Puzzled (Canto 1)
collaged by and of perypatetik authors1
1. Frustration (Angelika)
Munich, Germany
Anxious, unsettled, Angelika knew she had to salvage a modicum of sanity from the uncertainty. Her boyfriend had gone AWOL again; her colleagues at work aggravated her; she wasn’t sleeping well; migraines plagued her. What a way to spend the last days of youth in what was allegedly one of the most desirable places on earth.
Her therapist prescribed the virtual reality glasses:
Toni smiled as she turned into Jules Street. The people of Jules Street are tough, they have grit. Don’t mess with them or you’ll be sorry. But if you’re down on your luck, you’ll not find more generous people than the ones of Jules Street. These are my people. Their blood runs in my veins today, even though I live far way.
2. The existentialist (romantic omniscient narrator)
You live without fear. Fear does not sap your energy. You shift from the first-order to the higher-order of consciousness. The phenomenal.
3. Back to non-virtual reality (Angelika)
Angelika took her own advice. What she had recommended to her friend or ex-friend or former friend Yuri: Discard the devices and venture out – even if you just walk senselessly in circles. She happened upon this while editing the translations of classics. Men in Russian Realist novels like Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment or Brothers Karamazov walked up and down in rooms when they were thinking; women in Proust flâneured through the streets, parks and promenades of Balbec and Paris; the young artists in Zolá’s The Masterpiece wander around Paris discussing the artistic revolution being st(r)oked by their Open Air approach. So much of the day was spent outside back then, she had thought, even if you weren’t a farmer or carriage driver or the like. Even if our physical well-being is not biologically hardwired to (semi-)fresh air and sun- or smoglight, walking around outside gives us a break from looking at screens. No destination in mind, just become a part of “crowds of people, walking round in a ring.”3
A few blocks from her door, exiting the oppressive alley created by the monolithic, window-less TU-Munich and crossing to the open lawn before the backlit façade of the Alte Pinakothek, Angelika felt more than just an emotional shift: she homed in on what Toni had seen in Johannesburg – survival. The purpose as surviving. Purpose. Without future change. Purpose despite tomorrow being the same as today.
She texted Yuri: I think I just experienced something similar to what you were talking about a couple years ago. But you’re missing a critical element: we can find the exit to the smothering maze.
Yuri and Angelika may have enjoyed the ideal relationship. Maybe even the only love possible in our time – imaginary love.
They communicated entirely through text messages.
Angelika was referring to a series of texts Yuri had written a few years ago. He had been in a philosophical mood. Or maybe he was studying philosophy. She didn’t know because she only knew what he communicated, and facts were sparse.
4. The night-walker (Yuri)
New York City, USA
The wee hours must be closing in. Was the end as well?
Yuri’s clothes were drenched. To his body they clung as to his mind did the idea that his time had passed. Myrtle Avenue was desolate in the evening, but comatose at night. Comatose. The word lingered. The clear, sweltering night – intensified by the day’s heat still radiating from the asphalt road, concrete sidewalk and brick facades – weighed on him. It would be better to walk in pouring rain without an umbrella. He wiped his brow to prevent the salty sweat-like-raindrops from running into his eyes. At least rain wasn’t salty. The city swelter was legendary.
In the 19th century, members of the upper class were called brave if they stayed in the city after Memorial Day (the last Monday in May). Today, we survive it mostly indoors with air-conditioning, even if that makes the sticky air even more sultry outdoors. As standards continued to fall in preparation for humanoids to replace humans, shorts and T-shirts, even in professional environments, had become socially acceptable. It was the age of indifference – even managers, teachers and professors wore them – but they provided little relief. Yuri firmly believed that the easier and nicer you made life appear to children and young adults, the less competent you made them: if it looks easy, you won’t work hard; if you don’t work hard, you won’t be able to compete.
He decided to bring his night-walk to an end at the Myrtle-Wyckoff M/L subway station, a reasonable attempt to merengue up the once predominantly working class, largely immigrant community by building a modern(?), postmodern(?), peripatetic(?) domed station house that was in any case new. Alas, aside from its undefinable style, the glass and faux-brick building had to stand below the grimy exposed I-beam column and cross-beams that supported the above-ground tracks that decimated so many neighborhoods throughout the boroughs of the city. Nonetheless, the street livened up at the “square” in front of the main doors, even at this hour, with partygoers sashaying in and out. Intentionally or unintentionally, they were reinventing the artistic counterculture. Since the younger generation had begun to move further and further from Manhattan where mostly investment banks, international sovereign wealth funds and other well-endowed corporate entities purchased apartments, you encountered a living art show, a tableau vivant in motion, with outfits ranging from extreme classical beauty to what might be called grotesque (if you didn’t instinctually like them).
Passing a few exquisite exemplars as he descended into the bowels of the subway, Yuri felt heat more intense than in hell. And it was the middle of the night! You might think it was worse during the day, but he knew what it was like then – it was simply intolerable all the time. The train rumbled in and he plopped down on a bench in the car, initially relieved by the frigid air inside. On his phone, he saw the message from Angelika.
Roughly, he recalled what he had postulated:
What if our mindset was structurally off-kilter?
Wouldn’t we flail about without ever achieving a satisfying balance like Pierre in Tolstoy’s War and Peace or Esther in Plath’s The Bell Jar? Or take the political situation in any country with democratic elections: we expect that the latest round of elections will bring either salvation or doom. This cycle repeats every four, five, six, seven years. Quite an infusion of unnecessary uncertainty. In Sartre’s The Age of Reason, Mathieu commits to nothing during the vigil that precedes what should be his salvation: the reason to act, the beginning of a new existence – freedom based on reason.
5. Fate (romantic omniscient narrator)
You do not control yourself, let alone the externals. By embracing fate, you will not see a change in your situation, but your perception of that situation will be transformed to at least neutral.
6. The dream (Angelika)
Munich, Germany
One of the manifestations of imbalance wasn’t insomnia, but a lack of dreams. But after her walk that night, Angelika dreamed:
Pedro does not understand why Dora has any expectations.
“Amanecerá y veremos.” Pedro learned and lived by this phrase from an early age and throughout his life. The motto assured him that the future could not be predicted. This made him live his life without expectations. All he knew was that the sun rises every day. Plans may become facts, but whatever hopes and expectations someone has may also result in disappointment.
The process: the future will not deliver salvation. We finished the renovation of the house… and started on the next one. You stay balanced in the process, like cold winters followed by warm springs, dry summers giving way to wet autumns. And toward the end, building to the crescendo, you readily tap the keg of reserves.
7. Philosophy (omniscient narrator)
For Hume, Kant, Hegel, and more recently Quine, Putnam, Rorty, and Goodman, the mind perceives the appearance or impression of an external object. We do not know the object in itself.
Pedro wonders why Dora thinks that earning wages one way rather than another will affect her. For Pedro or the people on Jules Street, the means of wage-earning are the (empirical) “appearance” or “impression” in the language of those philosophers. Dora’s (rational) understanding will combine the pictures and organize them according to categories. Pedro believes that the next panel in the diptych or triptych will be contiguous with the previous one.
The content may change, but the form remains the same. It goes for him as well – once a window installer, now a shoe-shiner. Transposition or transadaptation: “He is certain that nothing, not even life or death, is predictable.” That is the content. “All the more so as he sits and waits for someone to demand a shoeshine in Parque de los Periodistas day in day out. Dora’s new job, like anything else, may or may not be what she expects. Just wait and see. Amanecerá y veremos.” The form is established.
Pedro is a romantic.
(…to be continued…)
Footnotes
1. Framework narrative composed by Angelika Friedrich and Henry Whittlesey; interwoven narrative written by Sarah-Leah Pimentel, Adriana Uribe, Veronika Groke, Lauren Voaden, Armine Asryan, Narantsogt (Natso) Baatarkhuu, Svetlana Molchanova, Jonay Quintero Hernández, Alejandra Baccino Uberti
2. All blue text indicates a hyperlink to the original story by a perypatetik contributor or to the theoretical treatise (Peripatetic Alterity). The stories are published in print as part of the transadaptation series (volumes 1-6) and are also available at the perypatetik.net website under Perception by Country.
3. T.S. Elliot, The Waste Land.
Transadaptation Volume 7 – Via Ellipsis – Continuation of Uncertainty, Instability and Extremes Transadapted
January: An Unexpected Trip Down Memory Lane – Sarah-Leah Pimentel (South Africa)
February: Blow-up – Veronika Groke (Austria)
March: Futuros Murguistas – Alejandra Baccino Uberti (Uruguay)
April: The Nomenclature Man – Paulius Limantas (Lithuania)
May: Amanecerá y veremos – Adriana Uribe (Colombia)
June: Finding Light in Yerevan – Armine Asryan (Armenia)
July: The Last Judgement – Nadia Silva Castro (Brazil)
August: Puzzled – a collaged nivola by and of perypatetik authors (International)
September: Second Steps – Jonay Quintero Hernandez (Spain)
October: New Normality – Svetlana Molchanova (Russia)
November: Beyond Comprehension – Rahaf Konbaz (Syria)
December: Who’s Afraid of the Big, Bad Worm? (Parts I and II) – Narantsogt (Natso) Baatarkhuu (Mongolia)
Background – Context
Transadaptation Volume 6: Meaning? – Uncertainty, Instability and Extremes Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2025)
Transadaptation Volume 5: Of Flowing Vicissitudes – Life Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2024)
Transadaptation Volume 4: Material Dissent – Adulthood Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2023)
Transadaptation Volume 3: Evanescent – Young Adulthood Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2022)
Transadaptation Volume 2: Conceived – Childhood Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2021)
Transadaptation Volume 1: In the Middle – Prelude to a Contemporary Transadaptation, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2020)
Peripatetic Alterity: A Philosophical Treatise on the Spectrum of Being – Romantics and Pragmatists by Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2019)
La Syncrétion of Polarization and Extremes Transposée, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2019)
The Codex of Uncertainty Transposed, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2018)
L’anthologie of Global Instability Transpuesta, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2017)
From Wahnsinnig to the Loony Bin: German and Russian Stories Transposed to Modern-day America, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2013)
Emblems and stories on the international community
Perception by country – Transposing emblems, articles, short stories and reports from around the world
Credits
Background photo: Munich, Germany – The street refracted – Jahanzeb Ahsan (Unsplash)
Inserted photos (top left clockwise): 1. Austria – The village – Sven D (Unsplash); 2. Goris, Armenia – Hung out to dry – KrimKate (Shutterstock)-2; 3. Montevideo, Uruguay – Ramirez Beach – DFLC Multimedia Designer (Shutterstock); 4. New York City, USA – Chinatown – Viktorija Demjanenko (Unsplash); 5. Karoo, South Africa – Roadside padstal – mehdi (Shutterstock); 6. New York City, USA – This is your god – Ludivine Indigo (Unsplash); 7. Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia – From the car – Keleny (Shutterstock); 8. Tenerife, Spain – Embedded in the mountains – Dynamoland (Shutterstock); 9. Saratov, Russia – Chernyshevsky Square – Fire-fly (Shutterstock); 10. Bogota, Columbia – Criss-crossing – Delaney Turner (Unsplash)