Dear Eve,

It has been a while since our first meeting in winter. I kept thinking about that day, about the promise I made to write to you. Sometimes, the story unfolded naturally in its entire splendor, but not on paper. Until today.

January 28^th was a sunny day that did not resemble its fellow sisters at all. It was a like fugitive spring day, running with its wild bluish green hair to meet you. I was kilometers behind her, in a yellow cab, having a strange small talk with the driver. About kids and parents, about kids’ bad ideas and parents’ obstinate what-I-am-telling-you-is-good, and childish acts of rebellion, and all sort of little things that you’ll experience one day. You know that kind of little stories, which you keep on telling to whoever wants to listen, landmarks of your personal history, bearing the sweet, seldom a bit sour taste, like some old melancholic love songs that sometimes you can hear on the radio.

I entered the church, wearing the joy instead of any gala attire or jewelries. And you were there, cute and sleepy, in a white flounced dress, unaware of the festive uneasiness of the moment. The soft voices of people in the choir were praising lord for his creation, and they sounded all of a sudden like a strange and soothing lullaby. Your mom was wearing a lacy black dress that made her look so young and hippy. Stressed and happy, and anxious and oozing a soft pale glow. So, this is how motherhood looks like, isn’t it ... Your father, a bit anxious, happy to nest you in his arms. All protective, all proud. He was holding gently the little monkey’s head (his words, not mine) on his chest near his heart. That is a subtle love confession, Eve. Subtle and deep.

Your clueless godparents, even more clueless than I thought. Saying the words of Creed all of a tremble, all full of emotions. And the baptism itself that took you totally by surprise and made you cry a bit in confusion. That’s the new version of you, having a name and a god to look over you.

The party was intimate and sweet, with your parents’ friends around in old but fancy house. Garnished with good music and good wine, with colorful macarons piled up on a white shelf in the hallway. With two dogs hidden under a chair waiting for someone to break their shyness and pet them. Having a chic and ancient stove covered in tiles and pots of flowers here and there. Yellow and green cushions and lemonade, so homey, so warm. With lovely small talks and plans over a delicious cheesecake, with coffee and dreams. Watching you, a small little girl with your fuzzy blond hair looking like a dandelion florets, sleeping peacefully in your cottony-like cradle. Making all of us swooning over you, oh my god, she is so sweet.

Dear Eve, what you’ve just read is a primitive form of memory sharing: a bunch textures and tastes and colors, some puzzle pieces bearing all sort of sensations, covered in words whose sense you will feel later on. 

Little earthquakes

She wrote back few weeks later. Totally random, like she used to do all the time. As if she continued some conversations, after kilometers of other off topic subjects, jumping among ideas like a kangaroo on a large chess table.

I guess you are right. It is something he knows, and sometimes I think he is amused. Yeah I guess that’s the word, amused. Sometimes I catch a glimpse of smiles. Milliseconds. That kind of smile full of candor and tease, lost among some other sorts of expressions and emotions that I am not exactly able to identify. This thing makes me sort of uneasy, sensory-deprived, as I feel both blind and deaf. So I am writing as this is the only thing under my control right now. The strangeness of our encounters did not stop. Or maybe it is me who has the strangest of minds, who knows?! So strange and twisted that I keep dreaming about him. And those dreams are like earthquakes, impossible to predict, shaking everything around, and leaving me breathless.

I have constantly assumed that she was telling me just some little parts of the story not the whole truth. Like she was afraid of being judged, afraid of what others may think, of what others may tell.

I keep dreaming about him. I don’t know why. I have no idea. Which make things even weirder cause in real life I keep unconsciously avoiding him. If he comes one step closer I am two steps back. Or one step aside, or simply leaving any proximity. Like his presence causes a quarantine alert, or a fight-or-flight response is automatically activated. Cause every time I have that feeling of trying to set a line, and there is always a push back someway intendedly askew. But in my dreams, everything was gentler. No matter how weird was the environment everything was gentler. I dreamt about an apartment with large windows and a huge dressing, and a parking lot for scooters on the top of the building – I could have seen up there the shiny handlebars of few Vespas each of them differently colored and the pebbled, curvy access ramp - surrounded by a green park. Apparently his apartment. It was not peculiar that I was sitting on the air conditioning in contemplation. Everything was so frightfully domestic. And the first thing that went through my mind was how I would organize the whole dressing on colors. Out of all the clothes hanging there on walls and within the wardrobes with some yellows and greens stood out from the background. Then he entered the room, with a dark beanie on his head and he told me he was going to leave to see his son. Ok, I said. No other questions or doubts. Why was I there, who is your son? The next dream brought us even closer. Which was scary and remarkably blissful. As before in a house, but a different one this time. Neither mine, nor his. But in a bed with fresh white linen - such a recurrent topic apparently. Have not I told you about this?! I will someday. I guess I know now... - that kind of linen always white and fluffy like some sort of floating cotton, and his damn inexplicably persistent tendency to be protective. I omitted to tell you about it either, is it?! Yep.... And he was caressing my hair, while I was barely touching his. I felt the smooth texture of his hair, absolutely aware of the closeness. He was asking about my family, and I guess I was telling him about my mom and dad, but I was focused on my hand and his hair, on the absolute awkwardness of the whole scene. But fully conscious of the sense of peacefulness. That kind of total, absolute zen. Like everything stood still for a moment there with him. And I felt like I was engulfed into deep, complete and utter peace. I woke up baffled asking myself in awe and terror what is gonna happen next?!

I smiled and I was thinking to write her back at that very moment, but I push back the chair and I stood up, as I was combing my hair with my fingers thinking to myself a bit mischievous but curious as hell... he will let you know somehow. 

If you cannot sleep, you can write to me

If you cannot sleep, you can write to me. And so I did, as I imagined sitting on the entrance steps of my block with a notepad on my knees, writing disparate ideas with my impossible handwriting under the pale light of a street lamp, smoking maybe. Or thinking. Maybe.

First entry log, 03.01.2017

This is the first letter to you. Actually, it should have been better for me to learn how to paint. There are colors and actions and images that come through mind when I think about writing to you. Anything, but words. It is hard to convey the sensation of flight, a purple flight as I saw it. You know, the first words that hit me hard on 1^st day of this year were “leap of faith”. I don’t know if you have ever felt a word echoing in your mind for hours. As if, those syllables were reflected over and over by each and every bone in the skull. To go to sleep with that word buzzing in your ears and wake up just to hear it again at different intensity. And the sensation of flight, like a back jump in large twirls with the arms wide open, half human-half bird. Few days later, I saw this picture. And I kept thinking about it. In the end it was part of the answer I might have been looking so far “you have to make quick decisions to optimize your time in the air”.

Second entry log, not dated

She wrote this to me and probably she wrote it to you too: “If you can imagine yourself sitting in an exotic forest, and behind you there is an a old deserted temple, with moss covering the broken walls, with vegetation among the standing ruins, and in front of you is the jungle and you hear all sorts of birds sounds and insects buzz, and you see the light hitting the ground among the trees and you have that blurry impression of smoke or fog....and it’s hot, really hot... well, so it was.” 

And I wish I could say holodeck please reconfigure the scenario according to the description. Change status to permanent. Save. Thank you. Just to enter, barefoot, take a few steps and then take a sit with the legs loosely crossed, close the eyes and turn the palms upwards breathing slowly. And instantaneously another images popped up in my mind in some sort of anime-esque CGI form with two transparent aliens, floating delicately like some aerial jellyfish, conveying telepathically messages to each other: “This is how they connect to the matrix?!” “No, this is how they shine”.

Third entry log: 6^th of the same month

Dear Eve, your mom has just sent me a short message inviting me to your party. Your baptizing party, but I am pretty sure you have no idea what I am talking about. Anyways, you will find out soon. Not in the most pleasant way, I dare to anticipate, but however... I shall come back with a post-party report later on, telling about all the things you may be interested in someday, how was your mom, how she looked like, was her dress pretty, stuff like that, bit gossipy, bit fun. How anxious was your dad, or maybe excited, or nervous. “Is that bloody servant of God aware of what is he doing?! Oh god why do I accept all this creepy show...damn I will kill him if something happens to you. With the candle-holders. No, with my bare hands”. I am thinking what kind of present I should buy to a few months old little girl. Something interesting, meaningful, pretty. I don’t know yet. I cannot ask for directions, because as you might have known by now, it’s supposed to be a surprise gift. There will be a letter for sure “Dear Eve, bla bla bla”, maybe a snapshot of that day, “Dear Eve, on 28 January it snowed a lot and it was pretty cold”, a picture of you “This is you minutes before the event”, of your parents maybe “your parents, sort of livid, bit expressionless, but deep down really happy”, “Your clueless godparents, trying to figure out what they were supposed to do” and a box to hide everything in. Wooden, or metal. With some floral patterns or engravings, where you could hide later on bits of first things you’ll ever experience. 

Hello Moses

British scientists say that December and depression go hand in hand and sometimes exchange long passionate kisses under the mistletoe that naturally end up in suicide attempts. I think that my December and my depression have a conflictual, love-hate relationship, with lots of bickering and sulky silences. And definitely, they do not get intimate so easily. And they do not kiss that much. Probably at all. However, that week towards the end of December was really hard to bear. I was depressed, sad, disgruntled. I refused to see people, to talk; to be nice was completely out of question. And I knew I was pathetic. Totally pathetic but I could not help it. So pathetic that I devoted my time to long stares at the walls and deep procrastination, and I stubbornly refused to do the things that I enjoyed that much. Instead, I was focusing on cleaning the apartment with that kind of obsessive determination. I definitely should do this. And this, too. Oh, and that too. Anyhow, that impassible dust does not give a shit about a depressed white-collar acting like an obsessive-compulsive Hausfrau. 

As a consequence of that antisocial behavior, she was travelling alone to a game where I was supposed to be. Actually, she tried to persuade me. Discretely, with that kind of elegant insistence that someone could rarely refuse. But I could not step out of my bad mood. For a very short time, I was thinking that I could go. But, I would not have been a pleasant companion. Not even a human one. Who am I to spoil her joy?! So I remained at home converting depression into cleaning the house, and obsessively listening to Charlie Puth’s song we don’t talk anymore.

Then she called. I made it. I am on the train. What are you doing? I'm taking down the curtain to wash it up. A real challenge you know for a shorty like me. I can tell my hubbie to come and help you. No way, I’m taking him to concerts only, that’s it. Nothing more. And maybe to mount up the shelves I intend to buy. My hubs?! Well someone has to do it. But, I have no idea when I’ll buy it. And from here, we got lost in the land of philosophical discussions about the sense of life and the greatness of Allah the world most famous entomologist and his team of 72 virgin mole crickets. It was quite unclear the role of mole crickets but it was not the first time when we had pretty long idiotic phone conversations. We agreed that it was kind of a creative training we both need, so that, from time to time we sensually plunged into the realm of crazy talks. Therefore, we concluded that those 72 virgin mole crickets might serve as a healthy desert, all coated in salted caramel, even though not that day, because of the advent. And Allah celebrates Xmas, that’s what you want to tell me. Only when he decides to disguise himself as Jesus. How did we end up here? I have no bloody idea. And we kept derailing on various subjects until I told her. I had an epiphany last night. An epiphany? Exactly. That we end up resolving the conflict we had on 1^st of January this year. Did we have a conflict?! Yeah, remember? Climbing that hill… Ah yeah I remember. I was really furious. I know. You decided to turn back in the middle of the road, the fucking middle of the road. But I resolved it right before the end of the year. I chose not to go with you, and you decided to go without me … and suddenly everything went clear in my head. That somehow that was my lesson for the time being. I can’t stop in the middle of the road. I have to keep going. I have to go back to the things left aside and resume them or finish them. Or pronounce them dead and have them buried and never resurrected. A clean cut. No loose ends.

So, dear tassels, and fringes and tufts it’s gonna be a hard time for you soon. Moses is here to part the seas, and, if you stop bustling for a while, you can hear his bare feet crushing the empty shells on the rock bottom of the sea and hear the familiar sound of GPS telling him it’s time to set the right direction. And get two bottles of tequila.