The problem which was created with the passing of the law of a presumed agreement for organs to be explanted from any Bulgarian citizen after that person’s death if the opposite decision was not declared while the person was still alive, where relevant queries may be addressed, or truthful information provided, is now doubled by the problem of the diminishing stock of human organs and the exportation of human skin and bone tissues, and all that one can do is live in fear of being made, by hostile circumstances, to give parts of one’s body, or live in the fear of being made, by the nature of things, to take another person’s body part.
At least that is how I feel, with the just one heavenly consolation that medicine will still be going on its almost legal roads to understanding what a dead body can no longer feel.
It is like trying to feel the lively artistic paint colours of the East by withdrawing from a picture that is intent on joining one’s world, and like getting intent on the understanding the somber plain hues of the West by penetrating through its aristocratic remoteness.
It is a wonder why I am watching parliament control on the same problem that made me write about it on September 12, 2005 the following (in Bulgarian):
‘Yesterday I was planning to write something great on the grounds of general speculation, and on no expenditures made by me for trips or impressions as I have been a periodically unemployed English language teacher forced to contribute to the introduction of the notion of work-hand flows and labour markets.
It was rather different from walking along the beach and imagining that what I am writing about the sea is coming easily because it is being driven towards me by my future critics, and that the seamen on the ships are totally enjoying my romantic presence by the sea waves, and the paparazzo behind the bushes is only trying to make some money on me.
While I was speculating on the similarities and the differences between love and death, about the feeling of timelessness and disintegration which are most probably due to the speed of exchange or transfer of bio-energy from one body to another, or from life to the world energy balance, I suddenly accosted a television program whose aim, most probably, was to inform of the passing of a new law by which donation of body organs is presumed to have been contracted on no compensation by any living person.
I am far from hindering the evolution of science, nor am I against transplantations, and in need, I will gladly contemplate my refusal to part with parts of me, but I am also sure that some human rights are being violated after one’s death, and I suspect that many scientific medical achievements will bear the historical blemish of having developed on lives lost under suspicious circumstances.
If I were a medic, a scientist, a technologist, a manager, I would be able to see more clearly the scope of things so brave in the perception of their own importance, like money, body organs, the globe of the different methods and technological interconnections, all in their extremes of accumulation and development, and I would unfold my capacity to create wonders of relationships, balance, and achievement.
But what I am engaged now in is the fear that I won’t pass away quietly, and that my spirit, which is bio-energy resident, will wonder like a phantom between the life and the death of my physical existence, looking for parts of itself in somebody’s life, in a test tube, or in the dump-place, like two lovers are drawn to each other from the two ends of a huge railway station, getting lost among the crowd, but led towards a meeting by their instincts which know the way to the partner.’
Of course, my text concludes with an explicit ban on the removal of any part of me after my death, for humane or sinister purposes, but what is more interesting is what made me so defenselessly tough long before writing the above text to compose the following poem:
SPIDER
The spider of my luck is crawling
from under my exhausted feet
I walked all distances, times yawning,
and managed circles to complete
I tore my poems and undressed
I took old inklings for new chances
I gave away all I possessed
so I could jump on running buses
I broke rules, spit out phrases
And offered to the nights my brains
I fought the devils, bribed the angels,
but went on dragging my old chains
I did it all, I can't go further
No energy by source or theft
I'm tired now, births or murders
can move no more what in me's left
V.P.T.
V.P.Toucheva 4.04.2008 Sofia, Bulgaria
