Goodbye Nonino and Violentango

There’s anguish in my stomach…even if the sky is clean, and the volcano is snow-capped. When anguish catches on with me, it climbs up to my ribs. And I have to pay for gas, electricity, there’s nothing left to eat. To dream. At home, there’s dust, books piled up in the corners, spiders, spiderwebs, flying poems. Anguish crawls up to my heart and grows—the books, the papers grow. Dust like an edifice. And I have to pay for rent, water, life. Crawl out of the dust, throw the papers out. And do something urgently.

September 16

“Fuuuucked love…” Lost? Fucked and lost. Is it goodbye or life bursting on top of my head? Is it the sad gesture, the barking of dogs for thirty-two years, disenchantment, bursting on top of my head. It’s the lamp on the wall of the bar, the density of smoke, neurosis, closing doors. Memory. The wind. I need to go outside into the early-morning cold, to howl under the giant rounded moon.

October 4

I woke up in fear, or in loneliness. I woke up in fear and loneliness. I came late to work. I don’t know the others. I’ve seen them every day for four years. I’ll never know them. I don’t know if life is this, a precise space in a precise time, people places and things flying and happening, and nothing else. Other places and other times, other lives.

October 25

The city is dark. Here the sun doesn’t grow, nor the ocean, nor the air. Here the days grow, the weeds, alcohol, papers. Here the streets grow, terror. A red flower in the balcony across the street, a cricket stuck to my ear, and desire in the boulevard.

November 3rd

In the mirror, a body. The dense breasts, the huge scar on my belly, the pubis…the long, thin legs. The dark eyes, the perfection of my hands, sensuousness. Also the conscience of not fitting in anywhere. The despairing continuity of days, insomnia, the storm that I am.

November 21

As if exiting a tunnel, walking in the afternoon, going into the madmen’s coffeehouse. Focusing on a point, not on the wall or on the street, but inside, which haunts you. Then going outside, and walking and walking, enmeshed in delirium. And getting home, and talking to a memory, going through the woods, descending into night, trespassing the horizon.

December 6

They’re in the streets, they walk, they talk to each other, they know each others’ names, each others’ childhoods. I’m also in the street, walking, signalling, but I carry a sign that I can’t see. Only they know what it is.

December 10

Inside me, pigeons flapping their wings, tolling bells, engines, horns, conversations…laughter. The world is coming down to solely sounds, and life, with its images, passes by far away, far away.

December 28

And what am I doing here? At a point amidst the immensity of the universe, twirling, looking, raving. Everything will be consumed, of the woman who thought, of the painter who sang. They’ll build with dead bodies on top of dead bodies, with blue windows and glass cupolas, violet, yellow walls, artificial plants, blinking lights. And maybe someone will look, or sing…

December 29

Are they armors or people? Mannequins or people? Murmurs or people? Very decent ladies or people? What are they? If they don’t let you touch them! If they’re part of the décor or the décor itself, which one can only glance at through glass.

January 1st

It’s dawn. I have a fever. I don’t have anyone but there will be another sky, where the shadows light up the stars, where the glimmers of moving celestial bodies, in their luminous hours and re-encounters. Where the hand, which I need…with fever. And suns. Up, down, up, down, up…the stream of water in the fountain goes. The punk sitting on the bench is looking at me, looking at me. What are you looking at? Hold me! The park is deserted, maybe because of the time and the cold. The pebbles are enchanted coins which I throw into the fountain. Closing my eyes, I wish for an absolute. That man is truth. And tenderness, and freedom, and sky, a lot of sky. The sea underneath.

March 3rd

Drops of water in the fountain. In the air the yellow of the sun. I pull my heart’s leg. “I’m happy, I’m happy, hahaha, I’m so happy.” I climb the fountain as its statue, the orchestra comes to play for me: “Crazy, crazy, crazy!” Now a spring bursts tinkling and they will not bring me down. Hahaha. —Crazy, crazy, crazy. And the scribbles of a crazy man, fabulous cartographies. Equinoxes. And astrolabes, seashells. My heart as luggage. —Happy, I’m happy, very happy, hahaha. Jump, the ship is about to sail. If the sky drips and comes off…let the orchestra come and play. Hahaha. Always to the east, without a never, not for eternity! There.

Today, a brilliant sun, a day beginning in peace. And the female salamander stretches out slowly, and nestles by the male salamander, and thus, in silence, they wonder, if they’ll outlive other amphibians, so many walls, their own platonic love. And it doesn’t matter if the earth, like them, is beating, a trilling comes out of the tree, if with the twist of the head, a new landscape is discovered. Today, they’ll remain lying on their bellies.

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That Desire and Thirst