Linor Goralik

Mom would bring home punch cards (I was five? six?) so that I could scribble my endless scribbles on them, otherwise there wouldn’t be enough sketchbooks. Of course, I couldn’t scribble on punched cards; it was unthinkable: long, cream-colored secret things with sweetly repeating, even and terrifyingly perfect lines of numbers (and no less perfect, rectangular holes that cannot be reproduced at home) required some kind of then they deserved special thought, not scribbles , but some unique work, which I found myself unable to imagine for myself. The sweetest thing was to find in a clip or in a scattering that punched card that did not have a single hole on it - for some reason in my head these were called “white”. Only with the white one was it possible to do this (no, not work , and this was embarrassing): sit down and begin with special care to paint over all the circles in all sixes, and all the circles in all nines, and the loops of the eight bow, and the ovals of zeros ( losing all numerical meaning from this). It was very scary to get lost and spoil it, because there might not be another “white one” - but more often than not, either the pen would be smeared, or the elbow would firmly rest against the protruding loop of the secretary, and it was no longer possible to lie on your stomach to another place, this changed everything , or my knee slipped off the chair. With those cream cards, which were not white, nothing could be done: just be annoyed at their ruined perfection, their desecrated and holed honor; Before going to bed, I mentally had to move the rectangular holes to the very corner of the obsessive card, knocking them there into the most symmetrical pile so as not to interfere with sleep. On one punch card, however, I still managed to draw a long man in a coat made only of buttons; This man had a hole in his stomach right through it, into which a pencil fell with a roar, and in general this man was not a good person.

Magazine "Kommersant Weekend" No. 48 dated December 12, 2014, page 16

Punched cards – Weekend – Kommersant