We will truly learn only after life puts us in the shoes of those we hurt.
Let's start with a June afternoon when we returned on foot from a civil wedding. It may be terrible to start a novel with a civil wedding, but what can I do? Not all stories are about loneliness and breakups. Or at least that's what I thought when I wrote the first sentence here 14 years ago. I wrote a sentence and then nothing. The phrase was like this: "A walk in the park, a few pages translated, a watermelon bought for nothing, some macaroni that I will throw away because I have no one to share it with, a soup that boils in the background of Alifantis' guitar, tomorrow , end of the month, rent, next man."
If I hadn't written, I wouldn't have remembered
that afternoon. Not at all. He would have been lost in the dust of other summer afternoons, from the pile of days and nights that make up a man's life. But look, I'm rereading now and suddenly a certain memory comes out of oblivion, with all the bittersweet atmosphere from that time, with all the desires that follow me like those tins tied to the rear bumper of the car, what a happy jingle announcing the departure in the month of honey of some newlyweds.
We are not going anywhere. Maybe we were just getting ready to see each other on our own way, parting for I don't know how many times, hoping it would be the last time. What I don't understand now is why it was so difficult for us. At one point, he told me that he never inspired me to write about him and that was the problem. He saw everywhere the traces of other Mariuses, he never recognized himself in my works. What was there to do? Nothing. You cannot convince a man who always suspects you of bad intentions. He had come with an invisible baggage of doubts and mistrusts and had thrown them in the middle of my room. He wanted me to handle them. Or he's just caressing himself, who knows. Maybe he liked to see me trying to convince him that I love him. But the more I tried, the more I realized that I love him less. Anyone who is bored trying to find love where it doesn't exist. So, we were waiting for the end while walking around other people's weddings.
We sat on a terrace, I told him about people he doesn't know, and he told me about people I don't know, people who had been in our past and were no longer there. Ghosts of the past that we talked about as if we were comparing two films, without judging the composition, the direction, the actors. We were accomplices from running away from a wedding, but now I realize that, in fact, it was just a kind of confirmation that we were running away from ours. I remembered everything now. It was the last friendly conversation, before there was nothing left, before we reserved the right to move to the next level, that of becoming ghosts for each other and maybe telling others about it another time.
We all do this.
Between the first night and the last short summer afternoon - so many dull moments, so many stuck.
This ghost is getting further and further away, in the arid desert of my former relationships.
However, I return to the idea that the beginnings of our love affairs are the only ones worthy of consideration. Here is a discussion between me and Martor:
"You missed me?"
"Not. Yes. Not…"
"Yes or no? Make up your mind.”
"No, I didn't miss it," I reply, "but you know why?" He silently waits for the answer.
"Because you were with me all the time."
His eyes are watering. It's just a moment of waste or abandonment, who knows. But for how long? I ask myself.
"Do you know what I want?" he advanced. He kissed my shoulder, as if he had been doing this for years. It's my fault, that I always walk with bare shoulders. "I wish to take care of you."
My eyes don't get wet. I know that men are not able to take care of anything. Somewhere, under the left rib, the music of the spheres stopped beating long ago.
I don't believe in fairy tales anymore. I know that the reality is this, with macaroni that you have no one to share with and melons bought for nothing.
Even so, the story cannot be stopped. The words came out and rolled right on target. In the heart.
See, he was right. As soon as we parted from that terrace where our last discussion was served (without us knowing it), I turned my back and flirted with someone else, out of habit, not that I needed to. And it's true, on the way to my job from then on, I didn't think about him and the evidence I had to keep giving him, to feed his pride, but about the other one, the one whose eyes lit up when we entered the room, to the one who received my simple existence and enjoyed it. But there are people who enjoy everyone's existence, as you enjoy the lights of fireflies. You get ecstatic one night, two, over 10 years, and you see them, and you enjoy, but nothing more.
So was the Witness.
One day, he will hurt me badly too, because he won't have or I won't let him have another way. And neither does he to me. But I'm ready.
I was born prepared to receive desertion in my chest.
Loneliness has always brought gentleness to my soul. And wisdom. And especially clean thoughts.
To always and always break away from your past, just to sublimate it, without risking yourself against it, just trying to understand yourself through its prism and overcome it, this is the great and only victory over me. And for the first time since I've been in this city, I'm writing relaxed. The night stretches its tentacles over the city, two swallows split the sky, above me, then even higher, announcing a new spring or perhaps my future journey through someone else's life. The lights go out slowly, one by one, at the windows.
The last snow of this year sparkles in the dark and it seems to me that the wounds are also closing forever.
Which is good, because you can't build anything in pain.
Emilia,
O carte minunată și pe care o recomand cu drag.
Raspundehttps://bombitaluivladmusatescu.blogspot.com/2022/09/pana-nu-ni-se-face-dor-zully-mustafa.html
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