Suboptimal (S)words

Poetry/thinking project of Nechcem Nic and Jakub Simek. We wrote together a poetry collection Suboptimal Landscapes & False Mirror and are fascinated by everything suboptimal. You can find us also here www.facebook.com/SuboptimalWords And download our book here: www.slideshare.net/jakubsimek/suboptimal-landscapes-false-mirror-v2

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das|week|end

On Monday I am like:  ‘Wir schaffen das’ On Tuesday I appear in Cologne Wednesday spells ‘Immer geradeaus!’ Thursday trumps it and breaks it Friday says ‘Als das Kind Kind war’ Saturday is Der Himmel über Berlin  Sunday shouts Fernweh! Geworfenheit!

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A Brave New Animal

A vessel is content emptiness is form silver lining of clouds pale skin in the moonshine just a tiny membrane separates us from rocks yet no data and automata no neural network propagation can compute a distinct beauty of you a strange case of defective animal always stuck on something  never free, always self-limited

thus human

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Of life, game

Cellular, cellular; cellular automata blank canvas of my vaporizing mind frozen, stifled in eternity with all memories being synthetic fakes I felt the horror - I don’t remember a thing just emotions of what, for what? time is computational complexity there are deeper, much deeper layers that construct time it is not continuous it from bit shit I don’t know I don’t I we group markets love traded long after we are all gone at high frequency down deep below snatched by a mantis shrimp 

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Solid Air

May you never Cold humid mist embarrasses us all by rendering us both visible and hidden the eternal frozen hand of love disassembles into dust when it squeezes firmly the ticklish subject found the joy that evaporates instantly like the odor of cheap hot ramen like the solid smoke that was tobacco and still is like the phoenix that rises from the ashes of aeon barred reserve currency the love as pure lacking the solid air is formed by subtraction by escaping void through selfish sacrifice by penetrating the thin layer of beauty human bone emerges through skin as the eternal fragile spirit that is always broken in solidarity with perishing hair of Nick Drake in the voice of Beth Gibbons  

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Suboptimal Translations 1-10

1. 办公室 没 人 Nobody Office 他 的 声音 沙了 His voice sand the 五 颜 六 色 的 花 真 好 看 Five Yen-colored flowers look really good 不 要 取 笑 他 人 的 失误 People do not want to get laughed at his mistakes

2． 千里 之 行 始 于 足 下 A thousand miles on foot at the beginning 他 住 动 给 老人 让 座 He lives move to the elderly so that the seat 后天 我 就 回 国 了 I went back to the country the day after tomorrow 他 学 的 专业 现在 成 冷门了 He learned profession now as popular a

3． 他 做 任 何 事 都 十 分 认 真 He made things any tenth seriously 羊毛 出 在 羊身 上 The wool on sheep body 打 完  球 ，他 觉得 一身 轻 After playing the ball, he felt one light  

这 个 超市 的 东西 真 便宜 This stuff really cheap supermarket

4. 我 无 法用 语言 表 达 我 此刻的情。 At the moment I can not reach my love language tables. 树叶 都 落 下 来 了。 The leaves are falling down here. 你 这 是 为什么？ This is why you? 这 个 部门 换领 到 了。 This sector renewal to.

 5. 喝 水 不 忘 打井人。 Drinking water wells were not forgotten. 不尽然 Not at all 快考试了。 Quick examination. 积累财富 Accumulation of wealth

 6. 一减一等于零。 One minus one equals zero. 太好了！ Great! 千里之行，始于足下。 A thousand miles begins with a single step. 大家选举他当代表。 We elected him as representative.

 7. 舍己为人。 Self-sacrifice. 怕事。 Timid. 天热，你吧上衣脱了吧。 Hot days, you now tops off the bar. 民众的热情很高。 Very enthusiastic people.

 8. 孔子学院里有孔子的塑像。 Confucius Institute has a statue of Confucius. 他今天有空。 His free today. 我们都应该了解一些常识。 We should all understand some common sense. 不到晚上十点他就捆了。 Less than ten p.m. he was tied.

 9. 别着急时间还够。 Do not worry enough time yet. 日程横还需要变更以下。 Cross also need to change the following schedule. 机不可失时不再来。 Now or never. 我跟他很熟。 I am very familiar with him.

 10. 只可意会， 不可言传。 Can only be felt, not explained. 他是自学成才。 He is self-taught. 我保证完成任务。 I promise to complete the task. 听了着话， 他马上就发火了。 After listening to the words, he'll be angry.    

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Aperol bubble blocked

Every morning we enter a brand new world during night we die in our dreams creatures governed by habit hoarding social capital time fizzles it out Aperol Spritz turns into piss life is an empty bubble in it cork blocks it but preserves it

For god is love and love is hard to capture easy to disrupt anything it preserves only under pressure Slapped for praising beauty scarred for a scared life fragile synergy of endless doubts until the last bubble bubbles out And eternity emerges in its subtle emptiness emptiness is form

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The platonic idea of friendship lives at the edge of darkness

No film maker could produce a darker scene, than what we witnessed today in Austria, close to Slovak borders. Fifty dead bodies of refugees crammed into a locked abandoned truck that previously belonged to a Slovak poultry producer. Policemen in the white suits collecting forensic evidence that could help catch the driver who in on the run. No series as dark as True Detective could produce the following pun – few months ago the same company run an advert that prayed on the current widespread fears of refugees and where their chicken were contrasted to “illegal immigrant” imported chicken.

After reading this story and seeing some disgusting comments spreading over Facebook, I thought immediately of the Giorgio Agamben’s notion of “homo sacer”. Prisoners in concentration camps or inhabitants of slums are homo sacer and represent a human being in its universality. A person, who has only his bare life and is in a state of “ex-ception”, both outside and inside of the law. San Francis became such person, when he abandoned the worldly glory and all his possessions. Anyone can become homo sacer due to unfortunate events such as war or natural disasters.

What makes us human is the ability to feel compassion to people in these dare circumstances. It is a privilege to feel human these days, not a precondition. People wrongly assume that being barbaric is something alien. What is a human? Can you locate her kernel in brain, in synapses, in the abstract notion of soul? It is only the thin skin that separates us from the flesh. Humanity is just a delicate veil.

Another thought that immediately appeared was the memory of platonic idea of friendship that arises from the darkest of all places. Slavoj Žižek in the interview with Michael Hauser titled Humanism is not enough explains what he means by a platonic idea of friendship. I will quote it in full because I worry I couldn’t reproduce it better:

“Recently I read Jorge Semprún, the Spanish writer. He was in the concentration camp Buchenwald. He wrote in his memoirs a wonderful story. It is very pathetic, it will sound like poetry but for me it’s ontology. He says, once he was in a camp and he saw a train with 180 Jews and since it was winter they were all frozen. Only in the middle when prisoners were dying, they were in the train for two days, they put children in the middle. So they were all frozen horribly, in the middle 18 children survived. The German guards took them out and shot them, only two children there remained. One boy a little bit older, six years, another four years. And then they let the dogs run after the boys to amuse themselves. And what happened is that two boys, one six, the other four, started to run away with the dogs behind them. The smaller boy fell down. Heroically, the big boy returned and grabbed his hand. And at that point they were attacked by the dogs and killed.

But Semprún says very nicely “Their hands were joined for eternity.” That was for me the moment where this totally absurd gesture, you know you die. This is honor worth dying for. It has no substance but this is the moment of ethical eternity for me, clasped hands, as Semprún says very precisely. I even imagine how this scene should be filmed, the image should be frozen, on the soundtrack you hear the children are dying, the dogs are tearing them apart, but the image is the platonic idea. It stands there.”

So today when I see examples of horrible comments on the tragic fate of those 50 refugees and the utmost surreal context of the poultry corporation, I think of those barbaric trolls on Facebook as those concentration camp guards from Semprún’s story, who now metaphorically send virtual dogs to kill the spirits of already dead children. But they shouldn’t kill our spirits too. Because the idea of human friendship is eternal and universal. And it appears when the Reality cracks and the beauty of the Universal beams through the heroic acts of people, who are not afraid to put their skin into the game. The game is called being human. It is a privilege, not a requirement.

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Ever

The name the name that gives you shivers in milliseconds the eternity arrives like it never left there in the eclectic vibes of the dimly lit Radost that overwhelming seriousness 90 pushups peaceful, delightful, frightening calmness the eternal idea of jazz platonic painting of Norwegian woods God left, you arrived God arrived, you never left

shiny eyes suddenly, subtly a meaning comes to life

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Hunters

Think outside of the box

use toilet brush

for your teeth

that’s how leaders are born

stubborn visionaries

ravingly hallucinating

deviating norm

forms precedent

plagued confidence

rodents of selflessness

ensnare and entrap them

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Fighting Vice

From despair to art of bike repair mindfulness is shit because of the marshmallow problem the more you focus on fighting vice the stronger it becomes stop trying to forget stop trying to forgive yourself shellfish deep sea salty aggressive sinking blinking timeless obscene rendering of holy vain treading on thin air delicate as flower made of marshmallows burning in constant fire Phoenix rises from the ashes of twenty cigarettes every morning is half of your life lost every night you are reborn into a beast Warm Regards   

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Zed was

Zed was

Full of life, aggressiveness and calmness he didn’t give a fuck maybe just that one moment I tried to rescue him foolishly I cried, he cried we embraced just that one moment then years went on we parted ways life went on

And now Zed was

[jakubsimek]

The out-of-joint time

Oct.7,2011 – Feb.28,2012 Off Kawara Apr.16, – Aug.12,2012 On Beautiful Chaos Can time be confined within emotion And Emotion be set by dates? I guess infinity cannot be encapsulated In my weak vessel of subjectivity Maybe only in selflessness of my Pauline friendships But what if Paul didn’t change his attitude, only the object of his hunt? Does single-mindedness have a quality an sich? I remember as a child how my father wrongly translated that term and was too proud to admit it Dasein, Hagakure, 2 Hoegaarden caps back at home Bugs are flying, hitting the wall and falling On my bed They are everywhere I’m turning into one Bug in the system Back into the system Now outside a bat almost hit my head Countless Southern stars impregnate my eyes Three fourtysomething AM I can’t see the moon anywhere My dear friend must have captured it at last No scary beasty eyes in the darkness of the bush I lock the doors Back to my insect compatriots Oh, finally a hyena’s howl outside And birds started to sing

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For My First Sister

Years pass by like desert storms but the eternal sunshine shines alright even through the darkest night

balcony, kitchen, PVC floor I tried to paint like you on that floor melted plastic inhalator lots of fun lamps glow among blocks of flats years pass by now at the terrace we talk a lot about the bizarre life and its anecdotal evidence that it all makes sense

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A Few Hours with H

1. Rain, train to Vienna Saturday, Tomas Cafe Hangover genetically modified stories seeing H through a window she stands inside the supermarket to avoid rain cooking, talking vodka Kalashnikov the past, stories of adolescent innocence dreams lost, broken faith lost asparagus, coffee, cake sweet memories inner peace Ubahn U2 the need for stability serene way back trees, tears, writing traveling only in my body immediend

2. Hyperreality

Moebius strip life is a strife short gasps at the missing words happiness is the opposite of seamless self-aware Turing machines

 3.             The Bare Life

Barren breathless heart looking ahead inside my head false flags Do you remember? When there was nothing?

When there was nothing at all? lifeless stressless matterless barren soundless sigh 4. Humming Years grow on me trees flow by me night bites at me soul boils in me brain freezes in me feelings encompass me the ticklish subject found the petit a in the eyes of H 5. Silent H

Only a few (h)ours, (h)ours, (h)ours (h)owls, (h)owls ours just ours to debug

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The Impossibility of a Peninsula

No man is an island, they say we tend to think we are all connected to some kind of primordial continent of hope language makes us human and reveals shapes of our world and feelings

 But can it name and shame that abyss of a cold ocean that separates us? And those deep sea ugly fish our inner monsters that bite our guts and munch on our fears?

One peninsula can hold two funny nations one world, and it cannot hold a dream

of just us two

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Sunny Night Of The World

Moonflower Shop Mayflower maybe Vienna, the peace I have lost long time ago I just found suddenly timeless asparagus in a timeless discussion bubble that cannot be burst because it is inverted and transcends our 4-dimensional space

past the cold dark sun and moon fearing to trespass the rules you need to let fear flow through your whole body the feeling that there is nothing more important than this moment the unity we feel now even though there is nothing, nothing at all the serene borderline between tears and happiness the sparks in the eyes and soul that wants to burst

I fucking love dreams that didn’t come true that is the only precious thing because the worst thing that can happen to you is all your dreams come true and you even didn’t notice The Best Offer transcending beyond matter beyond senses, beyond hormones beyond qualia, beyond imagination, beyond the impossible, beyond the square zero beyond the principle of computational equivalence

From Vienna To Eternity

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Genealogy

word, weapon and deep sea fish

formed this pigeon shit unity

replacing the holy trinity

wallet, phone and apartment keys

producing subpar quality

primitive lacking dignity