Να θυμηθώ. Να θυμάμαι.

Να θυμηθώ την χαραμάδα. Εκείνο το κενό μεταξύ ματιών και ψυχής που έφεγγε το μέλλον. Να θυμηθώ την χαραμάδα. Εκεί που ήταν ξημερώματα ακόμη κι ένα αγόρι 18 χρονών έκλαιγε με λυγμούς επειδή δεν είχε κάνει ποτέ του έρωτα και φοβόταν πώς θα ήταν. Και του είχα φιλήσει τα μάτια επειδή βέβαια δεν είχα πρόχειρες τις λέξεις «όλα», «θα πάνε», «καλά» στο στόμα μου. Ίσως επειδή τα χείλια μου ήταν προορισμένα να φιλούν κι όχι να μιλούν. Εξάλλου τα ρήματα απέχουν ένα σύμφωνο διαφορά. Και τα δάκρυά του είχαν σωπάσει στο φιλί. Κι έτσι έμαθε τον έρωτα. Μετά το αλατισμένο φιλί και πριν την ένταση του σώματος.
Να θυμηθώ την χαραμάδα. Εκεί που ήταν βράδυ πολύ, τόσο πολύ που έγινε μαύρος ο κόσμος. Και ένιωσα το αίμα να κυλά - πηχτό, ή ήταν ρευστό, ή ήταν ακίνητο όπως η καρδιά μου? Το αίμα σε διάφορα σημεία του κορμιού μου, μουδιασμένο από τη βία. Ήταν μαύρο βράδυ, αλλά θυμάμαι ακόμη το κόκκινο. Θυμάμαι την χαραμάδα στο νου που με κράτησε ζωντανή. Που επαναλάμβανα «θα τελειώσει, θα τελειώσει» κι όσο πρόσμενα το τέλος, τόσο μεγάλωνε η χαραμάδα. Μέχρι που φώτισε το μαύρο του σκότους κι ας άκουγα κάπου στο βάθος τη φωνή του αμέριμνη κι ανόητη να σιγοτραγουδά όσο έκανε ντους. Το αίμα απλωνόταν παντού με μια κίνησή μου, δεν ήθελε πολύ. Αλλά είχε τελειώσει κι έβλεπα ξανά το άσπρο.
Η χαραμάδα. Εκείνο το μεσοδιάστημα μεταξύ του ’72 και του 2011 που πέρασε στα αλήθεια μια ζωή. Θυμάμαι. Θυμάμαι, ακούς? Κάθε βόλτα των ματιών μου στον κόσμο, κάθε άγγιγμα, κάθε άνθρωπο που πέρασε. Ακούω μέσα μου τις φωνές όσων είναι ακόμη ζωντανοί στο μυαλό μου και δεν έχω καμφθεί, τουλάχιστον όχι θανάσιμα. Πέρα από το φόβο, το αίμα, τον πανικό του μετά; Τι μετά; Η χαραμάδα μου δείχνει πάντα τον τρόπο. Κι όσες φορές δεν την είδα, τόσες κι έσφαλλα.
Να θυμηθώ την χαραμάδα στο μέλλον. Εκεί που τίποτα δεν έχει γραφτεί και όλα μας περιμένουν να τα σχηματίσουμε. -

λίγο τόσο δα θλιμμένη σήμερα.

"Κι εγώ γεμάτος απ' την απουσία σου /
φορτωμένος μες την ανυπομονησία /
των μεγάλων ταξιδιών, περιμένω /
σαν αγκυροβολημένο φορτηγό, μέσα στην Προύσα"

~ Ναζίμ Χικμέτ

"I am human and I need to be loved... just like everybody else does"

Who knows where this line comes from?

Life lesson. Learnt.

Mental note to myself.

August Mood

does anyone hear me screaming? the best is the simplest. that applies to relationships too.
I guess I really am so over people I would and did never love.

There is. A limit. And so much beyond limitations.

Cupid 2001-2011

could not describe it better myself:

The Cocktail Party (1949), T. S. Eliot

It will do you no harm to find yourself ridiculous.
Resign yourself to be the fool you are.


You will find that you survive humiliation
And that's an experience of incalculable value.


That is the worst moment, when you feel you have lost
The desires for all that was most desirable,
Before you are contented with what you can desire;
Before you know what is left to be desired;
And you go on wishing that you could desire
What desire has left behind. But you cannot understand.
How could you understand what it is to feel old?


We die to each other daily.
What we know of other people
Is only our memory of the moments
During which we knew them. And they have changed since then.
To pretend that they and we are the same
Is a useful and convenient social convention
Which must sometimes broken. We must also remember
That at every meeting we are meeting a stranger.


What is hell? Hell is oneself.
Hell is alone, the other figures in it
Merely projections. There is nothing to escape from
And nothing to escape to. One is always alone.


Half the harm that is done in this world
Is due to people who want to feel important.
They don't mean to do harm — but the harm does not interest them.
Or they do not see it, or they justify it
Because they are absorbed in the endless struggle
To think well of themselves.


There are several symptoms
Which must occur together, and to a marked degree,
To qualify a patient for my sanitorium:
And one of them is an honest mind. That is one of the causes of their suffering.


To men of a certain type
The suspicion that they are incapable of loving
Is as disturbing to their self-esteem
As, in cruder men, the fear of impotence.


I should really like to think there's something wrong with me —
Because, if there isn't then there's something wrong,
Or at least, very different from what it seemed to be,
With the world itself — and that's much more frightening!


Everyone's alone — or so it seems to me.
They make noises, and think they are talking to each other;
They make faces, and think they understand each other.
And I'm sure they don't. Is that a delusion?


Can we only love
Something created in our own imaginations?
Are we all in fact unloving and unloveable?
Then one is alone, and if one is alone
Then lover and beloved are equally unreal
And the dreamer is no more real than his dreams.


I shall be left with the inconsolable memory
Of the treasure I went into the forest to find
And never found, and which was not there
And is perhaps not anywhere? But if not anywhere
Why do I feel guilty at not having found it?


Disillusion can become itself an illusion
If we rest in it.


Two people who know they do not understand each other,
Breeding children whom they do not understand
And who will never understand them.


There is another way, if you have the courage.
The first I could describe in familiar terms
Because you have seen it, as we all have seen it,
Illustrated, more or less, in lives of those about us.
The second is unknown, and so requires faith —
The kind of faith that issues from despair.
The destination cannot be described;
You will know very little until you get there;
You will journey blind. But the way leads towards possession
Of what you have sought for in the wrong place.


We must always take risks. That is our destiny.


If we all were judged according to the consequences
Of all our words and deeds, beyond the intention
And beyond our limited understanding
Of ourselves and others, we should all be condemned.


Only by acceptance of the past will you alter its meaning.


Every moment is a fresh beginning.

T. S. Eliot

Lady Lazarus - S. Plath

Sylvia Plath - Lady Lazarus

I have done it again. One year in every ten I manage it---- A sort of walking miracle, my skin Bright as a Nazi lampshade, My right foot A paperweight, My face a featureless, fine Jew linen. Peel off the napkin 0 my enemy. Do I terrify?---- The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth? The sour breath Will vanish in a day. Soon, soon the flesh The grave cave ate will be At home on me And I a smiling woman. I am only thirty. And like the cat I have nine times to die. This is Number Three. What a trash To annihilate each decade. What a million filaments. The peanut-crunching crowd Shoves in to see Them unwrap me hand and foot The big strip tease. Gentlemen, ladies These are my hands My knees. I may be skin and bone, Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman. The first time it happened I was ten. It was an accident. The second time I meant To last it out and not come back at all. I rocked shut As a seashell. They had to call and call And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls. Dying Is an art, like everything else, I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I've a call. It's easy enough to do it in a cell. It's easy enough to do it and stay put. It's the theatrical Comeback in broad day To the same place, the same face, the same brute Amused shout: 'A miracle!' That knocks me out. There is a charge For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge For the hearing of my heart---- It really goes. And there is a charge, a very large charge For a word or a touch Or a bit of blood Or a piece of my hair or my clothes. So, so, Herr Doktor. So, Herr Enemy. I am your opus, I am your valuable, The pure gold baby That melts to a shriek. I turn and burn. Do not think I underestimate your great concern. Ash, ash --- You poke and stir. Flesh, bone, there is nothing there---- A cake of soap, A wedding ring, A gold filling. Herr God, Herr Lucifer Beware Beware. Out of the ash I rise with my red hair And I eat men like air.

What the Thunder Said - T. S. Eliot

What the Thunder Said - T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)


After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and palace and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience

Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
If there were only water amongst the rock
Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit
There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain
There is not even solitude in the mountains
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
From doors of mudcracked houses
If there were water
And no rock
If there were rock
And also water
And water
A spring
A pool among the rock
If there were the sound of water only
Not the cicada
And dry grass singing
But sound of water over a rock
Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
But there is no water

Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
- But who is that on the other side of you?

What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal

A woman drew her long black hair out tight
And fiddled whisper music on those strings
And bats with baby faces in the violet light
Whistled, and beat their wings
And crawled head downward down a blackened wall
And upside down in air were towers
Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.

In this decayed hole among the mountains
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind's home.
It has no windows, and the door swings,
Dry bones can harm no one.
Only a cock stood on the rooftree
Co co rico co co rico
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain

Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves
Waited for rain, while the black clouds
Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
The jungle crouched, humped in silence.
Then spoke the thunder
DA
Datta: what have we given?
My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed
Which is not to be found in our obituaries
Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
In our empty rooms
DA
Dayadhvam: I have heard the key
Turn in the door once and turn once only
We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison
Only at nightfall, aetherial rumours
Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus
DA
Damyata: The boat responded
Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar
The sea was calm, your heart would have responded
Gaily, when invited, beating obedient
To controlling hands

I sat upon the shore
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
Shall I at least set my lands in order?
London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down

Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina
Quando fiam ceu chelidon - O swallow swallow
Le Prince d'Aquitaine a la tour abolie

These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.

Shantih shantih shantih

Donne - A Valediction Forbidding Mourning

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning by John Donne

As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls, to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
The breath goes now, and some say, no:
So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move,
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.
Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears,
Men reckon what it did and meant,
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.
Dull sublunary lovers love
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.
But we by a love, so much refin'd,
That our selves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.
Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.
If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two,
Thy soul the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th' other do.
And though it in the centre sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as it comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must
Like th' other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end, where I begun.

Happy 2011!!!

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