Batakliev's Bloc

I was sitting on my staircase eating supermarket Greek salad (€ 2,95, feta, lettuce, cherry tomatoes and mayo dressing). My travel bag was gaping wide open. Books, cables, t-shirts and disembodied tube tickets were scattered all over the place and I was waiting for the locksmith to come and let me in. As I was swallowing another eroded feta cube, half dressed in mucousey yellow substance, I realised I had fallen in love. I had fallen in love with London. And this is where I had left my house keys, neatly tucked into a drawer in a cute little flat in the West End. Big cities cause big gaps between people. You may be very special but I'm not coming to see you after the last tube has gone, I read between the lines of random best friends. Coming closer can be a bit of a stretch for many. Not many speak their minds and follow their hearts in the domain of distance. "We like who we seem to be", told me a distinguished Londoner who also doubled as an unemployed talented writer...

On an autumn afternoon in 1991 I received a bubble envelope. It was about 3pm and I had just come home from school. In post-communist Bulgaria bubble envelopes meant a package from Western Europe. And packages from Western Europe meant a glimpse into unattainable magic. I grabbed the envelope and started feeling it with both hands, trying to guess what's inside. In a rush of excitement I was popping the bubbles one by one and my heart was racing in anticipation. There had to be a tape inside. And indeed, there was one. A boxless black audio cassette with a recording of Heaven or Las Vegas by The Cocteau Twins . I stood outside for a while. The front door was wide open and so was the mailbox. For a short eternity, I was a happy and content 15-year-old, who had just been initiated into a secret realm, invisible to the rest of the world. It was as if I was surrounded by a bubble (one I had left unpopped) and through it I was contemplating the special moment in time. A moment I ca...

Think about the activities you are least willing to do. The tedious chores which trigger utter reluctance bordering on mental choke, once your mind incarnates their uninspiring lifeless torsos. Like dried-out tails of dead mice they scrape the recesses of the mind causing the face to assume cliched expressions of immense boredom. Think of pulling the plug which is underneath the table, having to go back to the supermarket because you forgot to buy salt, changing the dust bag of your vacuum cleaner. Well, I changed mine the other day. It was not easy. This was one of my "not-done" activities and its dried-out tail was casting a spell of inaction despite the visibly declining performance of the vacuum cleaner. I decided to break the spell. I acted. What followed may have been a dream yet I remember it vividly. The front of the vacuum cleaner opened slowly, like the bulging door of a space ship. Stuck inside, like monumental alien spawn lay the overripe bag, pregnant with th...