No one came, as you can see
But did some at least say they would come, she asked
They said there are no more unknown islands and that, even if there were, they weren’t prepared to leave the comfort of their homes and the good life on board passenger ships just to get involved in some ocean-going adventure, looking for the impossible, as if we were still living in the days when the sea was dark
And what did you say to them
That the sea is always dark
And you didn’t tell them about the unknown island
How could I tell them about the unknown island, if I don’t even know where it is
But you’re sure it exists
As sure as I am that the sea is dark
I’ve been trying to bring back your face — to remember just how you look.
Funny how even the dearest face will fade away in time.
Most clearly I remember your eyes, with a kind of teasing smile in them,
and the feeling of that soft spot just north-east of the corner of your mouth
against my lips.
You can leave behind houses, books, people.
You can try to forget the way you were, the way you felt.
And after a while you think you won, you think you are fine.
But the day will come when the radio will play a song you forgot a long time ago. You will need few seconds to realize where the elephant on your chest comes from.
You will be the same again, you will feel there was a world to save, your world to save and you could have not.
And there will be nothing left to do, just sit down and listen to the music.
“And I want to play hide-and-seek and give you my clothes and tell you I like your shoes and sit on the steps while you take a bath and massage your neck and kiss your feet and hold your hand and go for a meal and not mind when you eat my food and meet you at Rudy’s and talk about the day and type up your letters and carry your boxes and laugh at your paranoia and give you tapes you don’t listen to and watch great films and watch terrible films and complain about the radio and take pictures of you when you’re sleeping and get up to fetch you coffee and bagels and Danish and go to Florent and drink coffee at midnight and have you steal my cigarettes and never be able to find a match and tell you about the tv programme I saw the night before and take you to the eye hospital and not laugh at your jokes and want you in the morning but let you sleep for a while and kiss your back and stroke your skin and tell you how much I love your hair your eyes your lips your neck your breasts your arse your
and sit on the steps smoking till your neighbour comes home and sit on the steps smoking till you come home and worry when you’re late and be amazed when you’re early and give you sunflowers and go to your party and dance till I’m black and be sorry when I’m wrong and happy when you forgive me and look at your photos and wish I’d known you forever and hear your voice in my ear and feel your skin on my skin and get scared when you’re angry and your eye has gone red and the other eye blue and your hair to the left and your face oriental and tell you you’re gorgeous and hug you when you’re anxious and hold you when you hurt and want you when I smell you and offend you when I touch you and whimper when I’m next to you and whimper when I’m not and dribble on your breast and smother you in the night and get cold when you take the blanket and hot when you don’t and melt when you smile and dissolve when you laugh and not understand why you think I’m rejecting you when I’m not rejecting you and wonder how you could think I’d ever reject you and wonder who you are but accept you anyway and tell you about the tree angel enchanted forest boy who flew across the ocean because he loved you and write poems for you and wonder why you don’t believe me and have a feeling so deep I can’t find words for it and want to buy you a kitten I’d get jealous of because it would get more attention than me and keep you in bed when you have to go and cry like a baby when you finally do and get rid of the roaches and buy you presents you don’t want and take them away again and ask you to marry me and you say no again but keep on asking because though you think I don’t mean it I do always have from the first time I asked you and wander the city thinking it’s empty without you and want what you want and think I’m losing myself but know I’m safe with you and tell you the worst of me and try to give you the best of me because you don’t deserve any less and answer your questions when I’d rather not and tell you the truth when I really don’t want to and try to be honest because I know you prefer it and think it’s all over but hang on in for just ten more minutes before you throw me out of your life and forget who I am and try to get closer to you because it’s beautiful learning to know you and well worth the effort and speak German to you badly and Hebrew to you worse and make love with you at three in the morning and somehow somehow somehow communicate some of the overwhelming undying overpowering unconditional all-encompassing heart-enriching mind-expanding on-going never-ending love I have for you.”
Don’t think of your first love, think about this one, about the next one, about the last one.
Fate is Darwinian: everything which is gone wasn’t enough, even more than that, it was not rightful.
What matter is the game you’re gonna play and it is gonna be better than the ones that never ended and you know why?
Because this game is possible, it exists, because you’re playing it now, tomorrow, before it’s getting dark.
Dead or alive? Alive. So long.
often, the state of the desk is the state of the mind, confused and unsure men, pliable men are the thinkers. their desks are like their minds, cluttered with garbage, dirty ware, impurity, but they are aware of their mind-state and find some humor in it. at times, with a violent burst of fire they defy the eternal deities and come up with a lot of shining that we sometimes call creation; just as at times they will get half drunk and clean up their desks. but soon again all falls into disorder and they are in darkness again, in need of BABO, pills, prayer, sex, luck and salvation.
the man with the ever-orderly desk is the freak, however. beware of him. his desk-state is his mind-state: all in order, settled, he has let life condition him quickly to a basened and hardened complex of defensive and soothing thought-order. if you listen to him for ten minutes you will know that anything he says in a lifetime will be essentially meaningless and always dull. he is a cement man. there are more cement men than other kinds of men. so if you are looking for a living man, first check his desk and save yourself time
Did you become the sort of man you wanted to be? What does give you balance? The success? The strength? The power? Going sailing? Drinking cold wine when the sirocco blows? The smell of fried eggplants? Did you get what you wanted? Do you have a hand which caress your back when you need it? Then, why didn’t you chase this idea of quite? Why didn’t you practice to shape long afternoons when grasshoppers and sons’ voices vibrate?
We know it, we are getting prepared for it. Every night, before going to bed, thousands of people in this city follow the same routine.
They check flashlights and place shoes or slippers near the bed.
They close blinds in case of broken window glass falling.
They mentally double-check the location of the emergency kit and repeat three words: drop, cover and hold.
There is no concern, nor anxiety: everybody is getting ready for something they hope it won’t ever happen.
It is a pretty weird feeling, but whoever lives far away from his family has experienced it.
When your beloved are hours of flight away you develop a similar protocol.
You might be almost broke, but you always have some money in your saving account for a last-minute ticket.
You have a carry on ready to go sitting in your closet and the cell phone always on, even when you sleep. No ringing tone, just vibration, but it’s enough to wake you up in the middle of the night, even if it is nothing, it isn’t anything really.
Living abroad make us all alike.
We fall asleep without thinking what is the night because in our dreams it is always at odds with the morning, which is which.
I prefer movies.
I prefer cats.
I prefer the oaks along the Warta.
I prefer Dickens to Dostoyevsky.
I prefer myself liking people
to myself loving mankind.
I prefer keeping a needle and thread on hand, just in case.
I prefer the color green.
I prefer not to maintain
that reason is to blame for everything.
I prefer exceptions.
I prefer to leave early.
I prefer talking to doctors about something else.
I prefer the old fine-lined illustrations.
I prefer the absurdity of writing poems
to the absurdity of not writing poems.
I prefer, where love’s concerned, nonspecific anniversaries
that can be celebrated every day.
I prefer moralists
who promise me nothing.
I prefer cunning kindness to the over-trustful kind.
I prefer the earth in civvies.
I prefer conquered to conquering countries.
I prefer having some reservations.
I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order.
I prefer Grimms’ fairy tales to the newspapers’ front pages.
I prefer leaves without flowers to flowers without leaves.
I prefer dogs with uncropped tails.
I prefer light eyes, since mine are dark.
I prefer desk drawers.
I prefer many things that I haven’t mentioned here
to many things I’ve also left unsaid.
I prefer zeroes on the loose
to those lined up behind a cipher.
I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars.
I prefer to knock on wood.
I prefer not to ask how much longer and when.
I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility
that existence has its own reason for being.
A colleague of mine was telling me the trip she did in Italy some years ago. She hiked for several days along the border with Austria and then she went south. She could not remember the name of the village close to a small lake where she spent a couple of night, so we opened google maps and tried to figure it out. I realized she was pretty close to my hometown, so I pointed a dot on the screen and said: “Look, here where I come from”.
She zoomed in and switched to google earth.
My house was there, and the garden and the pine as well. It must have been Friday, around lunch time, because my dad’s car was already in the parking slot and the scavenger company had not collected the garbage yet. It was a warm day, the window of the kitchen was open and someone leant out of it.
I zoomed futher, but there was nothing more than pixels out of focus.
And the memory is the sorrow already, it’s already the regret of April, played in the shade of a courtyard.
I don’t wanna check when that photo was taken, I’m fine knowing there is someone at the window, always looking down the street to see when I’m coming back.
