My mother’s maiden name was Żelazna (Iron). I thought for a while whether to choose that name for myself as a nickname. Konrad Żelazny sounds cool. Like some powerful king or fearless knight. However, everyday life is much more brutal than these metallic word games. Every day I feel more like a crustacean that has just shed its old chitinous shell and, at this point, is more like a soft snail to the touch than the hard shield that my skin should be. I don’t have my shield or it’s at least not badly battered. Maybe I once had one, but it must have been made of fragile glass that shattered one day in one of the many fleshy human falls. I don’t even know when it disappeared.
I will never live in paradise. Paradise was never lost, it just never existed. There are only moments where I can feel good for a while and then I’m back on the constant battlefield again. All I can do is create more momentary idylls that collapse one after the other. I can invite people there, but they have to be aware that we have to get going immediately because a storm is coming. It is a pleasant vision, to know that happiness is and will be there. Just not as much and not as long as one would like. It’s easy to get addicted, harder to remember not to get too attached. Because that’s when it hurts the most. Then I have to forge another shield again. A shield from which I will build another little oasis.
Between failure and harbour is a field of creative uncertainty, where trauma can not only be experienced but also worked through. This is not easy or linearly progressive – it is rather a cyclical process in which revisiting the past is a condition for being able to move forward. The art of survival, then, is not about victory, but about staying afloat, seeking meaning where there is none, and building a ‘’harbour‘’ out of what remains in the wake of disaster.