/ world today news/ Once upon a time, long ago, Miss Tsvetkova, our class from the 11th junior high school in the capital, used to punish the disobedients like this – to stand in the corner facing the wall without ringing the bell for recess.
It had never happened to me, but now I experienced it. Our new Klasna punished me. I was punished for my refusal to attend a cocktail party which was supposed to demonstrate our tender attachment to Culture and Knowledge. And the congress had just ended with a blunder, which once again showed our humiliating disregard for spirituality and its actors – a muddy splash of the aggressive ignorance flooding our entire society. Then, like a cocktail, I kept silent about what happened at the congress itself, when even the second balcony of the hall, where I was accommodated as a guest, reached the stench of shameful backstage and dirty manipulations. I don’t know if Klasnata felt them too, but I had already written, begged and whined for a quota that would ensure the worthy participation in the work of our National Council of socialists from education, the media and the arts. In vain I reminded of times when Valeri Petrov and Leda Mileva, Stefan Prodev, Benjamen Varon, Kolyo Georgiev sat next to each other – and many more! – and the leaderships of left-wing parties abroad were proud of the presence of Joliot-Curie, Pablo Picasso, Pablo
Neruda, Henri Barbuse, Gianni Rodari, Cesare Zavattini, Yves Montand, Bertold Brecht…
…I also wrote a letter to Klastana about the catastrophic situation of “Duma” and its devoted, humiliatingly poorly paid workers, about the fact that not a single issue of our left-wing newspaper arrives in entire regions of the country. I suggested to her that we should do something about this problem – probably not a very smart suggestion, but I was still offering something – but no sound, no sign of response. That I was punished – probably for my refusal to participate in an imitation of concern for our national culture and the place of its actors in our party routine – an empathy that we show once a year in May, from cocktail to cocktail!
…Then one of the leaders of the German Green Party, who was the vice president of the Bundestag for 10 years, arrived in Sofia for his literary works. So he wanted this leader, as we were drinking brandy at home, to get to know our new Klasna and to exchange thoughts and mutual information on the things of life – especially since, as is known, the Greens in Deutschland, their largest opposition party, they redden quite distinctly. It wouldn’t be, it was Dimitar Blagoev’s anniversary and the meeting couldn’t take place at all – not now, not later: The classroom was busy laying a bouquet of flowers at Grandpa’s house.
I do not blame anyone – neither the reds here, nor the German greens: I know that in this case I am the one punished and no mitigating circumstances apply. And the chance for an extremely important personal contact that no political leader in Bulgaria would ignore, literally no one! – red, blue or checkered, was completely and with surprising political levity squandered by simple female stubbornness. An inexplicable vindictiveness – because I’ve always had a crush on the nice classy ones!
OK, let’s throw ashes at him – I’m standing in the corner, facing the wall, waiting for the halftime bell and thinking that something important is still wrong at “Positano”. I am thinking not so much of the German greens as of our still green, immature and unwise personnel policy. How, for example – I think – the person responsible for our coalition contacts will walk down the main Plovdiv street, once called “Jumayata”, and under the hills he will be widely disliked and booed, and the area is also pedestrian. And I think of other similar things – about that proletarian from the Executive Bureau, who drives his favorite Maserati for a hundred thousand euros along the curves of our social empathy, which hurts.
And I am thinking about the magnificent peace-loving idea of Klastana – to bring to the National Assembly an official proposal for the demilitarization of the Black Sea. A great proposal, probably discussed in depth and breadth by this same newly elected by free will Executive Bureau! Because if this bright initiative were to be accepted by the National Assembly, on the opposite Black Sea coast, on a beach called Sevastopol, the Russians would have to remove their nuclear submarines and torpedo boats, aircraft carriers and destroyers, the hundreds of missile and other aerospace units, and we from in turn, we will pull our two sunken boats ashore. And brotherly, we will drink cocktails with a clinking lump of ice under the peaceful beach umbrellas! And isn’t a reasonable member of the Executive Bureau found, I think, who will whisper to the Class an additional proposal to Mr. Putin – to liquidate his military bases in the Arctic, and we will in return remove the radar over Botunets. God protect Russia, NATO protects us!
And so, in epic blunders, went my punishment of standing in the corner, facing the wall. Then I remembered our dear Valery and hummed his old song about the lighthouse keepers. Tram tara-ra, tram tara-ra…
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* Reflections in the corner, facing the wall
** The class preferred Grandpa to a German politician – Cornelia Ninova’s response to Angel Wagenstein’s letter
***The “Wagenstein-Ninova” dispute ended with a publication ban in “Duma”
#Reflections #corner #facing #wall
