The poetry that took the shape of a shelter

Early morning, when poetry takes the shape of a shelter. Wallace Stevens' La Roca.

THE POEM THAT TOOK THE PLACE OF A MOUNTAIN

There it was, word for word,
The poem that took the place of a mountain.

He breathed its oxygen,
Even when the book lay turned in the dust of his table.

It reminded him how he had needed
A place to go to in his own direction,

How he had recomposed the pines,
Shifted the rocks and picked his way among clouds,

For the outlook that would be right,
Where he would be complete in an unexplained completion:

The exact rock where his inexactness
Would discover, at last, the view toward which they had edged,

Where he could lie and, gazing down at the sea,
Recognize his unique and solitary home.

- Wallace Stevens

EL POEMA QUE OCUPABA EL LUGAR DE UNA MONTAÑA

Allí estaba, palabra por palabra,
el poema que ocupaba el lugar de una montaña.

Él respiraba su oxígeno,
aun cuando el libro estaba vuelto sobre el polvo de su mesa.

Le recordaba cuánto había necesitado
un lugar al que ir por su propio camino,

cómo había vuelto a componer los pinos,
apartado las rocas y andado con cuidado entre las nubes,

hasta hallar la atalaya que fuera la adecuada,
donde estuviera él completo en un inexplicado completarse:

la roca exacta donde sus inexactitudes
descubrieran, por fin, la vista hacia la cual habían avanzado,

donde pudiera echarse y, fijando los ojos en el mar,
reconocer su única y solitaria casa.

- Wallace Stevens

Patience

"To let each impression and each embryo of a feeling come to completion, entirely in itself, in the dark, in the unsayable, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one’s own understanding, and with deep humility and patience to wait for the hour when a new clarity is born: this alone is what it means to live as an artist: in understanding as in creating.
In this there is no measuring with time, a year doesn’t matter, and ten years are nothing. Being an artist means: not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn’t force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come. It does come. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are there as if eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly silent and vast."

- Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a young poet

What scares me most

“Where are you from?” he asked.
It wasn’t the first time that evening I was asked that question. I was out with friends, we were in a small club, dancing and talking and enjoying ourselves. Good company, a nice evening.
I tried not to jump to conclusions after having spent some energy actively avoiding eye contact with men I didn’t know while dancing. Eye contact, especially repeating eye contact even when you only coincidentally look into somebody’s peering glance, is usually seen as a sign of approval to enter your comfort zone. I find it hard to keep my eyes down or look away. I like to look where my eyes wander. I like looking people in the eye. But not when it has consequences I don’t want. Keeping your eyes down is easier than having to keep turning your back to somebody who starts dancing closer to you or even pushing away hands or raise your voice and tell somebody to give you space. Or to fuck off.

“Where are you from?” he asked. He seemed to be a nice person but I never know what this question means and also I am not a big fan of small talk. So I asked: “What do you want to know? Where I was born? Where I was yesterday?” It seemed to make him a bit uncomfortable so I told him I was born in the Netherlands a long time ago. “That’s great!” he said. “Where?” I tried to explain I didn’t feel very connected to the Netherlands and anyway, I was born in a small village he wouldn’t know but he wanted to know where it was anyway. So I gave him the name and the cities closest to it. Again he said “That is great!” and I asked why that was great, which made him confused again. For me it was easy, either this was complete nonsense and he didn’t know what to say or ask and in that case I’d rather be silent and he would be better of talking to somebody else or he had a good reason to find it fantastic that I was born 44 years ago in a village in the east of the Netherlands. If so, I was curious for his reasons. But it confused him more and then a friend of mine, who had listened to us talking, asked me why I was being so tough on him and couldn’t take part in the conversation in a gentle way. Be kinder.
I tried to explain. How exhausting it is to continuously put little bits of energy in avoiding things. Be it making sure you don’t look into a man’s eyes on the dance floor or politely answering questions that are not going anywhere. I am not sure he got it. And at the same time his reproach triggered something in me. If there is anything I want to be it is a kind person. So I told him that maybe he was right. And I apologised to the man I might have offended. I didn’t want to be unkind.

And I still don’t. But I regretted my apologies afterwards.

When the lights turned on and I left the building there was some commotion outside. A man had touched a female friend of mine in an appropriate way. She had objected and became angry and the men present were trying to tell her that it was nothing to get upset about and that she shouldn’t make such a scene. The women present were defending her but all the men were either looking away, defending their friend or telling her she was overreacting. It was a complicated situation because some people had drunk too much and the people running the club were nervous about noise in the street so the group dispersed and I walked home feeling uncomfortable about not having fought harder for my friend and making a scene. I still don’t know if I should have done more than telling them they were wrong and her that she was right, maybe I should have raised my voice right there instead of here.

I walked home alone. It was dark and the streets were empty. I was angry. And aware of my vulnerable situation. Less of a prey than I sometimes am when I am wearing a dress but even when wearing jeans and a dark jacket still clearly female. I put all my money, keys and valuable belongings in hidden pockets so if again a man (or two, like earlier this year) would try to steal my bag I could just let go of it without getting hurt this time. I felt safer but also angrier.

It was just a random evening. I had enjoyed myself. Nothing too much out of the ordinary had happened. And that scares me more than anything.

Memory of spring

Autumn has started. You can smell it when you go outside.

In a forgotten corner of my storage room I found a box with old memories. Scents I caught 20 years ago when I had just started art school. The biggest one reads “voorjaar”, spring. The scent is gone though. Once there was freshly cut grass in it. Now it smells of decay. Of autumn before it turns winter.
“A dear friend”, “my love”, “grandmother”. The scents are still there, faintly, but the people who used those perfumes or soaps smell different now. Or not at all.
“Terschelling, the summer of ’89”, “Saterday afternoons a long time ago”, “my first job”, “Domaine de Merlac 1990”. Hard to recognise.
“Fishing nets made out of lace curtain” (there was muddy water inside), “for the love of cats” (liver, if I remember well: my mother used to cook it for our pets), all gone.
The strong smell of “Molenweg 29” is still there. The smell of the impregnated beams my father put in the front garden. Whenever I smell that, I am back there.
And the one reading "Opa", "Grandfather", still smells of what is inside. Earth. When I was little I used to work in the garden with him. I still love gardening. And the smell of earth.

Nature knows best

I wondered yesterday if I should eat the pumpkin flower or if I should eat the snails before they would eat the flower. Or maybe even stuff the flower with snails and rice and herbs.

I let it be.

And today nature took over my idea. In its own way.

Everything happens in a second

Nothing happened. I embroidered it in the pocket of a pair of shorts I found in the trash in Barcelona exactly one year ago. Nothing happened. They weren’t my own words, somebody else said them to me. I only stored them. When you put your hand in that pocket you can feel the words. Nothing happened. I long for those words sometimes.

Late this morning my bus arrived in Amsterdam. Sixteen hours from Wroclaw to my former home. A more human way of travelling than flying. A feeling of being in it together, staring at the moon at the saddest places possible, gas stations next to the highway in the darkest hours of the night. Sharing food and drinks. Sharing stories.

In the belly of the bus two red suitcases with my name on it. A big one I had just collected from a small village in Poland, Sokolowsko, a place I fell in love with a year ago. A place where Krzysztof Kieslowski watched movies as a child, sitting on the roof of the cinema looking through a hole.
I didn’t remember exactly what was in the suitcase. But now I know. It is the oddest collection of things. Golden shoes acquired at an auction in a permaculture garden, the letters LO on the left toe and VE on the right toe, golden spikes on the heels of both of them. Felt nipples made by a Hungarian felt designer I wore during a performance for a festival in Sweden last year. Paper airplanes folded out of the poem "Air mail" by Tomas Tranströmer, I threw hundreds of them in the air on a slow journey through Europe. The script of Kieslowski’s Decalogue which I was reading on the Kieslowski square in Sokolowsko daily last summer, Virginia Woolf’s “A room of ones own”, the Catalan translation of a children’s book a Dutch friend wrote and gave to me. My dead father’s suit, waiting to be embroidered and worn again. A sweater with a damaged worn out heart reading “I love Barcelona”, found on the street there, the gaps in the heart repaired with golden thread. A small plate made by an artist friend with a bird and the words “blue skies heal”. A walking stick I used on two long walks. A pair of shorts that look similar to the ones I posted last year but have yellow cross stitching instead of pink. There is a different memory in that pocket but I don’t remember what it is. And these are just a few of the things in the suitcase.

The other suitcase is smaller. I carried it around for the last 2,5 weeks. First to Amsterdam, then from London to the south of England, back to London and to Wroclaw from there. By train and bus to Sokolowsko and back to Wroclaw. I was supposed to carry it on to be reunited with my colleagues on the border between Slovakia and Hungary where I was a Bridgeguard once and from there to an artist' gathering in a salt factory in Hallein, near Salzburg but the load got too heavy. And I don’t just mean the suitcases. They are just weight in kilos. And besides, the small one is light. Half of it is filled with 250 paper boats. I am not joking.

Too much has happened since last summer. Amazing things. Beautiful people. The number of countries I was in don’t fit on two hands. Residencies and exhibitions and lectures and workshops. Meetings and articles and in the middle of all of that an unplanned long walk that left a lot of traces, of which I cherish the good ones just as much as the bad ones. But I forgot some of the names of people I became friends with. I owe them stories. Memories. Attention. I need to remember their names.

My former apartment in Amsterdam, the place where I am still staying whenever I am in town, is shaking. Literally. The garden next to my garden has disappeared. When I left here two weeks ago it was still there. But the neighbour has died, his cats have gone, the shed is demolished and all the trees and plants are gone. The owner of the house must have been eagerly waiting for him to go. To remove all his traces and turn it into a fancy apartment. Two builders and a big machine are driving long metal piles in the soft Amsterdam soil to build a foundation for an extension to the house.
I make coffee. I heat up some milk. I forget all about it. Another pan burned. Some things never change.

The bird clock on the wall in-between the kitchen and the living room is ticking but the hands don’t move, only the one for the seconds. It is stuck in-between the 32d and 33d second, 11.32. Everything happens in a second.

La grande solitude

 

Old Jewish Cemetery, Wroclaw