I dug ditches, I dried lawns, I pierced rain with lasers and bullets—a useless endeavor, I tell you—I was home alone, and I still am. Projectors, hot air balloons, locomotives and steamboats, sky-surfing or sky-diving or sky-skating boards—it’s all a house of cards. And you’re coming down from its peak to its roof’s edge. You’re light as my hand; Newton’s laws aren't written for you, neither the first nor the second, nor their consequences. You can’t bring all this down. But it will collapse, inevitably, and by then I want to be far away from these things. And I wouldn’t want to see you near them. But I’m a maniac, you know? If not a projector, then a whiteboard with markers. If not a hot air balloon, then a windbreaker or a glider, if I still have money in my account. You get it? Tell me you don't.

Below, above, between us. Projectors, aircraft, elements. How much can you take?

I’m not outside. Everyone around me is sure they’re outside. Even that old lady with "think positive" written in rainbow on her white T-shirt thinks she’s outside, though she's actually got one foot in the grave and the other in my house of cards. Everything’s there: all the tornadoes and avalanches, typhoons and earthquakes, all my loved ones, all the Presidents in the canyons, all those Symbolist paintings and Decadent poems. They’ve integrated into the system of this house. Every phenomenon, object, person, scenario, event occupies exactly one card. Only you are outside, and I am outside.

Inside, outside, between us. Cards, us, certainty. How much can you take?

An old man with a stick. A stick for digging up cemetery dirt. He approached the theme of creation from a different angle. The theme of sexuality and where its manifestations lead. He entered my house of cards through the back door. But this back door is a much taller and wider entrance than the front. Because through the front door, new things enter my house—young, little-known, little-needed things. Incomprehensible. The old man is comprehensible. He’s old. He’s tall and broad-shouldered. He has a cane with a bowl for collecting dripping sweat, like a bowl for collecting blood on execution crosses. He’s sweated more in his life than you and I can imagine. And how much can we imagine?

Inside, outside, between us. Sweat, intellect, tactile. How much can you take?

I want to talk to him. To his wrinkles, his cane, his sweat and blood, his life experience—as long as it’s not measured in years. I have to go to the window of the house of cards. I have to lean on the sill, or rather, pretend to lean. Hovering above the windowsill in a stooped posture, smiling casually for several minutes while the conversation goes on. I must not bring down this house. It will collapse, but without my involvement. And the old man will be inside. He will be one of those cards that furnish the rooms from within. He will be a chandelier or a piece of wallpaper or a sofa or a golden inlay in the ceiling lamp. Yes, I can afford such a house, if it’s only a house of cards.

Inside, outside, between us. Gold, wallpaper, sunlight. How much can you take?

I’ll approach like some insignificant passerby. I’ll pause for a second, or even stumble on the root of an elm tree sticking out of the hard ground, then I’ll come back and lean on the house—or rather, pretend to lean. That will be their perception—the cards’ perception. They’ll think I’m leaning. 

I’ll deceive my house of cards and demand deception in return. I’ll ask the old man, “How much sweat is in your cane?”—a question tangling in the old man’s wrinkles, making him look like a French bulldog. He’ll give me a gray smile, his sleek fur turning into an offset print—and he’ll think. Yes, then he’ll think. At that moment, perhaps, a bus mirror, pulling up to the stop, will strike me in the back of the head. The reverse side of the mirror will crush my conjectures, and I’ll be ready to hear an answer that has no chance of being politically correct or satisfying my curiosity, for my curiosity would have long overflowed a cup like the one on the cane. Curiosity, squeezed drop by drop from the murky sludge of my reason.

Inside, outside, between us. Drops, puddles, cups. How much can you take?

And he'll lift his thin, saggy left cheek, revealing a carotid artery to my gaze. Then he'll scratch the underside of that wrinkle. And drop the curtain a second before a creaking answer that will go something like this: 

"For the thirsty, this cup barely holds a drop. For the penitent, it's a vast ocean. But if you're asking if it's full, then yes, it is"—a total lie, from beginning to end. 

At the end: the cup cannot be filled. It can either be unfilled or overflowing, because it is the cup of human and humanity's labors. Then: he who wishes to repent doesn't need a cup at all. He needs a lamp to illuminate the space around him and confirm that he has someone and something to repent for. And the beginning: I wouldn't dare offer a cup of sweat to he who wishes to drink. He'd throw a fit. But—here's another thing: the old man is a wise man. Moreover, he is now a card in my house of cards. And finally—is it his sweat in the cup, or mine? Who should dispose of it? So, after all, the old man is right, even though I refuted all three parts of his answer. That's his perception. He sees it that way.

End, then, beginning. Fill, drink, repent. How much can you take?

The departing bus will douse us in a southern wind, smelling of the blazing Maghreb. Me and the old man. We're outside. So it seems to the old man. But I think he's in my house of cards. And where am I? Did I peek in from the void? From the hyperspace where I've been dwelling for the last seventy thousand centuries? Looks like it. And my thoughts will rush back to...

End, then, beginning. By you, of you, to you. How much can you take?