Desde Un Balcón

“Sleepless long nights, that is what my youth is for.”

Late nights become unhurried afternoons, with a view of the rooftops of downtown Madrid from the opened doors of the balcony. Lying on her bed like an old couple on a Sunday morning, we can see the blue of the sky and the pigeons that swoop across. We imagine we’re lying on a beach somewhere and that they’re really seagulls flying by. The whir of approaching cars is really the ocean, the tide coming closer. The warmth of the down blanket is really the warmth of the summer sun.

We talk about Spanish men — Spanish boys.  She talks about her frustrations, her desires. We laugh and I am glad that it’s daytime and that we have no obligations whatsoever. It’s a Tuesday, a holiday, and the city is bursting alive five floors below us, but we are lounging like cats in a corner of her tiny but cozy apartment, which is illuminated by the daylight that Spain is so sought out for. It’s December and the balcony doors are wide open, the air comes creeping in as if to clear out all the remnants of night. We’re tired, slightly broken, with aching feet. But the sun is out and we are at peace with ourselves, lying like an old couple with the covers up to our chins.

The Swallower Swallowed

” – Hay billones y billones de números…Tengo una idea! No sé cómo decirte… Hay billones de números. Hay demasiados para que los podamos conocer todos, retener todos en nuestra cabeza, lleva a todos en nuestro corazón, amar a todos tal como amas a tu árbol, a tu casa, a tu hermano…Si dices: Amo los números, no amas mucho que digamos. Si dices: Amo a los seres humanos, no notas que amas. Pero si tú dices: Amo a Christian, ves a alguien en tu cabeza, sientes el peso de alguien en tu corazón, te acuerdas de las cosas que habeís hecho juntos. Eso es lo que te propongo: escojamos un número cualquiera. Será nuestro número y le querremos con todo nuestro empeño. Entre los billones de números que hay, será el único que tenga una cara. Te dejo elegirlo.”

“There are billions and billions of numbers…I have an idea! I don’t know how to tell it to you…There are billions of numbers. There are too many for us to know them all, to retain them in our heads, to keep them in our hearts, to love all of them like you may love your tree, your house, or your brother…If you say: I love numbers, we could say that you don’t really love much. If you say: I love human beings, you wouldn’t notice yourself loving. But if you say: I love Christian, you see someone in your head, you feel the weight of someone in your heart, you remember all the things which you have done together. That’s what I’m suggesting: that we choose any number. It will be our number and we’ll love it with all our might. I’ll let you choose it.”

— L’avalée des avalés, Réjean Ducharme

Footprints and Discoveries

Someone told me the other day that he had randomly encountered my blog while perusing the net, without even knowing my last name. And my first reaction was panic: which blog? what sort of embarrassing drivel about me can be easily found and read? What kinds of footprints have I made on the world wide web in my last ten years of internet life?

I did a search with my first name and location and encountered a few pictures,  my YouTube channel (lord, must delete that soon), the link to this blog, an interview, some articles, and years worth of funny quotes. Remember the days of Xanga? High school and first year of college, first boyfriends, endless instant messaging, belly-deep laughter, procrastination, crazy youth.

I spent all night last night dying of laughter while rereading all of the quotes we put up on Xanga our freshmen year of college, that year of music majors on 7J and unbridled insanity. That spontaneity is what I miss. Being young, living with crazy people, not giving a shit, making the wrong decisions, growing from them, meeting the right people at the wrong time, recording quotes because there were just so many things said that were worth remembering. There were so many unexpected lines. The first year of complete independence out from under our parents’ roof, still young but taking those first steps towards reconciling our egos and insecurities with the real world, with new people.

Among all the remembered conversations were also poems, a start of a long, continuous process of feeling and how I wanted to recognize those feelings with words –well-chosen words. Poems that I’d completely forgotten about. An age that I’d forgotten about. The years I turned 18, and 19. And the updates which back then were so banal, so un-meditated, and yet which constitute a considerable part of my life hidden in the virtual pages of an old, obsolete online diary.

My roommate Lauren and I shared a love of writing down things, remembering things, especially the ones that gave evidence to happy, had-to-be there moments. Real and unrepeatable moments. We harbored a life-long relationship with sound, shared a pair of speakers, admired Pablo Neruda, e.e. cummings.  There are some things that surprise and delight you when they re-surface in your brain; other things are just impossible to forget. Tact, joy, weightlessness in love, music.

There are times when I write more, and times when I don’t as much. That year it was non-stop, I devoured pages like I usually do when a sensation has been deeply ingrained in me, when a feeling is newly ignited, when a bit of pain or desire makes me remember how alive I am again.

 

An untitled poem, written May 11th, 2005

this where she slept –
where the fluffy yellow floral
comforter bore her abrupt naps –
this where day sprawled its
gentle face and the
broiling dark grey of dusk
and rainy days sought a
place in our room –
our room –
where out of habit we knew
which drawer kept our socks
and skirts and –
how the seaons did rotate
in our closets –
the mornings of her early showers
nights of quiet “petalling”
of our pens clicking of
keyboards or raucouses in
the hallway –
how does habit become
something you will miss
and forget as years erase them –
little things so crazily dear –
like the door snatching at the
sometimes-compliant rug
neighborly noises – her laugh and
her fingers when she
played