Whenever I recalled my youth,
full of Dostoevsky, recreational carnality,
and conviction-laced twaddle,
all I could remember were the curtains
that granted me a sense of innocence.
But as time passes, I wonder: if I lived
up to my own past words, with age,
would doubts arise?
We didn’t invent death,
but we managed to industrialise it;
neither did we invent life,
and yet we pursue an obsession with immortality,
slowly losing the ability to distinguish silence
from the absence of sound.
To think, it all started with sin—our only invention.
You are allowed to be happy.
I got this from a film, since, strangely enough, no one ever told me that.
I guess everyone assumes it’s a given, like being infatuated with actresses
(I’m somewhere between the Tilda Swinton and Charlotte Gainsbourg phases).
But this whole idea seems a bit sketchy—bedridden, if I may say so.
I have long suspected that of all the things that make up
our meticulous, hand-woven everyday lives, nothing matters more to us
than the pursuit of happiness, and yet all we get are bus tickets,
bank statements, cartes du jour, bills supposedly paid on time, detailed itineraries,
and the like. Is that why the happiest person I’ve ever known
was a diener?
If I were to play a word association game,
the first thing that comes to mind
when love is mentioned would be films.
I don’t know how well it describes love,
but it certainly says quite a bit about me,
especially since I’m writing this at 1 a.m.,
after a day spent in my pyjamas
watching ‘Une nouvelle amie’ and ‘A Single Man’
on loop.
They call it the morning glory, but what’s glorious about it?
If anything, it’s just an inconvenience, like phantom pain
after you left. I guess, as with everything in life, that too
will go away with time, and, whilst drear, it might even feel
cathartic to finally find something beyond this dangling
personal pronoun of mine.
I live a simple life. If I’m hungry, I eat; if I smell, I take a shower.
I sleep for six hours and work for seven and a half, plus an hour for lunch.
Once a week, I masturbate or write a poem, and I still can’t believe I lost
my better half to the bus driver—unless it was a blessing, then I’m the winner,
or perhaps we both are. Maybe that’s why I can still look forward to losing
a game of chess to my little niece.
Sometimes I wonder. If it had been a little less improvised,
with a slightly more suitable soundtrack, would it have gone better?
Our last day, I mean, or maybe the first—I’m not so sure anymore.
I guess it all came down to the fact that, somewhere between
a jar of grated horseradish and a jar of honey, we forgot
that turning on the turntable makes absolutely no sense
if we never place a record on the platter.
If we mourned our birth, would we smile
at our funeral?
Look at us
standing in front of the blackboard,
diligently noting all the knick-knacks
that make up our daily routine.
Nothing but chalk dust.
We can’t even order ourselves some rain,
let alone find someone really nice
to listen to La Vie en Rose—no wonder
the soufflé is too soggy tonight.
If we mourned our birth, would we break
through the shrill screech of chalk?
In the comfort of an old cardigan, your world stretched
between Cassirer’s The Problem of Knowledge, The Avengers,
and a fridge singing its lullaby at night, all hidden behind curtains
when you watched your rotund neighbour cross the street.
I always wondered why you had never found it peculiar
that you felt sorry for him, but then you closed your eyes,
counted to ten, and moved away from the window
as if this were a way to apply kintsugi
to a soul.
