Tag: writing

The Lake of Honey

Chris KhatschLeave a comment

Lara was aware she was doomscrolling. Part of her wanted to throw her phone away, but she couldn’t stop watching those short videos that were made to grab her attention and keep her wanting more. Her eyes were stuck to the screen, and her thumb was programmed to ceaselessly swipe up. “I don’t want to do this anymore,” she wanted to cry. “Why can’t I do anything about it?”

It was 1:04 AM. She was in her spacious, fashionably furnished bedroom, sunk in a plush velvet sofa by the window. The sheer alabaster linen curtains were open, allowing the moonlight to invade her bedroom unimpeded. Everything in the bedroom seemed to be in its rightful place, except her. She was lying on the sofa when she should have been in bed, sleeping, dreaming, resting.

The more she scrolled, the angrier she became at herself, but every video postponed that anger another minute. Every last video she planned to watch was followed by another video, each more unfulfilling than the last. She kept wanting to watch one more, and she did. She scrolled.

Then, in the split second between the video she had just watched and the video she was about to watch, she imagined herself drowning in a lake of honey. The new video started playing, but her attention had now turned inward, and she saw herself sinking deeper into honey, and she wondered whether she could swim in honey if she were ever thrown in such a lake. She then thought, “Are the videos I’m watching supposed to be the honey I’m drowning in? I’m more like a fly stuck to a sticky flypaper.” But that thought was short-lived. She started imagining pulling herself out of the lake thanks to a rope that a good-looking stranger threw her way. The stranger looked like he was in his mid-twenties, five or so years younger than her. He was a muscular man with broad shoulders, wearing only swimming shorts. Thick veins ran down from his biceps and forearms and disappeared only when they reached his wrists. His whole body shone in the moonlight. And in that darkness, he was like the light a dying person saw at the end of the tunnel. Lara held on to the rope he threw and pulled herself out of the lake. When she reached the lakeshore, the sun replaced the moon in the sky. The moon seamlessly faded out as a hot Mediterranean summer sun faded in. The good-looking stranger extended his hand to help her stand up. “Thanks,” she said. “Welcome,” he said. She gazed into his ice-blue eyes. His face… she did not know what face to give him yet. But standing there in front of him, she felt the honey trickle down her body, and she realized she was naked, and she was naked because at that moment she desired to be… She made the man with the ice-blue eyes fulfill her wish. Her lust was the puppet master. She made him pull her towards him, made him lick all of the honey off her, and then she made him… Her phone rang, and she was pulled back into the real world where she was lying on the sofa by the window with her phone, which was now vibrating, in her right hand. Her left hand was in her underwear. The call was from an unknown number, and it was 1:09 AM, which meant it was either someone calling a wrong number or a call she did not want to answer. She wanted to return to the arms of the stranger with ice-blue eyes. She longed to go back. Before declining the call, she wondered whom it could be. She waited a minute to see if the same number would call again, but no call came. So, she allowed herself to drift back into her fantasies, and this time she gave the young man a face, the face of the bartender with the nice smile and ice-blue eyes who served her drinks two nights ago.

What Killed Art

Chris KhatschLeave a comment

In a forgotten pub, a Gen Z and a Millennial sat at the bar side by side on bar stools. The Gen Z’s bar stool squeaked every time he moved; the one the Millennial sat on didn’t. There was no electricity, but the night sky was clear, stars shone, and the moon was full, so, although minimal, enough moonlight entered the pub through the broken window behind them. The bartender was a skeleton wrapped in spider webs, but he still served them drinks somehow. The Gen Z was having his fifth Cognac and Coke, but the Millennial’s first pint of beer remained untouched.

“I was born to be an artist,” the Gen Z said. “But now it looks like art died before my time.”

“Don’t take it too hard,” the Millennial said, smiling. “Art died before my time, too. Much before my time, in fact. And it’s not just art that died. They also said that God is dead, philosophy is dead, and they even claimed that love is dead.”

“So, you’re saying that, basically, everything that once made us human is either dead or dying.”

“Unfortunately.”

“But who killed art? Who killed God? Who killed philosophy? Who killed love?”

“You want me to give you the names of the murderers, but I can only give you the names of those who wrote the obituaries. I’ll name them: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, for instance, announced the death of art; Friedrich Nietzsche announced the death of God; Stephen Hawking announced the death of philosophy; Byung-Chul Han announced the death of love. And I’m sure there are others who made the same or similar announcements. Journalists outnumber newsworthy events. But does it really matter who found the corpses? I have a feeling you don’t really care. I can see it in your eyes.”

“You’re right. I don’t care,” the Gen Z said. “What I want to know is the cause of death of art. What killed it? Can’t you tell me, please, who killed it?”

“Hm, well, the answer is more depressing than art’s funeral,” said the Millennial. “Do you really want to know?”

“Yes.”

“Then, let me tell it to you as it is. There are no murderers. No killers except time. After a long battle with history and technological progress, art passed away in her sleep of natural causes.”

The Gen Z let out a long sigh and said, “If what you are saying is true, then how come there’s still so much art, religion, philosophy, and love in the world?”

“Ah! That’s an excellent question,” the Millennial said. “But it’s the wrong question.”

“What?” the Gen Z was surprised. “Why?”

“I really wish I could spend more time with you in this forgotten place,” the Millennial suddenly rose from his place. “You may be onto something here, so I encourage you to keep looking. But I must now disappear.”

This piece was first published on my Substack on July 6, 2026.

The Interpretation of Lies (Part One): Neither True Nor False

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Lying has been an indispensable skill in politics since the beginning of time. In The Republic, Plato writes:

If anyone at all is to have the privilege of lying, the rulers of the State should be the persons; and they, in their dealings either with enemies or with their own citizens, may be allowed to lie for the public good.

We see here how, from the beginning, philosophers saw that politicians should be allowed to lie. (Today, most of us accept this intuitively.) However, it is also important to note that double standards are employed. In the following paragraph, Plato writes that if the ruler catches anybody other than himself lying, that person must be punished. (We can also add to this that when a person exposes one of the Big Lies told by the government, he will be regarded as a traitor…)

Everything a politician says simultaneously conveys a lie and a truth, whether he is aware of it or not. Those who oppose him will hear the lie; those who support him will hear the truth. But neither of them will be right. Only a skilled (and well-equipped) political analyst will be able to absorb the whole, the truth and the lie together.

When a politician speaks, he is directing his words to friends and enemies at once. He is addressing supporters and non-supporters, and he needs to ensure, consciously or unconsciously, that the message delivered (and interpreted) is just right for all sides. This is especially true in a time when everything ends up online and is accessible to everyone. One is always potentially speaking to everyone on the planet. A politician who is fully transparent with his people, then, is a politician who is fully transparent with his enemies. Such a politician is bound to fail. There is no possibility of addressing his friends separately and his enemies separately. So, if one wants to have a successful career in politics, mastering the art of lying is necessary and required.

Accordingly, since the possibility of a lie is always there, then the following statement is a very reasonable one to accept: that a politician’s words are neither true nor false and are always simultaneously conveying lies and truths.

In (21st century) politics, especially because it is accessible by anyone from anywhere, every political statement is the mother of many interpretations, all of them as real (as true and as false) as the other. Retrospectively (re)visited, the meaning of each statement is different (even if it appears to have remained the same) due to parallax. Looking at an event (or a political statement) from different spacetime coordinates changes its meaning. (The meaning is not in the object itself, which in this case is the event or political statement; the meaning is the subject’s relationship with the object.)

[History, as a true historian would tell you, is not static. New evidence, whether true or fabricated, can change the whole story. How we perceive the past is the past. Historical revisionism, therefore, is an attempt to change the past into a more favorable past. And the same goes for the future. The future is not static either. Both past and future are interpreted, edited, and moderated by the present forces that control the narrative. As for the present, although it may seem like an either/or reality, it almost never is. The moment lived will be revisited and changed later depending on the political needs of the future.]

To understand politics, one must accept the simple fact that all coins are two-sided. While the supporters and their opponents argue which side of the coin holds the real value of the coin (and even try to split it), the skilled analyst knows there’s no one-sided coin and there can never be. The side of the coin that depicts the truth and the side that depicts the lie cannot be split from one another.

Moreover, the side of the coin that depicts the truth according to the supporting party is the side that depicts the lie according to the opposing party, and the side that depicts the lie according to the supporting party is the side that depicts the truth according to the opposing party. Therefore, we can say that each side of the coin has (at least) two contradictory interpretations. This means that every word uttered by a politician has two opposing sides, and each of these opposing sides has at least two interpretations.

It gets even worse when you realize that the political agendas and manifestos that are made public follow the same rules we mentioned above. They can neither be a collection of true intentions nor a collection of lies. So, the political party you are a member of may or may not align with your beliefs behind the scenes, even if on the surface it looks like you’re exactly where you belong. In fact, although this might complicate things further, we can even add that your beliefs are mere echoes of political ideologies that you have inherited or adopted over the years… You know what this means: Nothing is true, politically speaking, and worst of all, nothing is a lie.

So, how can we interpret today’s politics?

This piece was originally published on my Substack on July 26, 2025.