Boris Glikman, Writer, Poet, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

    Boris Glikman's portrait created by the artist Ag Nes

Boris Glikman: "No longer young enough to know it all, not yet old enough to know better"

BPP: Who are you? And who you really are?

Boris Glikman:This is a very interesting and pertinent question and I am still striving to solve this mystery. Perhaps it will take me all of my lifetime or, indeed, beyond it, to find the answer to it. 

"The Reincarnated Between Two Worlds Self" - created by Anne Marie Delfini

BPP: If you could say something important to others who were listening, what would you tell them?

Boris Glikman:Listen to your Inner Self and follow its voice, for when you go against it, you are battling against the whole Universe, and when you follow it, the whole Universe is behind you, supporting your endeavours.

"The Sun Self" - created by the artist Ag Nes

BPP: What is your true dream, the one that keeps you up at night and if one day it were to come true you would feel peace and calmness in your heart?

Boris Glikman:To be true to my Inner Self, to discover all that I am capable of achieving and to fulfil all of my potential. 

"The Creatures of the Night negative Self" - created by the artist Ag Nes

BPP: How is life currently for the people in your country and what would you wish for them and for the planet at large?

Boris Glikman:Each person for me is a closed - off universe, an enigma that I can not ever know anything about. So I cannot speak for anyone else.

Also, I don't believe that such statistics as Gross Domestic Product, national average annual wage, unemployment rate, inflation rate etc give any indication whatsoever to people's happiness, well-being or contentment. These figures have nothing to do with people's inner world.

I would wish for everyone to be able to solve, to their own satisfaction, the mystery that life is.

 Boris Glikman's  portrait created by the artist Laura Mercer

BPP: If you had a chance to be a child again would you choose the same life?

Boris Glikman:I would spend less time eating the unripe, sour fruit from the Tree of Tomorrow and instead would enjoy the fruit from the Tree of Today.

"The Find Self" - created by  the artist Ag Nes

BPP:  What was the exact moment that you realized what you wanted to do with your life?  How did you feel at this very moment?

Boris Glikman:I have gone through many different incarnations and have taken many different roles in the world, but none of them were true to my Inner Self. I could have been a top mathematician/physicist but my heart wasn't in it, and in the end one has to follow one's heart. The relatively recent development of the role of writer/philosopher is something that rings true for the very first time in my life and I feel that my destiny is finally revealing its shape, slowly emerging out of the fog and mist that have enveloped it for such a long, frustrating time now.

 So there hasn't been an exact moment, as such. Rather it has been a very slow, gradual, still ongoing process of learning about myself, as well as finding out what I definitely do not want to do with my life.

"The Broadly Brushed Self"  - created by Dmitry Kandov  

BPP: Would you like to tell us something we didn’t ask until now?

Boris Glikman: If the readers wanted to learn more about me and explore further the world that I have created through my writings, they can do so by reading my stories, fables, poems and philosophical articles in my blog below:

http://www.gather.com/viewPostsByMember.action?memberId=201583

http://www.authorboris.com/

Also, thank you to you Ismini for creating this wonderful project which gives voice to creative people around the world and thank you also for the honour of letting me be a part of it.  

    Boris Glikman's drawing for BPProject

No longer young enough to know it all, not yet old enough to know better.

I'm at that age when I have time for everything except patience.

REVELATA SUBTERRANEA ( A POETIC MUTATION )

 Drawing created by the artist  Andy Paciorek

One day,

my friends and I descended

into the sewers

underneath the metropolis

and discovered the most unusual eel-like creatures

lounging indolently

on the concrete banks of the subterranean river.

There they were,

lying close to the river's edge,

only deigning to bestir,

dip their heads languidly

into the passing current,

when a particularly choice morsel

of human waste floated by.

Their appearance overpowered me

with its repulsiveness.

"How could Evolution ever

come up with such a horrible abomination?"

I remember wondering to myself.

"How could Nature ever allow

such a glaring insult against Herself

to arise and flourish,

such a  travesty,

such a betrayal,

such a perversion of the very natural order?"

Yet when I looked closer

at these anathemas,

a most astounding feature

revealed itself to me.

Somehow, through some playful whim

of the Goddess who directs and

oversees the evolutionary process,

these overgrown worms

developed human faces.

Nay, not just human faces,

but visages of angelic beauty

such that no earthly woman

would ever dare to possess,

lest the Gods became spiteful and jealous.

This discovery was so unexpected,

the radiance of their mien so intense,

I stood transfixed,

unable to take my gaze

even for an instant

away from these heavenly creatures.

Their eyes looked at me

with all the cognition of a person.

Their facial expressions were those

of  kindness, serenity, wisdom.

There were two over to the left,

holding their heads close to one another,

gazing deeply, just like two lovers,

into each other's eyes.

Suddenly I felt an odd sort of compassion for them.

REVELATA DYSMORPHOLOGIA ( A LYRICAL TRANSMOGRIFICATION )

Drawing created by the artist  Andy Paciorek

It started out inconspicuously,

inauspiciously,

a small pimple

on the lower left of his back,

something that no one

would ever give a second glance at.

It didn't even itch,

so demanded no instinctive scratching.

But

it grew

and grew,

developing into

a small cyst at first,

then into a larger and larger one

acquiring along the way the powers

of perception, cognition, speech, reason.

It became more and more dominant

in the running of his life til

there came a point

when he realized

he had become

the boil.

He now was the awkward,

ugly lump of shapeless,

useless flesh that needed

to be amputated

at the soonest possible opportunity,

discarded with other medical waste

or better still,

pickled and preserved

for eternity as a freakish

anatomical occurrence–

a talking, reasoning pustule

that apparently possessed

all the features of a well-developed human being.

He clearly saw how all this time

he had deluded himself

into believing that he was a real person

who deserved love,

companionship,

all the rights

that every member of society should possess

whereas

he was just a cyst

that somehow grew,

assuming the proportions,

the attributes of a person.

 REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS IMPERFECT

Drawing created by  the artist  Andy Paciorek

It is the middle of a sunny summer day

I am running down the stairs

quickly and excitedly, with my neighbours following me.

We all want to see the Sun

It just fell down in the front yard

I saw it coming down like an overripe cantaloupe,

staining the sky with sticky, succulent golden juices. 

There it is,

lying on the ground,

a giant orange, trampling the grass it landed on,

squirting its warm essence all over our bodies.

The neighbourhood dogs are running around,

barking at this strange visitor.

I approach it warily. I touch it.

It is warm and beautiful,

glistening in the mid-noon light.

I remember well the feelings of amazement, incredulity,

inexplicable joy overwhelming me

and the comical expressions of confusion

on the faces

of my neighbours.

 CREATURES OF THE NIGHT

 Drawing creatd by the artist  Andy Paciorek

These are

creatures of the

Night

that I

cannot

bear during

Daytime.  

Day, uncouth, arrogant Day

deigns no comfort for

their existence.

Only Night, demure

soft-speaking Night

broods them

to the fullness

of term.

For the rude,

intolerant brightness

of Day

shrieks at

their unnatural visage,

pushes them back

into the womb’s

abode.

Only night’s Moon

succours them

with its milky radiance,

the golden mead

of the Sun

being as though

vilest viper venom

to their young

tender mouths.

No birth pangs

accompany

their creation,

fully-formed

they spring forth

with such hale vigour,

confidence

that I become

but an adjunct,

a pale copy

of their existence,

as if they are

the begetter

and I am but a helpless infant

devoid of all knowledge,

sapped of all

force.

Born with

no blood

nor nature’s yolk

they feast

on the nearest flesh

consuming voraciously

that of which they came,

devouring,

like hideous grubs,

their creator

from inside.

So eager are they

to leave their natal home,

they themselves

chew off

the life cord

that once

bound them to me,

My own offspring

made my

nemesis.

HOMAGE TO LA: A SLAUGHTERHOUSE OF DREAMS

Drawing created by the artist Andy Paciorek

The smell hits you as soon as you step out of the air-conditioned airport. You feel the residue, the fallout of broken dreams hitting your palate. The charred remains of incinerated hopes mix with the omnipresent smog and invade every pore of your being.

The shuttle bus takes you to your hotel over miles and miles of pulverized aspirations paved over by concrete highways. From the bus window you can see the Hollywood Boulevard, where gold stars are set into asphalt, merging imperceptibly with the Promenade of Dead Dreams where the stars are wrought of dirty and soggy cardboard and are stuck onto the pavement with scotch tape or wads of old gum. Each cardboard star marks the exact spot where a particular dream breathed its last.

Different dreams die in different ways. Some shatter into jagged shards and one gets badly cut trying to piece them together again. Some fragment into neat, symmetrical fragments and re-construction is a relatively straightforward task, sort of like solving a jigsaw puzzle.  Others just crumble away, like burnt paper, and nothing is left to do except to warm your hands over their long-cold ashes.

Around each broken dream a mass of people sit in huddles, protecting it, as best they can, from the elements and the vagaries of fate and keeping a vigil, just in case it stirs and shows signs of life, for no dream can be obliterated completely.

LA, a Dream Slaughterhouse masquerading diabolically as a Dream Factory. The dream incinerators keep working day and night, around the clock, producing clouds of smoke that comprise of dreams reduced to their base elements: deep yearnings, life-long desires, burning ambitions, great aspirations, ineffable hunches rumbling just below the conscious mind, indestructible beliefs, half-remembered childhood premonitions.

The city takes delight in finding new ways to kill dreams, in finding new dreams to put to death. Special extermination squads roam its streets, ransacking every nook and cranny of the people’s souls and minds for any treasured hopes that might be in hiding there. The perversity of its depravity is such that it even gives birth to dreams just so that it can shoot them and watch them die. It makes you come face to face with your shortcomings, makes you face your failures. It knows all the delusions that comfort us throughout our lives, the delusions that keep us warm and secure at night, the delusions that sustain us through our daily struggles, the delusions that we use to solve our existential crises, the delusions that help us through our darkest times, the delusions that we stubbornly hang on to, nurture and cherish; the delusions that we would defend to our very deaths.

Every delusion gets hunted down and taken care of in this town: the delusion that one is special and unique; the delusion that one has singular and extraordinary talents; the delusion that one is in possession of insights into life that the rest of the world lacks and that one is privy to truths that no one else can access; the delusion that one is destined for greatness; the delusion that one is a genius whom the world doesn’t appreciate; the delusion that one will find a soul mate meant just for them and whose love will save them; the delusion that the convictions that one tenaciously holds on to are not delusions at all but are rather veracious, valid beliefs derived from experience and insight and supported by evidence from both the outer and inner worlds; the delusion that one is above the laws of humanity and deserves to be treated differently; the delusion that a lucky break will come to you in the end; the delusion that somewhere some person, angel or god is working on your behalf, trying to help you with your journey through life and is looking after you; the delusion that one is protected by fate and special luck from bad things happening to them; the delusion that there will come a day when one will begin to live happily ever after; the delusion that one will find meaning in one’s tribulations and that one’s struggles will be justified in retrospect; the delusion that it all will turn out well in the future; the delusion that one’s life is just a bad, absurd dream and that one will eventually wake up to find oneself living a happy life that makes sense; the delusion that you alone, out of the multitude in the present world and throughout the course of history, will be spared from death; the delusion that one does not have any delusions.

Over the eons the native denizens of the city have evolved a protection mechanism - they dream only fake dreams and have only counterfeit delusions so that when their hopes are destroyed, it doesn’t hurt at all. Only the unwary outsiders possess no genetic defence system and it is their dreams that the metropolis preys upon.

The mountains, mute witnesses to the tribulations and sufferings down below, are always there, solid and eternal, their paradoxical presence contrasting sharply with the ethereal and evanescent dreams floating around in the valleys.

Yet there might be an explanation to this incongruity for according to an old American Indian legend, the LA area was once flat as a pancake. Over time the detritus of destroyed dreams landed on the outskirts and amassed to create the mountains. Just as coral reefs are comprised of myriad dead organisms, so the mountains around LA are composed of fragments of lost hopes, scraps of unfulfilled ambitions and shells of dead dreams, with each broken dream contributing about 2/7th of an inch to the mountains’ height.

The mountains say nothing, expressing themselves through that most ancient, most articulate, most authentic and most profound language of all – absolute silence.

A few words about writing from Boris Glikman:

Boris Glikman: ""Writing for me is a spiritual activity of the highest degree.

Writing gives me the conduit to a world that is unreachable by any other means, a world that is 

populated by Eternal Truths, Ineffable Questions and Infinite Beauty.

It is my hope that these stories of mine will allow the reader to also catch a glimpse of this 

universe."

Poems and stories created by Boris Glikman. Drawings created by  the artists  Andy Paciorek, Dmitry Kandov. Painting by  Anne Marie Delfini. Surreal portraits of Boris Glikman created by the artist  Ag Nes and the artist Laura Mercer. All rights reserved.