Last night a surprising occurrence disturbed my sleep. From the bookshelf above my bed, a black metal box fell down on its own accord, injuring my forehead. Before, it had always stood there, quiescent, faintly glittering by night and unnoticed by day. Now, the same empty scrapbox lay still near my pillow, cold and omnipotent like some technical god. Blood welled out, trickling across my face and filling the sockets of my eyes with lakes of warm, silky-smooth liquid. Time stopped. The boundaries of familiar objects in the room liquified. Everything became immersed in luminescent blue. Languidly disheveling its lashes, my soul had awakened into a deep blue passage.

Reeling and unsteady in my gait, I entered a gallery that stretched along a high peeling stucco wall to the right and not far off ended with an obscure void. Stillness reigned in this haunting space, like bleary underwater without any visible source of light; not a waif of wind swayed my clothing. In front of me, six live females were successively exhibited in the wall's oval niches. Coming closer, I recognized the first two as my former lovers; neither of them had dared to look at me or to step out of her niche, which so nastily reminded me of unfledged hookers who attempt to lure a client by feigning indifference. Vexed by their unresponsiveness yet resolved not to stir a recollection, I proceeded to the next niche where stood the third woman, marked in her countenance by something unspeakably experienced and wistful. Her expression of gaudy anguish, her taut voluptuous bust wrapped in red tatters, her bare wringing arms, instilled in me the sensations of horror and compassion. What was more, thin parallel lines were scarified on her eyes, which could never open again -- her eyelids have grown firmly together -- or these might have been slits in her skin, through which exuded the darkest radiance of passion. Tearing myself away from her and ambling further along the exotic blue wall, I met the two who had spurned me in life. Their own peculiar blindness hinted that such was the common curse in this region. Perceiving my approach, their bodies convulsed and blidnly tilted to reach me with pointed breasts -- perhaps, as they would have acted toward any passerby. But the last niche offered to me still a greater mystery: its female possessed a dove-like sort of dauntless, unsatisfied beauty. "The prostitution of souls is not allowed. . . ," I thought, and so decided not to run to the dark aperture that was looming at the end of the passage.

No, he won't be reborn. On the train dimly trailing the aftermath of life, rushing toward an unclear destination, I will chance to meet him again in the uncharacteristic role of a car conductor. As I ride among ghostly passengers inside, catching in the window sloughing landmarks and same-as-everywhere dismal warehouses, he is gliding between the seats, unobtrusive yet discharging his duties. In due turn he stoops over my shoulder to check my ticket. Not a token of recognition in his placid, beautiful eyes! On this train, no memories are allowed to break the mysterious code between customers and personnel, the bright common laws of stability and abatement. Now, he wears a clean humble uniform, and a flat regulation hat with a badge of silver wings is placed athwart his head -- I guess, it's instead of a halo. The love of his gaze means seeing past the skin to the clogged artery near my heart. While he moves off to another traveler, I do nothing but fix my eyes back on the scenery, anxiously anticipating the arrival of the amorphous police that have suspected me since early childhood.

The causes of death bear no such importance as we might have attributed to them.

I like the airplane. It flies in the gray, thin stretches of atmosphere. Hale on its wing, it is invisible and greets the roundness with an abandon roar. It carries precious cargo while my friends, Americans, work kamikaze shifts, drink beer, raise many children, and console each other on life's worries. But the philosophers may say: There is always some object moving in the sky.

Religion says with bucolic intimacy that Jesus is a lamb, Ali, a lion, and my friends -- they are all goat devotees. Yeah, my gay Bakkhian mates! During parties, they rub against each other with words and bodies, through these means understanding each other well, if not completely. But for them it's not enough! The women lasciviously stretch their white, ample necks and the men hide despair between their legs; everybody has got something goatish on the brain. Rejoice then! Beat the drums, lay the tracks of songs in your blood! With you, I will join in the circle of honest dance.

Perhaps inside the stalks of grass are spacious chambers lit where live long-legged people who pass the night in revel and dance. Behind the doors locked on ungodly frights, they stomp and teeter in between the curved jade walls, imbibing fizzy drinks and choicest hors d'oeuvres, deranging their wits on inaudible waves of music and laughter, and yielding to each other in the courtliest manner. When the sun climbs above, their merriment having dried, do they doze away in wicker chairs, occasionally stirring to tell a bit of gossip about this incongruous world of ours.

Once my friend went for a stroll in the mountains. He came back with a shrunken head.

One must have courage to admit: There lived a saint in Russia who exchanged his social burden for a humble hut in the forest. Many years he grew vegetables and collected wild honey for sustenance, at leisure fighting with so-called demonic shadows that darkened the space around him. His situation cleared up only when a huge brown bear stumbled out of the thicket and, subsequently, stuck by this man. Monstrous as the beast seemed, the saint took good care of it, and God above the pine trees loved the saint.