Earlier, there used to be a herdsman’s home here along with his workshop and moped garage – a jury-rigged shed with a slanted roof and painted, but not planed, boards on the side walls, leaning up against the end of the cattle-sty. Inside – a carpenter’s bench, a metal-worker’s drill, an anvil with an iron cramp, a hulking wood-lathe, aluminum shelves with drawers that don’t fit, full of all kinds of tools, myriad screws, nuts, joints, electrical supplies, machines crammed into corners, smaller electrical engines and all manner of unknown implements. As a first grader, I was spellbound by this magical environment of the herdsman’s workplace.
Now, after thirty-eight years, next to where the bend of the stream used to flow, turning toward the farmstead, washing the roots of trees… Now, thanks to a geological cataclysm, the soil has collapsed from the edge of the sty all the way to the horizon, and the stream has become a cascade falling into an abyss. When the herdsman died, the inheritors sold the farmstead. The new owners, tempted by the impressive view, created an entertainment center with a bar, pool-hall and sauna. I learned about „world’s end” from two bar companions in a small town where I was giving a lecture about internet TV. When I told A&A that I used to spend summers there, they invited me to go with them to see my childhood theme. We arrived by taxi. We walk. They show the way. I follow. Twilight. On the horizon – silhouettes of tree trunks washed by the stream – chaotic contours. I step into some kind of manure with my shoes. A&A are already turning towards the doors of „end of the world entertainment”. The river’s current plunges, washing the roots of pines. Grasping one of them, I try to lower my foot to wash the dung off my shoe. The root snaps and I slide into the current, grabbing at weak rootlets, already up to my waist in water, my phone in my pocket. Help! But I don’t know A&A’s numbers. My rescue cables are breaking! The current carries me into the abyss…
Evaldas Jansas