STONES MAY FALL
Moving is a serious matter. The preliminary stage of a cardboard box is a two-sided view, yet you know your larger way around it without a manual. The flat surface speaks of six entirely different but connected dimensions. You think of your house in smaller units, and this porcelain bird you liked and bought, it undergoes short term memory loss when packed up under layers of bubblewrap, getting from A to B in a truck. It already forgot about flying.
When you think of the human body, when small spaces are made for us, we fit in and adopt not minding as strategy right away. When a room feels smaller when fully empty, I recommend you fill and organize it in such a way that you have smaller spaces within the larger space to feel nevertheless large in it. Reject the illusion.
To tell your real size:
Measure your pants; the gap left between chair and wall for you to pass.
Measure how far your middle finger extends, or the pinky.
Measure the empty field under the trees, the size of your mother’s fist.
Count how many mosquitoes you attract on a summer night.
The diameter of your open mouth.Or the wood per meter pricing for your coffin.
The size of the jar holding your ashes. Count the months passed since the break-up.
Measure in square meters your favorite corner you keep to yourself in your heart.
Destination is a serious matter. It no longer works well to form metaphors when writing. A pretends to be B and B pretends to be A. You turn the cardboard box upside down and it looks not exactly but almost the same as the previous view. You realize you had to memorize which side to cut it back open to find exactly what you had expected to find. You realize you should have arranged your own boxes yourself. You realize you’ve been fooled. You realize no one was going tell you which side to sleep on. You have a back pain now.
Your movements get slower navigating through the new place. The light switch isn’t there anymore but here. The button isn’t as wide anymore, but smaller and narrow. The mirror in the bathroom is bigger, so you see more of yourself in a single glance. The doors don’t lock from the outside but from the inside. The floor doesn’t make a cracking sound when entering the kitchen but right here, in the corner connecting your room and the hall. The windows open up from the top, and now, your bed faces a parking lot. There are somehow more cables, and also shoes are allowed indoors in this new place. This time the drawers are larger, all the cutlery and the equipment they do fit and there’s even space remaining. You have dimmed the lights on purpose and have kept the writing desk that bent in the middle over the years, with your elbows, making the objects on it roll to the center when placed.
Saying goodbye to a wall is a serious matter. You try to let it out but don’t know where to place yourself in doing, snug in the corner and after all, crying whose name? You refuse to hug yourself. You try to convince yourself that you’ll be back but the movers don’t believe you. They throw tape at you, “hey come put this together!”. Everyone’s in denial, and only the windows know how much they had to be left open so you could breathe at night. You realize you needed more witnesses. And you start unpacking the bird.
Everything is technically your one and only chance at it. But chances are you’ll have many more of everything. Like words. Fuck it up and you’re good to go.
You think of what you used to be. You confuse a thought and a rock. You look at an object no longer standing where it’s supposed to stand, and you think of your ex.
Okay, I’m going to talk about something I haven’t talked about before. Isn’t that what we always do? No, I learned to repeat myself at a very young age. Now I’m paying for tattoo removals. Wait, that’s against the whole point. Isn’t that what we always do?
If you’re speaking, in general, at large, if you have picked a life of speech, you inevitably have to repeat certain words. But no silence can be repeated a second time. There is no way to record it, to keep track of it, no way to hold someone accountable by what they did not say, no way to play it back, to rewind, to re-listen. No way to ask them “Wait, come again?”
All is connected. This time, when you speak, the movers do believe you, or they just believe your story. They teach you how to hug a wall, how to use your arms when lifting boxes, how to run a truck, how stay more silent. And you free the bird.
Distance is a serious matter. It no longer breaks people apart but puts them back together, like double-sided tape, like a good poem of two lines, or two pages, like a 21 minute song, like the wooden bridge in the forest, like the love that never came, like the child who never died, like a door with a stopper stuck under it, like the superglue drying on the side of your finger after fixing the handles, like a “conversation” with your mom that lasts 24 years, or like a train ride that never ends, but it does and when it does end, what do you realize?
That distance was only a thing over the phone.
You start writing about the bird. Or you come back to the same paragraph over and over again to feel proud when you come home. You read it again and again to remember who you are. You remember you could write. You remember you didn’t have to, but still did. You remember who they were, the people. You remember all the days leading up to your first birthday, you remember your first encounters with this world, how no one believed where you came from, how no one warned you about any of this, you remember how you hate these reminders, how you just wanted to be born and understand all of it by yourself, and have the chance to forget if you wanted. You read it. and read it. and read it. over. and over. again
From Helvetica to Arial then back to Helvetica.
To sleep. From bed on your feet then back to Arial.
Makes more sense.
Select text.
Underline.
Undo.
Italics?
Bold.
Italic.
Undo italic.
Now just looks bold.
Undo bold.
Only italic.
Now looks important.
Undo italic.
Regular Arial.
Good. But
From Ariel to Ariel narrow now.
Now italic.
Looks too italic.
Ariel Narrow italic.
Font size up, too narrow.
Okay stop.
Now looks italic and wide.
Italic enough and wide enough
Ariel Narrow in italic, for the title.
But Body.
Body in serif.
Font size down. body
body body.
From Helvetica to Times New Roman.
Now too small.
Doesn’t make sense.
Font size up.
Stop.
Doesn’t make sense.
No, back to Arial.
To write is to show appreciation for the knowledge that just came to you.
*
Today, I was about to fall from the sidewalk as I was looking at my reflection on a car.
Every time you called my name I said yes and heard nothing back.
Yet at a distance we’re bouncing in the same timezone.
Maybe I’ll stop saying maybe for the things I want for them to happen.
No one can be a replacement for anyone.
These crazy dreams continue.
I’m thinking if I should write more than twenty minutes each day.
Though I have to finish a fictional dialogue between a mother and a daughter.
Maybe I’ll make sure to write, to sleep well, to wipe my face and show some love to mom and dad.
Something will happen.
I guess this exercise works like when I used to play volleyball.
They told me I turned out to be quite short though. Shorter than they would expect. And I stopped measuring myself. Now I can’t find a couch I like.
It seems to me I have to take this writing thing more seriously. But it feels like a drawer stuck in its place no matter how hard I push. You PULL a drawer to open it you IDIOT. Stop pushing.
In the five seconds of coming after I masturbate I remember I should start having sex again. But this thought lasts quite short, shorter than I would expect, and I forget about it already as I’m putting the dildo back in its pouch. I use a cotton one with drawstrings.
I’m going away for a while. We’re going to vote at some point. We’re going to fuck at some point. We who? Both the liberals and the conservatives. I’m going to read a text at some point soon. What text is what I’m trying to figure out. This pen is going to stop writing at some point. Soon. Not because the twenty minute timer would go off but that the ink will. And I will continue writing nothing on a paper. I will write with an empty pen and make shapes of letters, like a relief. We’ll have a relief soon. Soon when? I’ll see you. Very soon. God I hate this sentence.
I am getting better at finding the light switch in the dark. my fingers have this little dance searching for the button. It’s the motor coordination that alerts you of things you thought you could do. I relate differently to all these poets now. I used to want to be like one of them. Now I just want to be like myself. Your left hand alone doesn’t manage to open a bottle this morning and you freak out. Left becomes right and right becomes left and you think whether it is all because you missed your turn.
You look through the space between two people, you ask, would I fit in there, can I smoothly glide my way in between the two, and they think I am a feather, or a bug the worst case. A bug that makes a buzzing sound only for the duration of the encounter, the collision, or a bug in the system, their system, our system. We who?
How dare you walk in between the two? How dare you come to be more smart than us?
I was looking at the bird (Remember the bird?) thinking it’s not where it’s supposed to be. The ground is too low for wing motion and the sky too unreachable, paralyzing, falsifying. So instead I decide to write B-I-R-D on an open-air wall on the third story of a three-story building, thinking it might make the bird happy.
So now on the same street I have the A and I have the B, doing rounds of back and forth with a full truck, thinking if I move enough it will reveal something to me when I hit the bed at night. On the same street I have a wall that says BIRD quite up high, and next to that building on a door, someone wrote “stones may fall”.
Aleksandra texts me saying that she thinks Sisyphus and Orpheus are the same person. Hearing this, she says, I think they were never really separate. I tell her I feel no coherence or real premise to this story I’ve been telling. But if you love it, then I love it too, and I miss loving something only because you do.
Not writing is not an option.
Not loving is not an option.
Coming out the tunnel they told me you would follow. I walked and walked despite my pants and despite my doubt and sorrow. Somewhere close to the exit I lost it all, I turned my head back and glanced, sirens have started. You apparently had returned to where you came from and since then, I never knew anyone who knew you, or who could name you, or could draw out your face. I know where you had returned to, but I realize I never got a chance to visit it. Otherwise I would have asked, to anyone, for my life, did you see what happened? What was it all about? I would do it all over again. I would look back again risking for an answer.
*
I put two singular papers in my bag today separately. A shampoo brochure my dermatologist gave me with the shower gel she wants me to use circled with a blue pen, and a pamphlet for a theatre play I went to see in the evening.
Living with your parents feels like walking on sandpaper. Or rubbing your crotch against one. In any case I can’t walk a straight line down our new corridor. I talk from the back of my shoulder. I want to stab someone with the fork I’m holding at the dinner table.
But what about fasting? What about a fast-pace melting? What about this thing I told you to maybe help me?
So I imagine no room but long long curtains. I imagine long silences. Big crowds in front of burials. And in the middle of it all, someone holding the scissors.
I planned a paper to wrap around your hands, split my fingers in halves and waited for you to hit. For you to tell me this is it.
But first make a mess before putting it in a place is not how I wanted anything to be but the truth is I have to understand. I have to understand that I am me.
And then when I leave it’s because I can.
Feeling like a villain when I put my raincoat hood on.
I go home and shout at my mom.
I make the dog mad and forget about my friends birthday.
I drink at least three cups of coffee everyday. at least.
I write everything in my Moleskine. I leave nothing to chance.
I wear the same socks for three days in a row. at least.
I never do what the doctors ask of me.
I externalize my anger to some others because I see myself in their actions.
I smoke weed in my room and dry my dirty hands on the common space towel.
I think of my parents as roommates and not the right way around.
I know I haven’t come out of a womb.
I don’t mind not changing the sheets.
I don’t mind getting scolded, in fact it’s what I expect.
I feel like a villain when I put my raincoat hood on ready to take on the entire city of broken hearts.
On my new desk, there are not a whole lot of words when I come to think of it. I But too many words when I run to write of it. Too many blank spots. And not a lot of things to tell but too many words so the story becomes form out of its own responsibility. Too many words to make up a few writings. No words to make up so many stories. Good morning. Now shut up.
Like the world itself, the word means nothing and everything, I blink to my friend.
Have you ever noticed a difference between someone who always carries a pen with them, and someone who doesn’t? When I hear the question “does anyone have a pen?” I go: Yes! I do! As if I have invented the pen myself.
There are many ways to tell if you can trust a person. I don’t know if this is one of them, but that’s the whole trick about trust, the one trick about trust. Is that you also don’t know what to tell it by.
I saw my dentist last summer. By then he hadn’t seen me in years. He told me the shape of my face had changed, and asked me to clench my jaw. Apparently it’s more square now, now that I press my teeth together during sleep. I couldn’t tell him about my dad, or the break-up, though I wanted to.
My mom believed that if she organized enough stuff, she’d win the war. I believed there was no war.
All this time moving I learned one main thing: That we spent most time decluttering, organizing, choosing, standing, throwing, carrying, replacing, letting go. So when we say we’re tired, its the weeks-long decision-making. It’s the remembering when you find an object, and the immediate need to forget about it; it’s the not having a choice but to remember what happened fully, and the knowledge that you could perhaps, not forget, but not remember if you wanted.
You should narrate my life, I tell him. It sounds more simple than I make it be.
Call it prison.
Call it an odd afternoon.
Call it the last 3 km to walk.
Call it a past home.
Call it a park.
Call it the seat by the emergency exit.
Call it a Thonet.
Call it a single rubber band fallen on the ground.
Call it a startup.
A notebook.
A cutting board.
Call it the municipality building.
Call it a ballot.
A bullet.
Call it a roll of tracing paper.
Call it a ruler.
Call it out.
And get as mad as you want, we have so much to celebrate this year.
*
Drop The Years. Grab Agua Viva. Google Print Shops. Patch the 10th piece of the performance. Finish designing business card. Pour coffee in your and your mom’s cup, for she gave you half of what she had this morning. And so you brewed more coffee. Now you feel guilty. You don’t even know if she has the energy to get up or not. Did Clarice Lispector already say everything? How many writers out there already wrote what you only thought of? Thinking is pathetic, is what I think these days. So the act of packing bags and going to Prague is a good start I guess. I can already hear myself thinking on the plane. Did I forget anything?
It seems everyone is moving in some way. As in, even without a direction and the act of packing itself becomes the only noble thing about the act of moving. I hear houses being left, and I hear about other houses being settled in. Though never not quite. The carrying van, or sometimes the truck itself becomes the new home for something in motion feels safer than something still.
My eyes are props today looking over the world. No one knows why they’re there. No one has a clue about their function. We’re not sure if they even look beautiful or fit for the shot. Nevertheless they make the scene happen. And the world means something for a brief second.
Okay the frame looks good. Let’s move on. Who do we shoot next?
*
Doing all of this I don’t sweat as much. I’d blame it on my new deodorant. I guess freedom partly lies in letting go of the concern for whether the lover shares the same sense of duty as the loved. Our family is being thrown out of the apartment I was brought to live before I even celebrated my first birthday. I have declared myself as the ministry of impatient affairs. Housing crisis everywhere.
I’m still whispering the word geni*us. Or not saying it at all. Talking way less in general. It helps me to be more specific. I’d blame it on my diarrhea pills.
I remember how to be or become a little bowl to contain love inside again. This is good news, like Christmas. It lights up like the fake tree in our living room. I’d say your bike is still around. And other precious things chained right outside your door, close enough yet far enough, just how you like it. I often want to feel your gaze upon me as I’m walking through the city, often motivated to find love doing that, and I take it seriously. I hope this trip takes me to places I would otherwise not be able to see. That’s what happened the first time. Keep your friends close, their business cards even closer, I blink to my friend.
So the orchestra might start a song from scratch but it can never pretend to not have played it initially with a few off sounds. And drums as will, as intent. And how similarly the brain holds the score. But I'm sure there is still another undiscovered organ. Too much happening all at once is nothing nothing ever happened. I will remember you glancing over your shoulder gazing at the world so sourly, playing the drums for me.
*
I remember finally what it is that I like about grocery shopping. That it leaves me with a purpose, a bag. Something to carry from A to B.
