PANTHA REI

You are influenced by thousands of memories. Each of them has changed something in your life. Each of them was a new experience.

Whenever you close your eyes, under your eyelids you can see, feel, hear, and taste everything you have gone through in your life. You will be surrounded by people, names, situations and events. Sometimes you remember the hour, the date, a human being, his face, eye colour, the smell of his skin; sometimes just the figure without a face, like a shadow of a shadow. Your memories create a chain of events.

 All that happened in the past, everything that is happening now, and everything that you dream about, is somehow tied up by a string of time. You have been experiencing it all your life. In the past, behind the barbed wire, time was steady and easy to understand; the minute was sixty seconds long, the hour sixty minutes, and the day, twenty-four hours. Only sometimes time seemed longer, like a sticky liquid falling down from a spoon, hanging above the table for thousands of years. Sometimes it passed very quickly like a crazy horse. But still it was TIME.

Here you experience time differently, maybe deeper. Here you think about TIME. Sometimes you think it is “relative”. Einstein’t theory must have been invented in prison - in a closed area filled with nothing but TIME.

How do you divide your time? Day and night?

Getting up – assembly – breakfast – dinner – supper – assembly – sleeping? The time from meeting with family to the next meeting?

Close your eyes and experience time. With every cell of your body... you close your eyes and you go through time as through a thick cobweb. You go through a tunnel, you tear the thick cobweb, then time passes slowly and lazily... on your face you can feel the wind blowing... the last cobweb. A moment for rest...the days pass quickly like pictures seen behind a car window….. and the next pellicle of a cobweb ... You can feel the cruel eyes of time on yourself ... everything slows down, becomes boring, grey on the white wall. Time only sometimes closes its lids and winks... Maybe then, when its eyes are closed there is no time for you to wait for long minutes and even longer days...time behind time...  Maybe here we are in a black hole where time is finite? It exists up to the moment when you look behind bars for the last time. Then it won’t exist. There will just be events... You won’t need it, it won’t be necessary. You will start everything again from the beginning – time will be just your time.

Anonymous

   (Rzeszow, Poland)

THE CHANCE OF MY LIFE

          I have always been an active person, maybe even too active! At school I had crazy ideas, sometimes even nasty ones, but always ideas and passions. I didn’t listen to kind people. I was always pushed by some urge and the time came when it was announced that life would change, that entrepreneurs would finally reach their promised land.

 So I became a businessman. I could write a thick book about those times, about everything that was good and bad, what was silly and at the same time sensible. And, as it does sometimes in life, what was supposed to be a success turned out to be a failure. But we human beings try never to give up; every failure was the beginning of a new success. So I set up warehouses in big cities, also shops and restaurants. I imported goods from abroad. I took loans which with time were difficult to pay back. Then I met a lot of people who pretended to be my friends, but in fact were like vultures. Finally the police turned up, which to date I had only connected with white and blue caps. In such situations you find yourself alone and your reputed friends take whatever they can. The court deprived me of everything I had gained through  life.

 Suddenly I had the next brilliant idea - a solution without any investments. The new business brought what I needed most – money.

 An escort agency – or, as someone has cleverly called it, a cathouse – is something that attracts everybody. Not so long ago they evoked a lot of emotions, but blue films can now be watched by everyone for just a little money. To such agencies come hundreds of men, the wealthy and the poor alike - the bank manager and the farmer. There is a lot of good alcohol, a lot of money and beautiful women, women who are ready to give everything, including themselves. The business goes on. Taxes and legal permits give you the feeling that everything is legal. Finally, everything that is against the law is not illegal. This, which was supposed to exist only for a while, became the main aim in my life. I had the chance of a lifetime, just as I wanted.

There are a lot of problems – but they can’t be avoided. Sometimes the price is very high. My marriage is falling apart. No woman can accept that her husband has such a job. Money can’t make it up. Computers, radios and expensive TVs can’t replace a father. But the business still goes on. There are more and more clients who soon become friends. Also, there are important surnames of those with even more important careers. But everything comes to an end.

 Suddenly there is anger. But I haven’t been doing anything wrong!

 Prison? What for?

 A lot of time for thinking and reflection. Suffering, but first of all, losing all hope. You are always alone. No, you have love and hope. Do you? You also have your family, you can rely on them. Then you come to the conclusion that you have been a fool. You haven’t seen what is most important in life. That is why you have to be punished. I forgot the old saying “Not everything is gold that glitters”. Yet today I can say – I had the time of my life!

Anonymous

                                                                       (Rzeszow, Poland)