Saturday, November 13, 2010
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Emotions of a maître-de-café - Justice (V)
We'll be the passenger
We'll ride through the city tonight
We'll see the city's ripped backsides
We'll see the bright and hollow sky
We'll see the stars that shine so bright
Stars made for us tonight
Oh, the passenger.
(Iggy Pop - The Passenger)
Waking up next to someone I don't know is not something unusual for me. I have a rare disease, permanent memory loss, although doctors won't acknowledge it. They say I am perfectly healthy. But I am the only one who can see inside my own mind and I am certain: there are things that need to be forgotten.
You see, it takes a change of personality to dress up in a short red skirt and high heels and to walk into a bar knowing that all eyes will be on you. Knowing that you have exposed yourself, just as you are: human. Vibrant. Vulnerable. You lean in and take that extra step towards the stranger who will never know your real name.
And then, I open my eyes. Frankfurt International Airport. I turn up the volume on my mp3 player, just as a Japanese business man sitting next to me crosses his legs, showing off his striped socks. I feel safe here, in the transit zone. I finally have something in common with all the people waiting here: I am away from home. There is this sense of passing, and yet of immovable distance. I close my eyes.
And there you are again. In the dark, nobody can see your soul. The warmth, the hunger for closeness, the feeling of feeling. I want to share myself, to divide myself, to break a part of my own being. I want to change. I want you to change me. Just like dancing, I have the choice to accept being lead, and I usually do. Just like dancing, we need to adjust to each other, to balance each other out, to tame each other. It's easy, and you don't even have to know the steps.
Flight 306, Frankfurt-Cluj Napoca-Bucharest. 18:20. The Japanese business man is gone and so are his socks. Instead, there is this loud woman sitting next to me, talking on the phone in broken German. A thin guy carrying his guitar is looking for his girlfriend, who had walked by a few minutes ago. In a while, they will find each other and head towards the exit, hand in hand. At home, he will realize he forgot his luggage on the seat to my right. All this while Madonna is moaning in my headphones. Wanting. Needing. Waiting. For you to
Justify my love.
Waking up in a place I don't know is not something unusual for me. I have a rare disease, permanent memory loss, although doctors won't acknowledge it. They say I am perfectly healthy. But I am the only one who can see inside my own mind and I am certain: there are things that need to be left behind.
We'll ride through the city tonight
We'll see the city's ripped backsides
We'll see the bright and hollow sky
We'll see the stars that shine so bright
Stars made for us tonight
Oh, the passenger.
(Iggy Pop - The Passenger)
Waking up next to someone I don't know is not something unusual for me. I have a rare disease, permanent memory loss, although doctors won't acknowledge it. They say I am perfectly healthy. But I am the only one who can see inside my own mind and I am certain: there are things that need to be forgotten.You see, it takes a change of personality to dress up in a short red skirt and high heels and to walk into a bar knowing that all eyes will be on you. Knowing that you have exposed yourself, just as you are: human. Vibrant. Vulnerable. You lean in and take that extra step towards the stranger who will never know your real name.
And then, I open my eyes. Frankfurt International Airport. I turn up the volume on my mp3 player, just as a Japanese business man sitting next to me crosses his legs, showing off his striped socks. I feel safe here, in the transit zone. I finally have something in common with all the people waiting here: I am away from home. There is this sense of passing, and yet of immovable distance. I close my eyes.
And there you are again. In the dark, nobody can see your soul. The warmth, the hunger for closeness, the feeling of feeling. I want to share myself, to divide myself, to break a part of my own being. I want to change. I want you to change me. Just like dancing, I have the choice to accept being lead, and I usually do. Just like dancing, we need to adjust to each other, to balance each other out, to tame each other. It's easy, and you don't even have to know the steps.
Flight 306, Frankfurt-Cluj Napoca-Bucharest. 18:20. The Japanese business man is gone and so are his socks. Instead, there is this loud woman sitting next to me, talking on the phone in broken German. A thin guy carrying his guitar is looking for his girlfriend, who had walked by a few minutes ago. In a while, they will find each other and head towards the exit, hand in hand. At home, he will realize he forgot his luggage on the seat to my right. All this while Madonna is moaning in my headphones. Wanting. Needing. Waiting. For you to
Justify my love.
Waking up in a place I don't know is not something unusual for me. I have a rare disease, permanent memory loss, although doctors won't acknowledge it. They say I am perfectly healthy. But I am the only one who can see inside my own mind and I am certain: there are things that need to be left behind.
Friday, October 22, 2010
Interlude (V)
La vida es sueño, y los sueños, sueños son. (Pedro Calderon de la Barca)
All you get is the present; nothing that belongs to you is really yours. A bus full of strangers in a city of permanent fog: some of them crossed oceans to be there, while you could only spare a few hours to board a plane. A few seconds too late and you lose your connection, but why would it really matter when there is no warmth in your hotel room at night?
You disappoint the people you respect and despise the ones who make you feel wanted. La vida es sueño, even if there is nothing more real than the cranky look of the woman sitting next to you in that crowded morning bus. You want to capture the few seconds you spend living, but you're always too concerned to recognize them. The big picture, you say in your mind, never forget the big picture. Life is a carnival, a carnage, a mixture of emotion, blood, bones and dust, a long ride on a short road. You can see this, even in that cold metal box that embraces a bunch of strangers you will probably never see again.
I vaguely remember the journeys of my life and I've almost forgotten the names of people I used to call friends. This is what happens when your past becomes a story, retold, and not only by yourself. Yes, the others know my story too; they only tell it differently, cutting it to their own size. But I don't mind. Because I know: all you get is the present. Nothing that belongs to you is really yours.
All you get is the present; nothing that belongs to you is really yours. A bus full of strangers in a city of permanent fog: some of them crossed oceans to be there, while you could only spare a few hours to board a plane. A few seconds too late and you lose your connection, but why would it really matter when there is no warmth in your hotel room at night?
You disappoint the people you respect and despise the ones who make you feel wanted. La vida es sueño, even if there is nothing more real than the cranky look of the woman sitting next to you in that crowded morning bus. You want to capture the few seconds you spend living, but you're always too concerned to recognize them. The big picture, you say in your mind, never forget the big picture. Life is a carnival, a carnage, a mixture of emotion, blood, bones and dust, a long ride on a short road. You can see this, even in that cold metal box that embraces a bunch of strangers you will probably never see again.
I vaguely remember the journeys of my life and I've almost forgotten the names of people I used to call friends. This is what happens when your past becomes a story, retold, and not only by yourself. Yes, the others know my story too; they only tell it differently, cutting it to their own size. But I don't mind. Because I know: all you get is the present. Nothing that belongs to you is really yours.
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Interlude (IV)
Like a car crash I can see but I just can't avoid.
Like a plane I've been told I never should board.
Like a film that's so bad but I've gotta stay til the end.
Let me tell you now,
It's lucky for you that we're friends.
Fast succession of events: life, love, ambition, freedom, change. Youth in its essence. I love the way it smelled in that dark basement, the hallucinating music, the people dancing close and closer. I love it every time. People watching from their tables, absorbing the smoke, the energy, the rhythm. You almost recognize a familiar face, just to be pushed away in the next second by a wave of newcomers, screaming their way in. You become part of the mass, part of the procession. You practise your anonymity by becoming just another face in the crowd.
Sleepless, I toss and turn in my bed, unable to forget. My life, I have a soundtrack to it, something between melancholic autumn jazz and the cold inflections of an English vocalist. My life is a movie and I guess I will never get to read its ending credits. I lie in my bed when it's still, when my house sleeps and you can touch the silence in the dark. And I wonder. All these nights of my existence, I would sweep them under the carpet, but I can't. I can only make out glimpses of passed moments in the haze that remained, trying to find patterns, to give meaning.
But all this has got no meaning.
I admire you, sometimes, because life took a shape for you. Because you directed your ambitions towards something you could measure. In inches, in centimeters. And now you can weigh your world and count it just like Dickens counted every single word of his interminable descriptions, stroking his beard.
There's a girl in the grass looking at the sky and she wonders about all these people staring, sharing her simple moment, in a simple life. People from all over the world coming back to see her, even though she's nothing special in this grand universe. You change planes with her image in mind, like she's the only thing you cannot count just yet.
I lie in my bed and I wonder. About crowds and people and the smallest gestures that bring insomnia. We talked about it, long time ago, about unique encounters and farewell and the lack of finality. And yet the universe seems to rotate like a wheel and you find yourself returning, set out on a new start. Until you see a painting of a girl in the grass waiting for you.
And then you stop. And I think you're acting silly, I laugh and I turn away.
Like a film that's so bad but I've gotta stay til the end.
Let me tell you now,
It's lucky for you that we're friends.
Fast succession of events: life, love, ambition, freedom, change. Youth in its essence. I love the way it smelled in that dark basement, the hallucinating music, the people dancing close and closer. I love it every time. People watching from their tables, absorbing the smoke, the energy, the rhythm. You almost recognize a familiar face, just to be pushed away in the next second by a wave of newcomers, screaming their way in. You become part of the mass, part of the procession. You practise your anonymity by becoming just another face in the crowd.
Sleepless, I toss and turn in my bed, unable to forget. My life, I have a soundtrack to it, something between melancholic autumn jazz and the cold inflections of an English vocalist. My life is a movie and I guess I will never get to read its ending credits. I lie in my bed when it's still, when my house sleeps and you can touch the silence in the dark. And I wonder. All these nights of my existence, I would sweep them under the carpet, but I can't. I can only make out glimpses of passed moments in the haze that remained, trying to find patterns, to give meaning.
But all this has got no meaning.
I admire you, sometimes, because life took a shape for you. Because you directed your ambitions towards something you could measure. In inches, in centimeters. And now you can weigh your world and count it just like Dickens counted every single word of his interminable descriptions, stroking his beard.
There's a girl in the grass looking at the sky and she wonders about all these people staring, sharing her simple moment, in a simple life. People from all over the world coming back to see her, even though she's nothing special in this grand universe. You change planes with her image in mind, like she's the only thing you cannot count just yet.
I lie in my bed and I wonder. About crowds and people and the smallest gestures that bring insomnia. We talked about it, long time ago, about unique encounters and farewell and the lack of finality. And yet the universe seems to rotate like a wheel and you find yourself returning, set out on a new start. Until you see a painting of a girl in the grass waiting for you.
And then you stop. And I think you're acting silly, I laugh and I turn away.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Interlude (III)
–noun
1. the act or fact of persisting.
2. the quality of being persistent.
3.continued existence or occurrence.
4.the continuance of an effect after its cause is removed.
My way to work is paved with autumn leaves and words resounding like an echo in my mind. I cannot help but recollect the smell of a room, the taste of something spicy, the scent of sandalwood. The world is a cruel place for the ones who have never felt this way: bittersweet memories of times you will never get back, of people you sometimes touch in your dreams and awaken just to realize you might never touch them again. The world is a cruel place for the ones that have never known the beauty of loss.
Mon amour, I have seen the marks that my tears left on my face, and they were deep. I have seen them on my morning paper, in my coffee cup, on my ironed shirt. I have put them through the ordeal of becoming words, poems, songs. I have sung my misery while people were cheering, unknowingly. Romantic is what they call me, but I will be blunt: the term is deceitful. I'm unclean, a libertine, and I have never been particularly kind. I haven't cherished anything I've been given, I've never felt grateful or content and I have never really cared about others.
Yet the world has been kind to me. The way to work is always the hardest, always the easiest. Every day is a new beginning they say, and yet we get older and older. I feel youthful and ancient, as I walk at the pace of the seconds that bring me closer and closer to death. My love, I've been teaching myself patience, I've learned it by heart and can recite it at all times, I promise. And still, there is urgency, there is need, there is hunger. And yearning. There is a hint of warmth I can still feel on my cheek, there is a whispered word I still have to hear, and a kind of completeness I have not forgotten yet.
Oh, baby, if you only knew how much you meant in this humble mosaic I made of my life. And if I only knew how much I meant in yours. Your own self is not even of importance anymore: it is the mere idea of you that I kept - and that kept me - somewhat complete. Somewhat enriched. Somewhat transcending.
Because I know the love I have is spreading out like a disease, contaminating the past, the present, the future. I know this kind of passionate, yet patient, longing reaches out beyond my meager being, beyond my malice and mistakes, beyond my self. And isn't it wonderful, my love, to know that we don't matter anymore in the face of timeless feeling? Of a feeling so small that time and space do not affect it. So microscopical that it remains undetected by the naked eye. And yet persistent.
And isn't this what we all want, in the end. Persistence.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Emotions of a maître-de-café - Justice (IV)
Dying is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I've a call. (Sylvia Plath - Lady Lazarus)
At first, it was just a bright red light that she saw, that slowly turned into moving silhouettes. She heard the voice of a man, a calming voice of a stranger who had come just in time to rescue her poor soul. She knew he'd come, as soon as she would cry for help he'd come and his white coat would become her weekly Sunday washing task. His hands would become her support, his voice her wake up call.
"We need to make sure there is someone by her bedside when she wakes up". Let it be you, she thought, let it be you for the rest of my days. It's not as if they had just met.
Oh no, they'd been married for years now, how many, is it two, three, four?... After a certain point you lose count. You surrender to your daily tasks and habits and they slowly become what defines you, what makes you certain of yourself, of your stability, of your future.
At first, it was just a bright red light that she saw, that slowly turned into moving silhouettes. She heard the voice of a man, a calming voice of a stranger who had come just in time to rescue her poor soul. She knew he'd come, as soon as she would cry for help he'd come and his white coat would become her weekly Sunday washing task. His hands would become her support, his voice her wake up call."We need to make sure there is someone by her bedside when she wakes up". Let it be you, she thought, let it be you for the rest of my days. It's not as if they had just met.
Oh no, they'd been married for years now, how many, is it two, three, four?... After a certain point you lose count. You surrender to your daily tasks and habits and they slowly become what defines you, what makes you certain of yourself, of your stability, of your future.
She remembered - because now she could afford to remember - the last summer before university. Long before his white coat appeared, she had been a lively young thing, carefree, naive, enthusiastic. Her good old friends in the neighborhood, her parents, her cat, her room: they all reflected her personality. She could find herself in her books, her perfume, her shoes and her toes, in her boyfriend, her lipstick, her favorite cocktail. Her choices were permeated with her own being. They were original, fulfilling, as if they were defining something that she could not grasp yet: herself, beyond her body, beyond time, beyond transition.
This is what originated her infinite greed for life, her desperate need, her addiction for discovering herself in all the things she owned. Every new little earring would show yet another facet of her complex being, every extravagant hat would become a surprise she would make for herself.
Oh yes, even this was a surprise, if you think about it. What else can you give to yourself when you've got everything you ever wanted? This ultimate act was like signing the deal with herself. She had made all the choices in her life, including this last one. And it was perfect.
"We should keep a close eye on her, for a few days", she heard the white coat man say, and knew she had forgotten one precious gift. This man, this voice drenched in her own blood, would bring her back, restore her to herself. One day, she knew, she would have to give him back to the world, she would fly off from a foreign country to another, she would find herself and lose herself and vanish into thin air. And one day she would be back here in this dream, this memory of her young self sitting in a coffee shop talking to a stranger about all the deadly sins. Her timeless being. Her greed for life would be stronger, this time, than the numbing feeling in her toes.
This is what originated her infinite greed for life, her desperate need, her addiction for discovering herself in all the things she owned. Every new little earring would show yet another facet of her complex being, every extravagant hat would become a surprise she would make for herself.
Oh yes, even this was a surprise, if you think about it. What else can you give to yourself when you've got everything you ever wanted? This ultimate act was like signing the deal with herself. She had made all the choices in her life, including this last one. And it was perfect.
"We should keep a close eye on her, for a few days", she heard the white coat man say, and knew she had forgotten one precious gift. This man, this voice drenched in her own blood, would bring her back, restore her to herself. One day, she knew, she would have to give him back to the world, she would fly off from a foreign country to another, she would find herself and lose herself and vanish into thin air. And one day she would be back here in this dream, this memory of her young self sitting in a coffee shop talking to a stranger about all the deadly sins. Her timeless being. Her greed for life would be stronger, this time, than the numbing feeling in her toes.
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Interlude (II)
The smell of burnt paint will always remind me of autumn. That's because the paint of the radiators starts smelling when they are heated up. And that ultimately brings me to last winter, when I was reading a particularly thick book, a horror story that I had to dissect using more than one thousand words.
And that, in return, takes me back to those high school days, when an undernourished, naive little girl used to translate the poems of mad expressionsts and read Schiller's Joan of Arc in one sitting. Those were lonely times, days that got shorter without lending meaning to any of the nights. Later on, Schiller's voice was replaced by some clumsy boy's romantic fabulations, late night drinks and smoke-filled coffee houses, umbrellas left under some stranger's table. Autumn has always been the unofficial season of love. At least for me.
I remember rain and the smell of decay, of beautiful death and of peace. Life in its decline, without anger or despair, slowly coming to an end. I remember being in love, and what could love mean for me back then - an exotic kind of pastime, a permanent glow that had the magical ability of making every day seem even shorter. Love is a waiting game, and the leaves came tumbling down, remember...
But my memories were outnumbered by all the things I forgot. The peaceful silence at home, the passionless passing of time, uneventful growing up. I forgot the balance of my own self, and how my voice sounds in my head. I forgot how to bear the weight of my own company. The things I forgot are so many.
And I would walk 500 miles, and I would walk 500 more, just to be... It's way too fast for me, I could barely keep up with the rhythm. But I could try something else. A white woman's black voice, a funeral song more in tune with my melancholy than Chopin's tubercular musings, going like this: He-e-e left no time to re-greh-t, kept his well, let's just say everybody is entitled to keep their personal belongings wherever they find fit.
As for me, I find that this autumn will be very Schilleresque indeed. And after all the Sturm und Drang melodrama I will probably retreat into the dark sphere of poetry, that corner of the literary madmen, where I may find my temporary (always temporary) peace. The fewer the words, I find, the more acute the madness, and you end up talking to yourself, repeating the same words over and over and over again, as if to imprint them on your brain.
Wer jetzt kein Haus hat, baut sich keines mehr.
Wer jetzt allein ist, wird es lange bleiben,
wird wachen, lesen, lange Briefe schreiben...
The smell of burnt paint will always remind me of endings.
And that, in return, takes me back to those high school days, when an undernourished, naive little girl used to translate the poems of mad expressionsts and read Schiller's Joan of Arc in one sitting. Those were lonely times, days that got shorter without lending meaning to any of the nights. Later on, Schiller's voice was replaced by some clumsy boy's romantic fabulations, late night drinks and smoke-filled coffee houses, umbrellas left under some stranger's table. Autumn has always been the unofficial season of love. At least for me.
I remember rain and the smell of decay, of beautiful death and of peace. Life in its decline, without anger or despair, slowly coming to an end. I remember being in love, and what could love mean for me back then - an exotic kind of pastime, a permanent glow that had the magical ability of making every day seem even shorter. Love is a waiting game, and the leaves came tumbling down, remember...
But my memories were outnumbered by all the things I forgot. The peaceful silence at home, the passionless passing of time, uneventful growing up. I forgot the balance of my own self, and how my voice sounds in my head. I forgot how to bear the weight of my own company. The things I forgot are so many.
And I would walk 500 miles, and I would walk 500 more, just to be... It's way too fast for me, I could barely keep up with the rhythm. But I could try something else. A white woman's black voice, a funeral song more in tune with my melancholy than Chopin's tubercular musings, going like this: He-e-e left no time to re-greh-t, kept his well, let's just say everybody is entitled to keep their personal belongings wherever they find fit.
As for me, I find that this autumn will be very Schilleresque indeed. And after all the Sturm und Drang melodrama I will probably retreat into the dark sphere of poetry, that corner of the literary madmen, where I may find my temporary (always temporary) peace. The fewer the words, I find, the more acute the madness, and you end up talking to yourself, repeating the same words over and over and over again, as if to imprint them on your brain.
Wer jetzt kein Haus hat, baut sich keines mehr.
Wer jetzt allein ist, wird es lange bleiben,
wird wachen, lesen, lange Briefe schreiben...
The smell of burnt paint will always remind me of endings.
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