One way to (not) enter home

I am a book addict. I taught myself a long time ago that when I fall for a book in a bookshop, I go home without buying it and if it stays on my mind long enough I will go and get it. Or order it online. But it is better to go back to the bookshop and hold it in your hands again. Maybe put it back once more but if you return for it again, it will be yours.

There was a book once in the bookshop next to the CCCB, the Center for Contemporary Culture in Barcelona I broused through every time I came there. It was the title that had attracted my attention. And the small drawing underneath it. Modos de (no) entrar a casa. Ways of (not) entering home. A drawing of a house that was a rain cloud, an umbrella holding the house or catching the rain. I wanted to buy it the first time I saw it but I didn’t. And I didn’t all the other times it winked at me. If it would have been in Engish I probably would have but it was a few years ago and my Spanish was not sufficient and I told myself that was a good reason to buy it because I could use it to learn but I also knew there were still a couple of unread Spanish books on my shelves I had bought with the same excuse.

After a while I forgot about the book.

Today was a hot day. I wanted to leave the house. I didn’t want to leave the house. It is often like that. I wanted to be elsewhere but I didn’t want to go. There was a performance by a writer and visual artist I like. I don’t know her work very well but I read her last novel, Brother in Ice, originally written in Catalan and I liked it a lot. Before the book there was a series of exhibitions in which she explored the explorations of people who were obsessed by the poles. The cold and white far south and north. The book is a mix of stories and facts. Science and fiction. But really the opposite of science-fiction. Heading into the other direction. Not out there but deep down. Inside. Into a similar unknown. Dark as a black hole. Or bright as a white one.

I went. This time it was closer to science-fiction. A performance about the possible relationship between a woman and a non-person. About Artificial Intelligence. A woman in a bed and a drone flying over her head, landing next to her. Her soft back almost touching the cold metal of the machine. In the gallery space there were drawings that looked like scientific drawings. Wormholes. A text as a drawing in a circle.

There are tiny black holes
their whole event horizon fits in your hand
If you enter, they tear you apart

There was the documentation of her communication with the gallery owner.

“Asi que a la gente como yo, que nos dedicamos a la minería de metales precioseos del alma, no nos queda otra que meternos en zonas difíciles, tratar con metales pesados y presenciar o vivir ciertas colisiones. E incluso entrar en ese horizonte de sucesos que parece lanzarnos de una dimensión a otra. Deberían existir esas lineas tan claras de los manuales de ciencia que delimitan donde están las fronteras de las cosas y nos dicen su nombre (por ello me gusta tanto el dibujo cientifico, porque hace el mundo tranquilizador y comprensible, aunque las lineas sean tan humanas y ficticias).”

“So for people like me, who are dedicated to mining the precious metals of the soul, there is no choice but to get into difficult areas, deal with heavy metals and witness or experience certain collisions. And even enter that horizon of events that seem to throw us from one dimension to another. Those clears lines that are in science manuals that define where the boundaries of things are and tell us their name should exist (that's why I like scientific drawings so much, because they make the world soothing and understandable, even if the lines are so human and fictional).” *

After the performance I went to get a beer at the entrance of the gallery. And there was the book. Modos de (no) entrar a casa. By Alicia Kopf. Of course. I asked the woman handing out the beers if I could buy it. She told me they had only this one, it was not for sale and as far as she knew, it wasn’t in the shops anymore.

Next day I went to the place where I had seen it first. Nothing. I checked online. Sold out everywhere. Maybe it will be reprinted one day. Or I will find an old one somewhere. Until that day I’ll enjoy longing for something I could have easily had. Or maybe not. “If I would have known …. “ is useless. Politicians misuse it often: “With the knowledge we have now we wouldn’t have …. “

It is often like that in life, timing has to be right. There is nothing you can do about that. You can look back and regret but it is better to look back and smile.

* my own translation in English

High time to build a dragonfly

I read a beautiful text by a friend on Facebook yesterday. We never met. But five years ago she sent me a big envelope. I never replied to it properly but I take it with me to every new home. I took it out today and broused through it. I put on the ring and maybe I will wear it until she is where she belongs. Soon it seems. In the meantime I will write an answer to her questions as if they are my questions. And in a way they are. Her answers are on the other side of the paper. I didn’t read them yet.

It will be time to build the dragonfly soon. It has been waiting for five years.

Here’s Mimi’s text:

my kind of people dance
read write eat walk talk
light candles
but not 50
every night
they know how to tell stories
how to look out of windows
how to spot a poet
they don't do too much for you
& because their occipital bone is soft
they're ok with you not showing up
but keep telling you they want you to
because they want you to
no other motive
my kind of people are different
without needing to be
they do things because they want to
not because they think they have to
they know you are their best audience
they aren't waiting for something
better to come along
they sing & know the words to songs
they know how to whistle but rarely do
they go out walking alone
& when you are out walking alone
you find them again & again
as if you were in orbit
my kind of people
keep inviting you
we'd love to see you
come
they make old family recipes
they eat with their hands
they always say something before they drink
& they look you in the eye
without it having to be a game
they save things
& can show you them
things you sent them long ago
my kind of people
don't bring their phones to dinner
or out walking or to bed
my kind of people aren't rushed
or bathed or newly shod
they all own folding knives
& crossdress without question
& stand close enough to you
without it being awkward
hugging them is never awkward
my kind of people grab the bottle
& pour yours first
they smile real smiles
they don't bounce when they walk
they aren't mesmerized by you
they are curious & glide
as they ask about your art
because they want to know
but objects never trump the moment
the moment is fit for real exchange
goodbye is a big deal with my kind of people
whole faces light up & go out

- mimi allan

Elsewhere

In June you can find me in the Middle of Nothing: http://themiddleofnothing.blogspot.com

this is where the clouds grow

When we had wings

Sometimes the name of things, people, animals, are exactly what you see. I was reminded of that yesterday, when being asked: What is that black bird roaming around under that tree?" by somebody who grew up in a city. I sang the first line of a Beatles song. And today, remembering it, and smiling about it, it reminded me of a friend. She was called Marybird once, I don’t know if she still uses that name but I do when I think about her. Sometimes you don’t see with your eyes. And sometimes you do with different eyes. She once took a photo of me walking through the mountains with a backpack. When I had wings. 

We lived with goats, harvested corn, watched eagles fly, recorded windmills crying, we measured things with our body and lived a story that has never taken flight but traces of it are caught by our cameras.

Remembering good things is a bit like flying.

 

On the edge of the middle of nothing

I failed. I was supposed to be at a beautiful city garden at 12.00 to watch a silent movie with a soundtrack made by a dj and drink vermut afterwards. I had reserved a ticket a long time ago.
I left in time. I skipped the first metro entrance because it involves a long walk through underground tunnels to the tracks. I wanted to take the second one but it was closed. I was redirected to the next one and I just saw the metro drive off but there would be another one in 4 minutes. It wasn’t. But it was there in 6. I would be a little bit late but with some luck not too much to be denied entrance. The metro was crowded. At the next stop more people entered. And more at the next one. Verdaguer. Verdaguer? No. That wasn’t right. I got out just in time. Wrong direction. Where was my mind? A soundtrack started in my head. The Pixies.

Up the stairs, around to the other platform. It was almost 12. I would be very late. Too late. I took the tram back to where I started. Go home? The sun was shining. Maybe there would be an empty table at the square next to the church. Coffee instead of vermut. Watching the real life movie in vivid colours instead of a silent black-and-white one.

There was an empty table. And there were books in my iPad. A good day for Christian Bobin, The Eight Day. “The eighth day is the day that follows the Jewish Sabbath when God rested from creating. It is thus beyond time.” It is a collection of essays, starting with “The eighth day of the week”. It is one of his early texts and all his principal themes are already present: childhood, nature, death, time and timelessness, the role of writing in the life of the writer, and that of the writer as translator and interpreter of what he sees.

“Unable to write, and living out a penitantial time that sheds its hours as a tree sheds leaves, I read. I devour books, and not a word brings succour. It’s a common enough experience: this gulf between weighty knowledge, as embalmed in books or moral laws, and the breezy mood of life as it passes. One can be a mine of learning and spend one’s life in total ignorance of life. It is not the books that are to blame, but the meagreness of our desire, the narrow limits of our dreaming.”
I looked up, just in time to see a small boy walking over from the table next to mine to his neighbours or more specifically: to their big old golden retriever who was lying on the floor. The boy kissed the strangers’ dog on its forehead. His parents waved him back but he refused, got down on his knees and hugged the dog as if he would never let go of him again. His mother tried again in vain so his father walked over to pick him up. He didn’t want to let go of the dog and was about to start crying but when he heard the magic word, the dog was forgotten. Patatas! As yellow as his sweater. The waiter had just put them on the table. And his excitement got even bigger when he discovered that he hadn’t finished his pineapple juice. The sounds he made while drinking it became my new favorite soundtrack. After the patatas and the juice he wanted his father’s glasses and looking through them he laughed as if the whole world had turned into a carnaval. Then the empty chairs had to be dragged to the middle of the square so he could sit next to the fountain. I thought it was a splendid idea. His parents didn’t.

I continued Bobin because I suddenly remembered how it ended. I read the pages too fast to get there quickly: “To a child who asked me, ‘what is beauty?’ - and it could only be a child, for that is the only age that hankers after lightning and frets about what matters - I should answer: beauty is in all things that move away after once brushing your skin. Beauty is in the radical instability - a loss of balance and of voice - that the passing touch of a white wing provokes in us. Beauty is the sum of those things that pass through us, unaware of us, and suddenly intensifying the lightness of being …. I would tell him that a book is like a song, that it’s nothing, that it’s for saying all that can’t be said, and I would cut up an orange for him. We’d carry on walking late into the evening. In the silence we’d discover at last, he and I, the answer to his question. In the luminous vastness of a silence that words caress without disturbing it.”

The sun was still shining but when I got home I heard thunder in the distance, even before the sky turned grey. My plants were cheering. Then the rain started falling down. A message popped up on my Facebook saying that the other thing I had planned to go to, an outdoor music event, was cancelled. So I stayed inside. Everything seemed to be failing today. But beautifully. I made more coffee. Liquid happiness. And even more so when drank from a handcrafted ceramic cup, rough on the outside but after you’ve enjoyed your coffee you see it is smooth and shiny on the inside. Like life itself, from time to time.

While I was wondering if this last line wasn’t too tacky, my computer screen turned black. It wasn’t the first time. A few weeks ago it stopped warning me when it was running out of power and was in coma for two days, just until the moment I was about to screw it open to see if I could revive the battery. I am trying to keep it plugged in now but sometimes I forget. On days like this apparently.

It restarted, the programs reopened, I held my breath but the freshly typed words were still here. Time had moved backwards though, Thursday 1 January 2015, 01.14. It took longer than normal to reconnect to the modem and in the minute or two it lasted, I tried to remember where I had been at that time on the first day of 2015. It wasn’t hard to remember. The first hours of the day I was supposed to be in Barcelona to start a new life in a new year but had failed to leave the Netherlands. On a white plastic chair in a forest staring at the stars, drinking my father’s wodka. But that’s a whole different story and I already told that one here elsewhere. How he failed to live, one of the rare circumstances in which you can’t tell somebody that it is ok to fail and, like Samuel Beckett said, try again, fail again, fail better.

The computer switched back to Sunday May 19th, 16:04, later than I wanted it to be but lingering in  the past sometimes does that, it catapults you further into the future than you would like.

Bobin writes: “We fail our lives. We fail everything. What is strange in fact is that grace still gets to us, when we do all we can to render ourselves unreachable. What is strange is that - thanks to a wait, a look, or a laugh - we sometimes gain access to that eighth day of the week, which neither dawns nor dies in the context of time. It is in the hope of such things that I live, and it is under that light that I write, savouring the beauty of each passing day. Writing is doubtless vain, and there is no guarantee that it prevents the night from coming, none whatsoever, but, after all, it can seem just as vain to love, sing or pick the first periwinkles - pale and tender as though emerging from a long illness - to bring them into the empty room.”

I often have the feeling I am wasting my time writing. But sometimes I don’t know what else to do and then I just write. Today, or actually yesterday or last week, but latest today, I was supposed to finally write a text for my new blog, to explain about “The Middle of Nothing” which is the title I chose for the project I will start next weekend. I can’t get my fingers around it. Which in a way makes sense:

The middle of nothing
Doesn’t exist
Unless you know where the borders are
But you don’t
When you are in the middle of it

Maybe today I have been writing from there. Maybe I failed well.

wor(l)ds

writing inkless words here but painting memories with the natural inks we made at Estudio Nomada yesterday at the same time

(colour samples by Nadine Rauterberg)