A MONOLOGUE WITH FRIENDS

Dear readers of the Hive!

 

Two years ago, we built this hive and placed a couple of honeycombs inside. The number of stories grew and the harvest of both years brings me joy. Don't worry, I haven’t prepared any statistics. I just want to say goodbye and pass on the Hive to younger successors. The spirit finds its way from one generation to another, be it in bee colonies or people, or any other living thing.

 

Have fun and let’s enjoy the Hive stories together.

 

Prof. Aleš Leko Gulič

 

PS, and as my parting gift, a fable about people.

 

 

 

A MONOLOGUE WITH FRIENDS

 

Efendi lies in my lap and purrs. A morning ritual, it doesn't matter whether the winter weather spills over into April or becomes bright and warm. He needs somebody talking to him, every day; not a lot, just enough for him to close his eyes and calm down. After that he can spoil himself and nap on his own. He’s not too fond of political stories, nope, he prefers mood stories, spring-like and kind. He sure knows what’s good and healthy. The other one, he goes by Cinnamon and likes to rub around legs, still needs a bribe to calm down and finish miaowing his morning songs. The TV is talking to itself: a sort of semi-Korean reporting in Slovenian, yelling and waving, pathos, importance, bulging eyes...

 

 

And people, we are, well... If there aren’t a couple of corpses or at least severely impaired or injured people jumping at us from the newspaper, it’s not even worth reading, the same as if there's no mention of a couple of hundred allegations of bribery in the amount of ten thousand euros. We can’t stand anything idyllic or peaceful on our TV screens either. Not even on weekends and holidays, when people are supposed to look inside themselves, contemplate things, find calm and rest. If there are no atrocities or shenanigans, of one kind or another, to report on in Slovenia, then they decide to do reruns of last year’s events that had failed to repeat themselves or engage enthusiastic reporters and witnesses from foreign countries that aren’t celebrating and where people are battering each other on our celebratory day. All this access to everything right here and now is continuously irritating us and shocking us, raising our sensitivity threshold and building up our resistance, making us insensitive and indifferent. Even dreams and daydreams don't bring us peace anymore. So it’s no wonder that this two-week soap opera about our stuffed dummy government and all its big and little branches went unnoticed by the viewers. Not interesting enough, not enough action. Although the media blew things out of proportion and screeched anecdotes with great delight, although the intellectuals and thinkers analysed, scribblers fumed and guest writers sharpened their pencils—nothing happened. No harakiri, no shot in the night, no dead at all, and so no joy either. The people answering polls and questions in the street refused interrogation in a quasi-Gandhian manner, because they know and they don't care. The only knowledge that this nation’s people still seek is related to gardening, gastronomy, astrology, fortune-telling and sometimes also to diatonic button accordion skills and, I guess, throwing bobbins around and tying knots. The only little pleasure they got out of all this huffing and puffing was from the nation's representatives consulting with representatives of smaller and special groups of people about what was happening before it happened. The answers were telling. Not that they actually said anything, they just brought to light the singularity of ignorance, lack of education and disinterest. That's just the state of representation. In the words of Pahor: so what.

 

I didn’t recount all these indecencies to my two friends. Efendi sensed that the typing wasn't going quite as smoothly and fluently as it should, so he left and went to his haven after the first clicking sounds, not to mention the reproachful look. Cinnamon, like the loyal subject he is, forgets everything when he sees a sausage. Two citizens—cats. So I was telling myself this and a bit later shared some of this with the fellas at the safe house so together we could think through what we're like and where we're going... A billion-year project.