knowing that you can always return to my scribbles

and say something about them—about me.

But careful—

not like today,

So clever.

“Rarely do we feel happiness when it is ours. Only after it has passed do we look back and understand—sometimes with astonishment—how happy we really were.”

—Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis

More is in me poetry than prose these days. I disagree with prose more often, though with poetry sometimes too, but you know that poetry disarms us more. I think someone had already said that poetry is something we do not have defences against.

But with you, with your texts…

This is also something I find very pleasant and endearing in women—that they are never interested in apparent problems.

Artists have always been successful with women. The notions of honour, consistency, and logic are often foreign to them. They are intuitive, “unpredictable”—in a word, “effeminate.” The term “effeminate” is, in fact, a compliment. It means that a given person washes frequently, does not like killing people, is capable of compassion, and does not enjoy shouting or pushing forward just to prove their importance.

Women understand the value of human life—not only because they give birth, but also because they raise children and know what torment, responsibility, and effort that entails.

Men’s resentments toward women stem from wounded pride. From this comes contempt and disregard, as a kind of artificial compensation.

It is entirely natural that women do not need to search for translation, catalysts, or substitutes—just as great mystics do not. Women, like mystics, have a direct contact with reality through love.

I do not like masculinity in the majority around us, not like an anthill-type creature like the Chinese, though that kind of collectiveness is, in some sense, also a way out. Unfortunately, many men we know often remind me of the behaviour of certain animals I observed many times as a child, in my grandfather’s yard.

And how you sign yourself at the end of the letters, like here:

he wrote,

happy that he could tap on the keys,

M.

despairing,

pointlessly satisfied in despair,

not entirely defined,

longing for something or someone,

yet at the same time expecting nothing,

a dream

like nothing…

like you,

the absence of you, who knows more than you suspect,

the absence of you, who knows less than you expect,

the absence of you, who understands the unobvious,

the absence of you in being this way and not another,

“whatever you wish”—
your words wrote everything above.

And now, that I left your apartment when you showed me your viola, you received from your grandfather, the only thing I can say is a short quote and a poem:

“The union we experienced in the square was so deep that ordinary conversation now seems… well, simply ordinary.”

—Late Lovers by William Wharton

Funny

by Anna Kamieńska

(Translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Claire Cavanagh)

What’s it like to be a human

the bird asked

I myself don’t know

it’s being held prisoner by your skin

while reaching infinity

being a captive of your scrap of time

while touching eternity

being hopelessly uncertain

and helplessly hopeful

being a needle of frost

and a handful of heat

breathing in the air

and choking wordlessly

it’s being on fire

with a nest made of ashes

eating bread

while filling up on hunger

it’s dying without love

it’s loving through death

That’s funny said the bird

and flew effortlessly up into the air

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I don’t know how many years have passed. I don’t know how many times I’ve persuaded myself not to remember us. Yes, that wet-behind-the-ears version of us. You, in your black sweater and glasses alike, and me, drinking my first Viennese coffee on our trip together; how we visited a shop wit…

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1)

You know I lose myself inside myself. Enough that I don’t know how to write a letter about myself.

After all, supposedly:

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⸻

2)

There is not enough of you.

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— Lewis Carroll

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I’m writing, and behind me, the world exists.

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I’m …

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