Me and the Bay

Entropy at work

meandthebay — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 02:39:55 +0000

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?

meandthebay — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 03:54:28 +0000

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?

Preparedness

meandthebay — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 04:55:39 +0000

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.

Me, too

meandthebay — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 22:43:03 +0000

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.

Maps for lost people

meandthebay — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 01:28:46 +0000

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.

Years ago, somewhere in New York

meandthebay — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 00:51:00 +0000

Just like I said it would be

meandthebay — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 22:21:08 +0000

It was a day we lost ourselves
like losing a ring in a lawn,
and there was an entire future plan
we did not fulfill.

On the dashboard, taken years ago

meandthebay — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 02:26:45 +0000

I take photos but I do not develop them. I love the idea of getting a nice shot, but I don’t care too much to see the result. I guess I consider photography a sort of mental exercise: when I physically click, I click in my mind too, I remember the picture and I don’t feel the urgency to see it printed.
For years I’d stored 24-exposure films, and when I switched to a digital camera I’ve started to fill memory sticks and folder. Sometimes I need to erase files, so I happen to see some old photos: everything is the way I remembered, my memory did not embellish colors or hide details.
But it also happens I come across some shot of me, taken by someone else with my camera, and I don’t know who I’m looking at.
I watch it and I’m puzzled: I remember it was a happy day, so why my eyes look so lost, so sad? I remember it was a happy day, so why I cannot remember whether I was happy or not? Is the film lying or my memory is fooling me? I was not even looking at the camera, as I was distracted by something over the photographer, as I was called from a distance.

There is nothing frightening in the voice which calls me, just me, from the street below my house late at night. It’s a brief rising wind, it’s fugitive rain. While calling my name she does not list all my faults, she does not hold the past against me. Sweetly (Andrea, Andrea) she disarms me, she arms my self against me.

A book from Italy

meandthebay — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 18:19:58 +0000

I wish that in moments of despair you could not envy other people’s happiness, the good fortune, the success, the firm beliefs, the fruits, the lights in other people’s houses: there is good everywhere, everywhere evil.

Not everything, not illuminated

meandthebay — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 17:26:14 +0000

What’s going on?
I’m all alone, he said.
You’re not alone, she said, taking his head to her chest.
I am.
You’re not alone, she said. You only feel alone.
To feel alone is to be alone. That’s what it is.