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.

I thought you may want to know

I opened her email curiously and I started to read.

I always thought that looking deep in someone’s eyes is like throwing a hook to secure a safety landing in that person’s mind. I can even picture that slowly roll on a climbing rope until one’s hand reaches the other’s shoulder. And becomes translucent and hazily attached like some sort of shadow, in a different stage of molecular coherence. “This was a soft landing my friend; I am closer to you now. Or you are closer to me now. Or whatever... makes you feel comfortable”.

But it is not. It is like a door ajar that allows a flow of things to come in. And the conquest was nothing but smooth. An insinuated glide past the unconscious mind, random and erratic... but all of a sudden the conscious mind opposed waking up in the middle of the night quivering. “I do not know what you are doing in my mind...but you’d better get out”. However, those moments when a flow of images suddenly pumped up out of nowhere were just the preamble of other weird things that happened.

I used to know that we lived in the same neighborhood. But, we rarely met. Our time frame overlapping is strict and well regulated, no other contact than exchanging few glances, few words nothing important. But, that time our encounter was completely unexpected. Somehow, both of us seemed taken by surprise. Or at least so it looked and so it sounded. The hesitant small talk, stroked me unexpectedly. “Oh, I have found a backpack I was talking about in the email... I thought you may want to know”. The words remained suspended in the middle of the road, as the talk turned abruptly towards other things totally unrelated. Minutes later, this short happenstance ended curtly and we both left as if nothing ever occurred.

And it was not like I have been thinking for a while earlier that day, is my damn backpack clean or not. Have I washed it or not... it is not polite to lend a dirty thing. However, I am sure everything is going to be all right, without my help, anyway. And those unimportant words caught me off guard “I thought you may want to know”. ”Oh... ok” was everything I was able to say as my mind stopped for a while. What the heck is going on?! Why would you say that and how have you... oh god. I do not want to know how much, or how often...or simply how. I just do not.

I was about to write to her...I think you are overreacting, overthinking, over analyzing some random sequences of events. You give too much importance to details. But I changed my mind. Because I remembered. I remembered how it was to be emotionally synchronized, well too synchronized for your mind to accept others’ feelings running through your veins, making you nauseous, anxious. Likewise, the reversed effect, causing your consciousness to perceive, to the point of no return, that it may happen for your emotions to massively ooze out, and each and every thread of your sheath would be ripped off, leaving your entire being exposed and vulnerable.

And somehow, all the unspoken details of her strange encounter unfolded, skillfully placed here and there within the hidden layers of her story. A phrase remained stack in my head and kept spinning over and over.

But, sometimes I miss being there.

... and sent her back. I guess he knows... that

Photo: Hattie Ellis/Getty Images on http://www.npr.org/2013/06/24/195193839/turning-points

breakthrough

She is my half. The brilliant, shiny, adventurous half that makes me a marvelous and quiet, yet complete lunatic. She has been the code breaker of my strange, dyslectic, amalgamated but visually stunning world in my head. I am the peculiar creator, but inexplicably the inept reader of my own nature. So I need her wits to help me unfold the elliptic world to erase my fears. Yet, that crazy and ambiguous dream realm my mind creates is the escape route during the night that pushes me away in the abyss to save my own hide. As all the unspoken thoughts and desires are, at the same time, guilty and innocent. Beyond all, there was always a residual meaning that keeps floating in my conscious perception putting together what I felt and what my skin remembered. Out of the whole surrealist stage of that dream, what lingered the longest was the sense of comfort in a bed that appeared out of nowhere on a sidewalk, cocooning two strangers in a white downy linen. That man’s arm stretched over me to prevent the fall. Later on, I realized why. I need him to cure my stuttering self, to pat my soul and shoulders, to whisk the dust and paper clips. The hide and seek stopped for a while, her words were the Ariadne’s thread that guided me out of my own maze. She raised her head and looked at me with that expression of an old and tired cryptographer and said “you have to enter a collision course to find the right shape. It’s a matter of choice after all”.  At any moment that there is a choice to be made, make one arbitrarily from those not already marked as failures, and follow it logically as far as possible. Unwittingly, I have already made all the wrong choices.

Photo: http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/video/moving-down-a-digital-data-labyrinth-stock-footage/160670441 - snapshot

Doors

Coincidences are transcendent spices that transfer the savor of a different dimension to a tasteless reality. As if they were opening a pink door shifting among a number of concurrent possible realities. Like some promises coming from another world where any possibilities are slowly ripening, following other rules, beyond comprehension.   

One night I saw you in my dream, standing in front of a locker with a sport bag on your shoulder. In a world full of details the only thing I noticed - besides the distance separating us - was the similar shoes we were wearing, mine light purple, yours vivid green, with the same white sides. That me, was seated on a bench at one end of the hall, and fumbled in a bag to find a T-shirt while peeking at you. Few days later, I got a message from you. By mistake. It was your turn to search and fumble about some things to wear. I should have told you, maybe, that you would look great in something casual-chic, maybe sporty. A bright color to match your dark hair. But I did not.

There is always a game of colors and movements. Small changes of fulcrum, and the plans slowly slide in a strange subduction drift. But, there is no closer. There is always a transparent door cutting with surgical precision even the molecules of air, sealing the worlds apart. However, I wait for a moment when I can approach imperceptibly to paint on that door with words and fingers. This is how your smile and the line of your shoulder is seen from afar.  

Photo: tumblr.com

Excerpts in italics: http://dilemaveche.ro/sectiune/tema-saptamanii/articol/strange-phenomena

Rough

I am still thinking about that shooting, even though, I would never be able to bring it to life. I have the clear image in my head. I can see it. I can see the choreography of the shoot. Black and white. Maybe a bit dark, but soulful. And there is you, your small delicate frame populating an imaginary world, with your tutu skirt, naughty and vaporous, a tight top and black leather jacket. Knee high socks and Converse shoes. Sort of 80s I guess. Smokey eyes, thick mascara, and perfect lipstick contouring. There is something dangerous and endearing in this crazy minimalist mind built scenario, an old shabby building with light coming through dirty windows of hallways. An elevator with ragged and creaking doors. And a white, white and scratched wall to project the poses. And life. And stories, maybe yours or maybe somebody else’s. Your delicate hands and wrists up on the elevator doors like a brutal pinning of shadows and memories. Ghostly hot lips down the neck and sweet lies. I’m gonna call you and they never did. Sensuous line of knee, outsole sliding down on the elevators wall... dark eyes looking down your shoulder. The rough and needy hands, hoarse whispers that coat the cramped cubicle. I want you now and forever. But you know there is just unfocused now, but no forever. Those stories are now lying on a side on the stairs, with smudged mascara and bitten lips. Disheveled hair and cold fingers brushing down the cheeks. These lenses are an exorcising trigger making those memories to come unstrung with a part of heart, leaving behind a raw, vivid wound. And there are long weeps that whisper a chant of forgiveness and salvation, washing away the darkness. There are still deep breathings gasping the fresh air after the rain. Somehow, we both know there is a jump waiting. Back to the life that has been unintentionally ignored so far. 

Demon tamer

You are a demon tamer and you are playing a dangerous game. Stay away or turn back. You are only the tamer that makes peace offerings to allure demons; you slash their throats and pull up all the bitterness. I shall bath myself into the blood of beast and claim my own redemption. Stop coming so close. Stay there.... Your fragrance is so sweet. Like vanilla. And yours enticing and persistent like the red thread fading its color to foggy nothingness. Stop coming so close. Stay there. I just want to say that you are beautiful. That’s it. Your words have woody trail and bergamot touches and heaviness of a whisper in the wind. Your light touch makes me remember that my shoulders levitate up high above the hips. It’s only a half of me here. No wonder, I miss long breaths and erratic heartbeats. And butterfly’s flutters squirming my insides.

But now I know ...it just hit me hard how simple it was. Somehow, I am a singularity point that went wrong. That’s why half of me is transparent and devoid, and clouded. My heart simply slipped somewhere else, between the strings. Soon my left hand will go looking for my heart to get it back or to push it forward. Or rip apart flesh of things that keep you hostage in a different, probably parallel timeline.  

Photo: https://500px.com/photo/129033355/reach-out-by-takashi-yasui 

letters

I entered the book shop with music playing out loud in my headphones. I was craving to sense the smell of typographic ink. And I felt it. Vivid and intense. With a raspy touch, almost palpable. And I was thinking how would it be to lay down in the middle of the book shop and breath slowly the scent of ink and one thousand billion letters in various combinations. How many stories would then be crawling within my cells? None? Just a few? A lot more? Those books either colorful or simply white and small, like a pocket edition, were begging to be touched. So I trace my fingers gently on their tattooed shelf-backs... And then I remembered the story running to and fro in my mind for a while, the image of an old wooden bench on a seashore, and white piece of paper trembling in the wind... and the words all mute, but aloud. Lots of subtle scents wrapped up in the smell of ink. And I knew, all of a sudden all the words the wind swept away off the paper. I knew them well ,and I felt them as if they were mine. As I was breathing them away, I took off my earphones a bit and combed my hair with my fingers. I'm here without you, baby/ But you're still on my lonely mind. Are you kidding me?! I think about you, baby/ And I dream about you all the time... and tonight, I was her, like she was me. And we both smiled and mumbled the song, arts and parts in this strange story. Then I heard her soft voice whispering “I knew you heard me”. After a while I knew it wasn’t over.

doubles

I am two and we both write. Sometimes simultaneously. Sometimes just one of us. We never quarrel upon words, as we never use the same. We are just occasionally confused about what we feel. One of us seems younger, annoyingly curious. Conflictual most of the time. Overly emotional, yet in denial. Incredibly stupid. However, it is that one that I envy. For her vivid dreams with skirts and red stilettos. Because that one can weep for long, laugh at heart, face her fears. Because she can dream of a redheaded alien that was hiding in the cellar. I mean, yeah, in fact it is nothing strange to dream of a redheaded alien wearing a long grey coat, and it is not that strange to hold him in your arms, to hide your hands in his coat’s pockets while placing your chin gently on his shoulder and whisper “you can hide in the loft, if you think it’s safer”. It is neither strange to wake up from your dream and nor is it to fumble in your book shelves looking for the book that may have the answer. Even if you know the cover but not the title, and on the spot you do not remember the author. The poetics of space is everywhere after all in its plain simplicity, unfolding before your eyes in various geometries and reasons. I envy her because she can make her mind dance, because I know she dreams almost every night. And I know she chose to make those images fade away before reaching my sight. I envy her for keeping her dearest dreams floating alive in an image database I cannot exactly access. I am just her dark shadow double, keeping her grounded to my own hell. I do not want to let her go, as long as I do not want to let her live either. She is my captive and I am her tormentor. Because I envy her for all she can be, while I cannot. And, because there’s always someone she can call when she senses the danger, even in her dreams. And there’s someone to answer her call, even in her dreams. And I want to be her too, to the point I crave to intermingle and get dissolved, until there’s no me anymore.

Photo: http://www.jacobsutton.com/index.php?section=exhibition_work&portfolio=underwater_girl

waves

Because of global warming Venice is sinking 1mm per year […] We will have again branchia.

So, we have again branchia. We send letters into air bubbles crossing the no man’s land water fields to their intended recipients. Like some sorts of word-carriers transparent balloons. And the messages are intimate as kisses maybe, undeliverable to the outside world as we take the bubble gently with our lips, swallow it slowly so the words could pour on our mouths. Taste of the words blooms like buds sending the messages up high like long expected echoes. We dance like the seaweeds, hoola hooping with the deep waves. We may go up close to the surface and coil around sunrays in a sensual and provoking pole dance, sending cartographic details of the skin while twirling. The message I got was seven letters long. Let us meet at sunrise in Venice.

We came ashore for a glass of air and a breath of smoke. To live and die simultaneously. We sat crossed-legged with wet hair on the stripped pavement of Piazza San Marco smoking a cigarette with a sweet scent of cherry and vanilla in the crude light of dawn. We may have looked like strange butterflies wearing transparent foggy wings attached our backs. Or, maybe some kind of polymorphic amphibians ready to fly at each blow of breeze in a totally reversed world. I wanted to dance with you in the middle of Grand Canale an old court-like dance wearing early morning sunrays as a carnival mask. We were slowly dissolving into the water with each spin. Breathing each other stories in a closed embrace until sun was all above and we were all gone.   

  

Photo:

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhe-NEuXCMz16aJGA5GOp1aoDK93D3A0pmjmD7BCpLoaM5g5gTpsd3vL5ZwObBBAqruIpSW9E0goZ6ACwPdVUPNGG4PTrPQ1Ddz_3OUs1yNDPU2_UHotCeTKTRC5SJBsNRwVlP_9KAfocI/s1600/luv,photography,silhouette,underwater,couple,kiss-47f8c295eef05904423a8eaea2e5dae0_h%5B2%5D%5B2%5D.jpg

Fragmentary beings

I am a fragmentary being with a colourful, different, volatile, incongruent, dyslexic almost world in my head. An uncountable amalgam of automated activities. A static noise bearing all sorts of thoughts, memories, fears, ideas, fragments of reality, overlapping images. Different voices, background music, various focuses, hidden pains. Like a solar explosion, sometimes there is a word or a sound emerging in full power splatting the conscious mind. Last time it came out loud and clear.

As if someone was slowly turning on a radio deep inside. And, that out-of-music morphine kept running and running for long, at different intensities. The same word, but different voices bearing other meanings each time; and at last, the way out of this labyrinth was to focus the rhythmic patterns of drums. You had been there in the middle of a live concert, and probably, that morphine having been hit my deep level of subconscious mind was at first gently passing through your body, your cells before landing on other remote places. You have that kind of pull, like gravity, keeping things on their right orbit.

In the end, it is not about time, but paths. And like that, I became suddenly aware that in my dreams, I have never seen or heard watches, but sometimes I dreamt maps. I remembered that I was looking at a map and drawing with my fingers the path to take, to reach the same unknown point outside the boundaries of map. Therefore, it was me heading south, and you heading north and deciding to meet I don’t know when and I don’t know how somewhere in the west.

 

You are there in different shapes, way too different to ever recognize you. Disclose yourself. Whisper me a hint. And, the hint was there all the time, but in fact, I was so afraid I might lose everything forever the moment it was poured into words. But there were no words. Only a hug from behind, close and intimate, and completely unexpected. For those few mind-created milliseconds, I felt safe. Gently touching your arm, I closed my eyes, and tried to save a file storing the warmth of your skin.

Photo: http://www.techhog.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/fragmentation-art.jpg



Magnetism

It took me a while to understand. Those things love to come poke my head in various ways. Delightfully visual, colorful, almost surrealist, and ambiguous. Last time my alternate universe was contracted in a squared room with dark brown-sugar wooden floor. Impeccably waxed. Maybe that was why two white seals defy gravity to live comfortably on magnetic board on the wall. Refugees from the north pole maybe. More likely, the magnetic north pole. It is all about magnetism after all. And I felt it. You, your naked back and waved hair, your hand. We seemed to run out of that squared room, run from people and waxed floors… then I woke up. That morning draped itself in simple words; we touch each other’s lips with our fingers, each other’s neck, and trachea. I can still see, frame by frame, your uncovered blade bone, your shoulder, but my senses cannot remember your touch, neither the texture of your skin. We touch various things having abstract names, but what I cannot touch in either way yet is me. And is you.

Photo: http://ntikhomirov.500px.com/

Personal Geography

I have borne these words in my mind for months. They were somehow inhabiting my synaptic defined space, and erratically emerge to grab various senses. There was no algorithm of such encounters other than spikes of emotions. Or, at least, that was what I thought. Unexpectedly, the trigger was a name. My secret name was written on a wall and I have seen it. For a split second. With neat and sharp line, elegant in particular way, indulging a wonderful asymmetry. “This is me”, I thought and I felt it was that hidden me I longed for so much to meet. I moved to New York with two suitcases and a goal to make ten thousand photos. So insanely courageous indeed. There might be a precise New York for everyone located somewhere within the inner personal geography. What if, somehow I would find that necessary and sufficient strength to say…that’s enough lack of horizon for one life. What if, after seeing the image of me there, I knew where my New York was? Even though I cannot say who I am but go for it and speak as if I knew it. Time is half of the story. My New York is fragile and under the radar, unidentifiably gorgeous and strange. I am still running around in circles, hunting down, putting on the right scent with bow and arrows. What I could do for now is just lay down in shadow and listen. Then I will go on writing till I drop & hoping that one day or one night you can read my words beyond my caring.

Photo: http://www.babel-voyages.com/mini/1000m600/photos/source/the_temple_of_transition_morning_light_breaking_th.jpg