we asked to all the Fabulamundi’s authors to share stories, videos, comments, pictures of what we are living now in Europe.
Read the journal written by our Polish author Artur Palyga
Closed pet store in the hypermarket. Hamsters, guinea pigs, mice, white rats, gerbils, bunnies in aquariums. Calm. Nobody knocks on the glass every now and then. I see if they have something to eat and drink. They have. Someone comes and refills the bowls.
Dim light in the hypermarket. Only food stalls are open. A handful of people hang around between long shelves full of sausages, cheeses, desserts, kefirs, yogurt, coffee creamers, baking ingredients, meat in all forms, dead fish and their dead eggs, a hundred kinds of flour, a million candies, candy bars and cookies, fresh fruit, dried fruit, frozen fruit from all continents. A great, always laid table full of deliciousness from around the world is waiting. But guests didn’t come.
The closed pet store is located opposite the closed travel agency. In the window of the travel agency full of invitations to great adventures and unforgettable journeys to the most remote corners of the globe, hamsters, guinea pigs, mice, white rats, gerbils, bunnies in aquariums, as well as caged birds and fish are reflected. One hamster jumps stubbornly on two paws, leaning his whole body against the glass, staring up. The front paws try to stretch as high as possible, stretches the body, flexes it, bounces once on two hind legs, once on one. So many generations in captivity, but still believe that the glass will eventually give way and the walls will collapse.
There are solitary aquariums, with one individual, they are and overcrowded, full of small and slightly larger children who were born here and do not know another world. A small mouse runs at the edge of the aquarium back and forth, back and forth, at an even pace. Her roommates are trying not to react.
You know every millimeter of your space, from wall to wall. You can see every tiny change. All landscapes of the world, all the changes of the seasons, wind and weather must fit in this narrow space.
I stare at a small aquarium with fishes. What are they doing? How they spend their lives of decorative aquarium fishes in a large hypermarket, when nobody disturbs them, nobody catches them, nobody touch the aquarium. There are not vibrations from human footsteps.
There is a large veil with a giant tail. There is small silver, shiny fish. There is algae eater.
All interpersonal relationships, all ocean emotions must fit in a tiny aquarium. The veil, which at first seems confident of its place, stable and strong, occupies the left, lower quarter of the aquarium and almost does not move from it. It hangs in the water, as if in lethargy, as if it led an intense and absorbing internal life. A small algae eater crouched on the other side, sucked to the right window, hidden behind a leaf of an underwater plant, near the buzzer, which constantly works uniformly and makes them harmony of the spheres. But the cards in this isolation are dealing by small, silver fish. It is fast and it is spread by energy. Must do something. Continuously flows three-quarters of the space of the aquarium, back and forth, at an irregular pace, making sudden turns. Small silver fish carefully avoids the part occupied by the veil, but she clearly violates it from time to time. The veil then loses its apparent calm and turns, but the small silver fish is no longer there. The veil flows majestically through the entire aquarium, from wall to wall. She flows three times and returns to its place. Exactly the same place, as if she had some invisible, reclining armchair in which time had carved out the form of a veil on a scale of one to one. After this show of power, the small silver fish retreats and swims only to the right, leaving the entire left part of the aquarium for the veil. It bites an algae eater. Hates him. SHe spreads his impetus under the leaf and hits his neck. Into something that algae eater have in the place of neck. Swims to the invisible border in the middle of the aquarium and returns doubly aggressive. The algae eater goes away to the farthest corner. Into the bottom edge of the aquarium, as if he trying to drill a tunnel. But there is no escape from here. Irritated, small silver fish looks like she wants to kill him and spread the debris all over aquarium, but she doesn’t, because she want to have her victim for longer. Nothing will change here in the near future.
