shatters, falls down,
touching the ground with loud
ding-ding-ding….melts, flow…

where there is a river, there are river banks…

© 2011 by Nina K Orlovskaya

fragments (far away in time)

Almost every summer there are periods of heavy rains. The better summers saw three day stretches of rain and the worst ones drenched for nine days in lukewarm water, steadily falling from the broken sky. I used to love those long stretches.

As a child, I suffered frequent migraines, but never on the rainy days, as if the water washed my clogged brain. During those days, the usual boredom would get swollen into timeless lethargy, compared to the peacefulness of the grave.

My father, a chain-smoker, would open the front door, take my baby chair, light a cigar of his own making and own growing and sat there, watching the wall of rain. I would sit next to him, on the floor, leaning on his leg, copying his action, trying to singulate a droplet and follow its fall. We sat there for hours without saying a word. I felt incredibly safe and comfortable at those times, safe like never again.

Eventually I would fall asleep and he would carry me to my bed. Upon awakening I would recall the rain-gazing. It would be entangled with my dreams, blurred by the fragile memory, absorbed by the new day and forgotten.

I had never smoked, but each time when someone lit a cigar and as soon as the smoke would touch my nostrils, I smell the monsoon, mixed with black dirt of the Steppe. And I feel safer, I feel home…
© 2011 by Nina K Orlovskaya

letters (the last drop)

All sore from the self-inflicted bruises
of painful events, a product
of entangled imagination.
…’suppose to’, never have happened…
I sat and laughed when you said
I was the last drop to overflow the cup.
And I thought that I was a Golden Fish,
I thought I could grant a wish, if caught.
I swam carefully around all baits,
behind the glass of a cup,
famished, fearful of being trapped.
… where I was just a spark of light,
broken over the glass,
distorted by the prism of water,
trapped in a drop…
But, at last, I caused a flood.

© 2011 by Nina K Orlovskaya

fragments ('Dead End')

Homeless dog curled under the street sign,
black bones of a ‘Dead End’
over the dirty-yellow body,
empty eyes drown in the insanity
of never-ending Now.
Ticks, flies, fleas, death – ran away
from the furry island of Nirvana.
I walk by fast, avoiding eye contact…
the blissfulness of nothing is familiar… contagious
and survival doesn’t assure immunity.

©  2011 by Nina K Orlovskaya