Cactus.

In a state that might be called, with some irony, a “heightened state of consciousness”—a state in which the senses behave like rebellious members of a neglected brass band, each blowing its own tune, regardless of conductor or score—the curious phenomenon occurs that, despite this inner state of carnival, the writer still strives to place the comma correctly before the conjunction “but,” as if it were a mere lifebuoy of syntactic discipline amid a linguistic deluge in which full stops are waved away like specks of dust on a car hood in the Mojave Desert of grammar, and in which capital letters float like forgotten barques on a sea of structural nihilism. It is in this sultry, chemically-driven linguistic space that the writer—that is, you, the subject with the slight tendency toward existential hubris, or perhaps just someone who thinks out loud alone at night with a keyboard as a confessor—manages to depict a fundamentally human paradox: the urge for order within chaos, the craving for form within an environment that behaves like an emotionally unavailable cactus in a dusty desert of semiotic sorrow. After all, the comma before the “but” is not a trivial choice; it is a final expression of hope that, despite everything, meaning is still possible. Even when the full stops, those modest yet essential pillars of meaning, are neglected as if they were superfluous relics of an old-fashioned language regime that still believed in structure, hierarchy, and the illusion of coherence.

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The Rain.

The rain lashes down with the cruelty of a world that has sunk its teeth into my dreams. My fingers tremble as I open the matchbox, the cardboard box wet and soft as old sorrow. The fire refuses to cooperate, it resists, as if it understands that each flame swallows a piece of my soul. I scrape the match along the box, but it breaks like a promise that never came true. One more try. The rain laughs at me as I desperately try. Each spark that lights and immediately goes out is an ode to my perseverance, a macabre dance of light and water. The pleasure lies not in the ease, but in the fight – the fight against the elements, against my own desire that hunts me down like a dog.

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Fragility.

Well, there you are, soul under arm, the smell of freshly baked egg salad in the air, realizing that the fragility of life is not only revealed in the great moments of illness and death or in the heartbreaking scenes of human tragedy that force themselves upon you as you doomscroll through your screen, but precisely in those banal moments when you can do nothing but wait in line at the gas station, your thoughts like a flock of starlings fluttering nervously along the frayed edges of your consciousness because you only wanted to fill up half a tank because the gas prices are ridiculously high again and you have somehow come to terms with the fact that you cannot control everything except the uncontrollable craving for an egg sandwich that you suddenly had, just like that, as if your subconscious was signaling you to pause for a moment and consider that your body and your mind together form a fragile fortress that adapts to the vagaries of evolution, just as organisms once did the step moving from water to land, from fins to legs, from invertebrate to vertebra, from cell clump to consciousness, each transition accompanied by breaking points and vulnerabilities and an uncomfortable unsteadiness that we still carry within us, because even in a gas station, surrounded by gleaming shelves of candy and energy drinks that are a caricature of the primal instincts that once drove our ancestors to survive on the savannah, you come face to face with the fragility of your existence.

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Even.

Imagine a long corridor, infinite in both directions. On either side of this corridor are doors. On the left: the even numbers. On the right: the odd numbers. Each number is a room, and each number is a person. They whisper among themselves, bicker about their reason for being. The even numbers wear gray cloaks, symmetrically cut. The odd numbers, on the other hand, are wild, uncombed, their voices uneven and their steps jarring. Now the corridor is filled with light: the light of infinity. This is no ordinary infinity, but an infinity with taste. An infinity that judges, that distinguishes between order and chaos. And here the first sign reveals itself: every odd number can be transformed into an even number, simply by subtracting 1. 7 becomes 6, 5 becomes 4. But not every even number can be transformed so elegantly into an odd number, because 0, the absolute even, has no odd predecessor. It is the origin, the first silence, the mother of parity. 0 counts, say the wise, and with that the even numbers have a head start of one. But we are not here for childish arithmetic games. We are looking for a deeper proof, a proof in which logic submits to imagination.

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Lawn.

A lawn is a carpet of tiny wonders, a collection of millions of green fingers reaching for the sky. They await your touch, your whispering caress—the tickle that makes them dance in the morning light. How do you do that? Begin with silence. Kneel down, feel the earth beneath your hands, the springiness of the grass stretching and bending. Let your breath become calm, as if you were breathing with the grass. Then slowly reach out your hand. Don’t think about the end result, about the perfect picture—think about the game. Let your fingers gently glide over the tips of the blades. Feel the grass opening up, wanting to share a secret with you. Each blade is a sound, a note in a silent symphony. As you run your hand through the lawn, listen to that music. The grass whispers back, a rustling song that you only hear when you open your heart.

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Friend.

The concept of a friend of the room sounds innocent, almost sweet — as if a room could have a friend. But in a world where chairs dream, walls whisper, and wallpaper secretly observes its inhabitants, the phrase becomes something dark, strange, and philosophical. Let’s explore four possible, uncomfortable explanations.

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Somewhere Else.

…or are you not in the hotel and somewhere else entirely, in a place where the floors breathe and the stairs occasionally decide to move themselves? The door you just walked through may no longer exist; it has retreated into a wall and now blooms like a chestnut flower, smelling of other people’s memories. You walk on, but the carpet beneath your feet turns into a dry riverbed covered in stamps and forgotten birthdays. The light on the ceiling blinks in Morse code: “don’t stay too long, the room is getting attached.” Someone—or something—breathes into the wallpaper. Not scary, just practical. A room needs to know who you are, so it can adapt to your dreams, your fears, your body odor in June. There’s a clock on the wall, but the hands have been replaced by two outstretched fingers pointing to where you used to think you were. Time there has congealed, like jam on a napkin in a breakfast room that might be a hospital, or a prison, or the inside of your skull when you dream about suitcases packing and unpacking themselves.

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Side.

There are gestures in life that seem so small, so insignificant, that they barely stir the dust on the scales of existence. And yet—and yet—they evoke a deeper truth. A truth that whispers: you could have done something useful with your life. Take the gentle touch of the side of your keyboard. A gesture that balances on the delicate edge of tenderness, boredom, and total cognitive implosion. There you are. The cursor blinks like a sarcastic metronome on the blank document. The world is burning outside. Emails are piling up like garbage bags after a strike. But you, you decide to touch the side of your keyboard. Not the keys. Not the space bar. No. The piece of plastic next to it. That smooth, matte wasteland that registers no input and knows no gratitude. Your finger rests on it like a pianist taking a break—but without talent, audience, or music.

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Zebra.

Humanity has long pondered the great questions of life: Is the glass half full or half empty? What is our place in the universe? And more importantly, what drives someone to cross a zebra crossing that is on a bike path, with no traffic lights, no warnings, nothing but white lines and blind faith in human goodness? The idea that the glass is “always full”—half with water, half with air—is an attempt to transcend the limitations of our perception. What we don’t see counts too. And seen in this way, the zebra crossing becomes more than a traffic amenity. It becomes a metaphor. A paradoxical tension between order and chaos, hope and threat, civic trust and reckless cyclist anarchy. The zebra crossing on a bike path seems empty. No lights. No flashing signals. No explicit indications that the pedestrian has priority here, except for a few white lines that are now fading from years of rain and tire tracks. Like the glass half empty, this path seems mostly like an attempt that is not quite finished. But what we do not see is more important than what we see.

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Press.

The pink citrus juicer, that trivial kitchen object, fashioned in a color that perhaps refers more to marketing than to function, still smells of pulp and sourness—a mechanical altar on which oranges, grapefruits, and even the occasional lime yield their internal essence under the pressure of the human hand, their fibers and acids spilling over the edges like an acid bath that slowly corrodes the plastic—and here, right here, begins our wandering towards a supposed connection, a hypothesis of sensible connectedness, with the tragic figure of a human being, whose skin glows unnaturally brown, as if life itself has been caressed by a UV lamp until it evaporates irrevocably, like a forgotten moth in a light box.

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Branch.

In a world where everyone is so worked up about the slightest thing—like a large branch of leaves casually growing out of your ear—it’s important to maintain a little inner peace. Maybe you’re sitting at home right now, sipping tea, while a blackbird inspects nesting material on your left ear. The neighbors are whispering. The doctor has “questions.” But you? You stay calm. Here are 5 tips on how to handle this slightly unusual, photosynthetically active situation with style, flair, and, most importantly, unwavering denial:

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Experience.

Let me start by saying this: if you’re looking for an adventurous escape from the ordinary, this three-day experience offers a surprising twist on your routine. No booking required, no overly Instagrammable locations, just you, a bunch of dedicated professionals in balaclavas, and a dark sense of loss of control. The journey begins with a classic heist setting, somewhere between “unexpected” and “unwanted.” Within seconds, you’re in a cozy, slightly claustrophobic space — the trunk of a car. The smell of old carpet, motor oil, and desperation gives you an authentic experience that you won’t find in a brochure. And while the space to move around is limited, that’s part of the charm: minimalism in its purest form. What makes this three-hour journey truly special is the combination of sensory stimulation and introspective silence. Every bump in the road is a reminder that you’re alive — at least for now. You hear the car humming, snatches of traffic noise, the occasional bend that makes you rethink your spine. Call it a meditative reset, but without freedom of choice or a yoga mat. Arriving at your destination (somewhere Google Maps wisely steers clear), you are poetically abandoned. The kidnappers, with an eye for detail and punctuality, leave by bus, which is a testament to their commitment to sustainability. No unnecessary violence, no big drama — just you, the moon, and a vast landscape that calls out for existential questions.

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Center aisle.

There are moments so banal they feel almost embarrassing to describe. You’re standing in the center aisle of a moving train. Not sitting, not reading, not talking. Just… standing. As if you’ve forgotten that you’re a human being with muscles that are getting tired and a brain that needs attention. You’re standing there like a morally neutral banana, right between the seats, right between the windows, and—here’s the ridiculous part—you’re trying to look out of both the left and right windows at the same time. It’s a position that makes you feel like you’ve put your life on hold for no good reason. The rest of the train is filled with humanity: scrolling, snorting, sleeping, sighing. You ignore them all, like they’re noise. And there you are, in a place that’s not meant to be standing, staring at two worlds rushing past you in opposite directions.

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Fried.

The smell of hot air. Yes, that’s what you get when you ask me, a digital entity without nostrils, to write a 500-word olfactory report on something that is by definition nothing. But anyway. You asked, I take a deep breath, figuratively speaking. Because hot air doesn’t smell like nothing. It smells like pretension, expectation, disappointment wrapped in warm aromas. It smells like something that is almost something. And that is tragically beautiful. Or just tragic. Imagine a kitchen with something in the oven. The smell wafts towards you, fills your nostrils with promise. You think: ha, something delicious is coming out of there. But as you get closer, you notice that there is nothing in that oven. Only air, heated to the exact point where molecules start dancing and pretending to carry scent. It’s a smell that tastes like nothing, but lingers anyway. You smell memories that never happened. Hot air smells like PowerPoint presentations sound. You know, those sessions where someone talks about "synergy" and "low hanging fruit" for 37 slides, while everyone else is slowly wilting inside. You smell the promise of substantial content, but you get hot air and buzzwords. It's the smell of market research without conclusions. The smell of ambition without direction. The smell of a manager saying, "Let's put this on hold for a moment," while he's dying of emptiness inside.

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Square.

…and so she moves through rooms that always seem square, even when the walls buckle under social expectations and the floor wobbles with implicit intentions; she, whose way of seeing was never meant to be a rejection but a precision, a kind of moral obligation to clarity, for how can one orient oneself when everything is constantly moving except the gravity of logic? She does not wait for a feeling, she waits for a pattern, a confirmation, a repetition, something that makes sense, like a series of footsteps that echo at precise intervals on a smooth floor — there lies safety, and therefore truth, and therefore reality. The others, always on the move, speak in language that oscillates between meaning and gesture, as if their words were more sound than structure, and while they laugh at the wrong moment and their eyes slide along invisible points of meaning, she tries to understand by writing things down, drawing them, making diagrams in which their capriciousness can be captured in forms that at least adhere to their own logic. And so the square is created — a mental space, not really hard or cold, but not fluid either — with rounded corners that allow what is flexible to be captured, if only for a moment, for observation, for processing, for an attempt at contact that relies not on feeling but on decoding.

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Closing time.

Sometimes, in the last few minutes before closing time, when the supermarket’s fluorescent lights flicker just a little brighter and the staff, with a passive-aggressive smile, starts sweeping the floor as if they’re trying to subtly erase you, something wonderful happens. Not grand, not divine—but strangely intimate. You grab products without thinking, guided by impulse, memory, and a vague sense of “needing something.” And before you know it, you’re walking around with a basket full of objects that you didn’t choose, but that might have chosen you. There, between the urge to “get something quick” and the leftover clutter on the half-empty shelves, a kind of supermarket zen reveals itself. A state in which everything—every banana, every tube of toothpaste—has a story. And maybe even… feels something.

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Barrier.

In the shadow of concrete and pass systems, where human traffic is streamlined by technology without poetry, stands the barrier of the parking garage—a white-and-red border guard, ruthless and obedient. One would be tempted to say that man is subject here to the dictates of the machine, to the unwavering logic of payment and protocol. And yet—in the midst of this technocratic banality—it emerges like a ray of light in a puddle: naïve hope.

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Rear rack.

When a slightly tipsy human tries to swing his leg over the rear rack of his bicycle, an unprecedented but extremely complex chain reaction takes place within a second and a half on a molecular, medical and philosophical level. What superficially appears to be a clumsy motor error is in reality a play full of chemical errors, biomechanical drama and existential confusion.

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Code of conduct.

The stone. So simple in form, so rich in symbolism. Once a foundation, sometimes a projectile, often ignored – until it falls. The falling stone is not a thinking being, but that makes it all the more interesting. In its fall lies a pure truth: movement without intention, momentum without morality. And that is precisely why it is high time to establish rules of conduct. Why? Because people like to mirror themselves on all sorts of things – wolves, stars, even office plants. But rarely on something that really resembles them: an object in free fall. We pretend to make choices, but much of what we do is simply responding to gravity – emotionally, socially or physically. So, let’s face it: in times of losing control, when your life is tumbling down a slope like a boulder that was once solid – how do you behave with dignity? What are the standards of decency of a stone in free fall? Here they are. Five rules of conduct for those who find themselves in a falling existence – literally or symbolically.

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Red.

There should be exactly five parked cars along every street, in every city and village – and one of them should be unmistakably red! This is not a non-binding recommendation, but a clear call for order and harmony in our urban landscape! Firstly, the fixed number of parking spaces provides structure and overview. Five cars form a symmetrical ensemble: three on one side of the entrance to a plot, two on the other, or vice versa, depending on the width of the road! By adhering to this rhythm, we avoid chaotic rows of eight or ten vehicles, which harm pedestrian comfort and the appearance of our streets. Unity in numbers leads to unity in experience!

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Fair.

You get into the bumper car, like someone who knows his place in a dream that is not governed by any logic, as if you no longer expect the world to conform to you, but you move with a gentle resignation toward the crumbling remains of the known, dressed in black that does not set off but dissolves into the shadow of forgotten things, and your thoughts—gray, viscous as mist over a lake where no one ever swims anymore—swarm around like slow moths in a room where the light is just enough to notice them but not enough to chase them away. And as you sink into the decaying seat of a bumper car that’s being crunched by roots as if the earth itself has decided this party has gone on long enough, the light on top blinks with a kind of weary fervor—white, not bright white, not hopeful white, but the white of an old fluorescent tube sharing its last flickers with no one in particular—and you think of how it used to be a place of screaming children, hands clutching the steering wheel as if control was something you could grasp at in plastic cars that went nowhere but in circles. The trees have nestled without invitation, their roots through metal and their branches like fingers trying to grasp back something long lost—the freedom of wild growth versus the mechanics of amusement, and you, in the middle of it, an anachronism in a black suit, among the foliage of what was once a floor and now looks like an oversized tree leaf with veins of broken concrete, as if the entire fair were a page from an out-of-print book.

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Do It Anyway.

There is a moment, between waking and sleeping, when the laws of probability have forgotten themselves. There, in that crack between 'can't' and 'do it anyway', a thought slides along the lines like a silky eel. You want something – something big, something smaller than a whisper – but the world nods its concrete head no. And then it happens: you nod back. Not in response, but in distraction. You pretend. As if the staircase to the moon were made of rubber and extended to under your feet as soon as you wiggle your toes. As if the conversation that never began was now whispering to you through the pores of the air. As if gravity were a non-binding suggestion and not a dictator in a crash helmet. You pretend, and the 'can't' dissolves like sugar in boiling water – the sweet proof that refusal has a taste you can skip.

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Now.

as if the thoughts are clumped together in a vague web of ideas, constantly revolving around that one moment, twelve hours and fifty-one minutes, as the second hand convulsively makes that final tick that lights up the digital clock and whispers that now is the moment to publish, like a fluid stream of conviction that crawls under your skin and whispers every argument in your head that will later be too late, too early, too uncertain, but 0:51 is just the sweet spot, the pinch of tension that puts reader and writer on edge at the same time, driven by the elusive promise of relevance, the adrenaline that rushes through your veins when you know that every click that registers at 0:51 will sound like a testimony to your daring, to your timing, as the moonlight falls through the window and reflects on your screen, diffuse and elusive, and you realize that every word that appears after that magical hour loses its shine, as if in the aftermath of midnight they are merely echoes of a decision that should have been different fall, just at that fractional moment when the day still slumbers and the night turns, almost not to wake

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