If there were a healing cream for the soul,
like the one I use for eczema, perhaps I could stop scratching the itch
after you left (you weren’t expecting anything more, like pain, let alone despair, were you?).
Oh well, the occasional rom-com or dramedy will do instead, I guess.
After all, sometimes it takes more courage to step back from life
than to cling to the roles it imposes.
My mistress, the soul, has never transcended
her affair with my ever-decaying soma,
like an old lady to the bitter end watering flowers
on her abusive husband’s grave. And yet, as I learn
old man tricks—an afternoon game of dominoes
and speaking fluent pigeon—and can curb my urges,
she still insists on one more shot at l’amour vrai.
Perhaps a tad of The Swan of Avon will do the trick.
After all, nothing soothes the soul like a verse
after a day of debauchery.
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.
It would be nice to be seen as funny for a change. Perhaps if I were actually jovial and had someone around to appreciate that, it would be easier to fulfil that little whim of mine. But there is more to it. As Montaigne said, “The most manifest sign of wisdom is a continual cheerfulness; her state is like that of things in the regions above the moon, always clear and serene.” What I need is a soul that lodges philosophy. “There is nothing more airy, more gay, more frolic, and I had like to have said, more wanton. She preaches nothing but feasting and jollity; a melancholic anxious look shows that she does not inhabit there.” (from The Essays of Montaigne—Volume 05 by Michel de Montaigne, translated by Charles Cotton). And although Montaigne said the latter about philosophy itself, I consider it a perfect description of the soul I desire.
There are films I watch for a single scene only, but to appreciate that scene, you have to see the whole film. Like the one in Marianna Palka’s Motherhood, also known as Egg, where conceptual artist Tina asks Karen, her friend since art school, who is now eight months pregnant and came with her husband to visit her, just as the guests were about to leave her apartment, to send her a picture of Elliot when he is born, thus reviling the gender of the expected child to the father. It may sound unremarkable, but it’s not. That single scene in an otherwise mediocre film is like a little gem found in the ashes, as beautiful as unexpected. And it’s the same in life, with those rare moments we encounter in the currents of everyday mundanity. We tend to forget them quickly, but eventually learn to treasure them and cling to them like a lifebuoy.
It reminds me of the words of George Falconer, the protagonist in A Single Man played masterfully by Colin Firth, who says in the dénouement: “A few times in my life I’ve had moments of absolute clarity, when for a few brief seconds the silence drowns out the noise and I can feel rather than think, and things seem so sharp. And the world seems so fresh, as though it had all just come into existence. I can never make these moments last. I cling to them, but like everything, they fade. I have lived my life on these moments. They pull me back to the present, and I realise that everything is exactly the way it was meant to be.”
And the most important part is that these moments are derivatives of our perception, not expenditures. We don’t have to travel thousands of miles or spend a substantial amount of money. All that is required is a slight shift in optics, perhaps some fine-tuning of the soul. And then even exchanging a glance from a distance with a fox in the middle of the city during an evening stroll takes on a transcendental dimension.
I like Monday blues, pure peppermint tea,
and the smooth touch of piano keys.
I make flatbread using my own recipe,
find washing dishes by hand calming,
and respect the spiders living in my bathroom.
I buy books in second-hand bookshops
for the dedications and random notes
left inside by previous owners.
If there is a film that particularly appeals to me,
I watch it over and over again,
even several times a day if time allows.
I also never treat music as background noise,
and if I feel like listening to something,
I make sure to pay it full attention.
Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night
or can’t fall asleep at all, and if that happens,
I get up to write a verse or two.
In principle, I could say that I quite like myself
and my life if it weren’t for the thorns
of everything I hate. It turns out that the door
to someone’s soul is in the shadows.
hidden pilcrow 