Lina was in her late twenties, thin almost to the point of dissolving into nothingness, as though fear and repeated detention had slowly erased her facial features.
I returned to my city. The voice of Fairouz, drifting from Radio Damascus, mingled with the screams of the cell guard as he beat a man, commanding him to speak. I opened my eyes.
I said that we didn’t need to wait till midnight, as the recording of the speech could be found on the Internet: in the Far East the new year had already begun. The man looked dumbfounded.
As a fully grown-up person, I’m able to buy alcohol or cigarettes without any difficulties, but I am not able to work out in a gym. And they say this is done for my own good. Facepalm.
So, I bought a mouse from a kiosk in the nearby pedestrian underpass. Asked for a quality one and was given ‘an everlast model’ by the vendor. Maybe it WILL last forever, but it works really funny. Had to ask Artem to buy me another.
They have certainly heard about dad; news spreads fast. So, they decided, “Better safe than civil,” I assume.
“There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re just making things up. You’re stout and sturdy. Just pull yourself together! Everyone calls a doctor now when they fancy themselves ill. You have no idea how many visits I must make today…”
The people even justified the approach: “If we’re going to be ruled by clowns, lets at least get some fun from them.”
Apparently, everything was okay, a bit too much okay, you might say. There was no screaming, no laughing, no running to catch the bus, no begging, no dog poo on the ground, no pickpockets harassing the tourists….
No matter how technological human life has become in this twenty-first century we are living through, irrespective of whether people have landed on Mars, independently of humans possibly coexisting with robots or generative AI…
A collection of essays on instability, called transposing emblems, from around the world.
Essays on uncertainty, another prominent characteristic of our times, from international authors
Writers throughout the world opine on the topics of polarization and extremes in transposing emblems
Introduction to the perypatetik project – romantics, pragmatists, transposition, transadaptation, transposing emblems, and more
Neobaroque characteristics in transposing emblems – uncertainty, instability, polarization and extremes
The transadaptation of life – In the Middle, Conceived, Evanescent
The theory of transposition (updated 2026)
Classics transposed
Peripatetic Alterity (theory)
Romantics and pragmatists (basic framework)
The Purpose of Literary Fiction at the Beginning of the Third Millennium (2022)
An Analysis of the Values and Norms of Romanticism and Pragmatism in Literary Fiction (2023)
The Process and Concomitant Characteristics (2024)
Conveyors of the Metaphysical in Literary Fiction (2021)
