I feel a great responsibility writing to you,
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
