And the bastard politicians and their calculations. How can you think in the plural if you don’t respect the singular? The problem with politicians is the angle from which they view the world. They look at the world the way God looks at it and then they sin from a lack of power. Because they’re watching us from above while they’re down below. Only by treading the earth can you understand how to walk. And they abandon the all for the individual, forgetting that it’s of the individual that the all is made. One stone out of place is enough for somebody to trip. It’s so simple to live when you think with art inside you. Governing as though writing a poem: that’s what I’m proposing. Governing as though composing a piece of music: that’s what I’m proposing. Make each decision the most beautiful one in the world. And carry it through. It’s when the melancholy arrives that the individual runs the risk of leaving.
Today I’m inclined to give up but at the same time I’m inclined to live for ever. Because there will always be a poem to discover or a melody to explore. A poem is all it takes for being alive to make sense. And an embrace. Oh God, an embrace. Art and embrace: a definition of happiness.
The country burns and there are men and women saving men and women from the utter misery: that’s a more than adequate reason to be worthy of the privilege of being alive.
For each bastard who rises up there must always be two or three heroes to make him bend.
I’ve unlearned from life so many of the things that life gave me.
I’ve unlearned how to love the future – because what’s left of it for me is this soul that is so ready to keep going and this body that is so ready to stretch. What’s the point of there being an after me if I won’t be here to live through it?
I’ve unlearned how to discover what drives younger people, what forces them to be what they are, what they need constantly to be. I don’t know why there is such a thing as envy, as ambition, the sum total of banknotes kept in a safe. I don’t know why there’s such a thing as health if all it’s good for is earning money. What’s the point of youth if we don’t know what the point of youth is?
I’ve unlearned how to understand the people contained in this world. There are people who expend their lives on the lives of others, on the happiness of others while martyring their own, people who don’t grab hold of the so-much that they have and prefer to reach for the so-much that they will never have. There are people who waste themselves on life. What’s the point of having your whole life ahead of you if everything we do makes it turn its back on us?
I’ve unlearned how to disdain the moment – because I’ve already got so few moments left to disdain. The images come and they stay, they stay around here, as though they knew that each of them might be the last, the one I take with me to who knows where but to somewhere that certainly is not here. How many smiles do I have left to see? How many embraces do I have left to hold? How many euphorias do I have left to feel?
I’ve unlearned how to devour time as it rushes past. Now I consume life in mouthfuls, each piece in its proper place. There is an assigned place for each moment, the right space for each precise feeling. I no longer want any of what is fragmentary – and that’s how I feel whole. What’s the point of having everything at once if there’s still an afterwards to fill?
I’ve unlearned how to waste pleasure. Happiness is about avoiding gulping life down in one go, but rather having just a little taste here, a little taste there, setting the bar way up high but never touching the sky. Above the sky there’s nothing but death, and there’s still so much I want to rise to before reaching the absurd summit of the end. How many orgasms are there in each life?
I’ve unlearned from life so many of the things that life gave me.
But what I’ve never unlearned was the size of your skin, the illogical eternity of liking you like this. I did the sums yesterday and there have been more than thirty thousand days when we’ve fallen asleep and woken up together, in the bed where I’m now writing to you and from where I hope to go to you again. Thirty thousand days watching you sleep, knowing the cold or the heat of your body, understanding what was hurting you inside, loving each new wrinkle that appeared. Thirty thousand days of me and you, of this house that one day we said would be ours (what will become of a house that knows us so well when we are no longer here to occupy it?), of the difficulties and the yearnings, of our children running down the hall, of the longing of knowing that we were always going to end up as just us. Thirty thousand days in which everything changed and nothing changed us, of your tears that were so beautiful and so sad, of the few times that life forced us to be parted (and one evening far from you was enough for neither home nor life to be the same). Thirty thousand days, my adorable grouchy old lady. Me and you and the world, and all the old people we once met have already been taken by old age. We are still here, thirty thousand days later, together as ever. Together for ever. Thirty thousand days in which I have unlearned so many things, my love. Except loving you.
There is no longer sun nor your naked body, and the beach where I’m lying is an empty space.
You came alone, your steps resolved to speak to me of life. I knew that you were coming for the goodbye, for the moment that would make all pains seem small. Why do you have to leave for somewhere where I am not? Why is there the possibility of a life of yours that doesn’t include my whole life? You came alone, and in your aloneness when you arrived there was the certainty that you wanted to be alone when you left. How many embraces would you need to know that you are mine?
The light is no longer the same, nor does the sea seem to follow its course, and the beach where I’m lying is an empty space.
You said we needed to carry out the last kiss, to construct the final moment; you said also that it was in our hands to manage to avoid the impossible, the absurd separation that neither you nor I wanted. And you left it to our lips to say the rest. I’m the most beautiful woman in the world when I know you love me, the most sensual body in the world when I know you want me. The hot sand had never seen anything like this. Your body with no clothes and my body soulless even though with all my soul, as we seek to avoid the dissolution of what will bind us for ever. All the kisses rose up and all the hands met. Why does something so eternal have to end?
Already the moon doesn’t look so full nor does the water look so infinite, and the beach where I’m lying is an empty space.
The problem with everything that exists is one day having to stop existing. The certainty of a future ended in an orgasm. We looked at each other for several minutes, the still beach watching us suffer. Once again you were the first to speak. You said ‘I wish we were possible’ and I heard you. You said ‘promise me you love me unconditionally’ and I heard you. You said ‘if you say nothing in the next thirty seconds I’m leaving for good’. Then you looked at your watch and counted along and I heard you. I wanted to say I’d give my life for you not to go, that eternity only exists so that there’s enough time to contain all the time I need you for. But I just heard you. You said ‘time’s up’ and I heard. You said ‘I love you until I have no skin’ and I heard you. You said ‘goodbye’ and I heard you. Why the hell did you demand words when everything in me was saying everything in you?
The night is already less calm and the wind seems so human, and the beach where I’m lying is an empty space.
Far from anything that is land, I am trying, here, to return to the lap of your memories. I know I was one sentence away from being happy. I imagine you might return one night, repenting or in a moment of revelation. But I quickly stop imagining.
The water is no longer as cold and nor do the waves seem so large, and the beach where I’m lying is an empty space.
I needed to find the start of life,
and the greatest charm of your smile was its being mine.
I used to tell you that God inhabits the flesh of
the poem, that the words I wrote
were so far from deserving you, then
I’d grab you har
d and show you that even
love knows how important the body is.
I needed to find the end of the kiss,
and the greatest dream that could exist was your being real.
We met on the corner of orgasm, after
the sweat and the whole discovery of pleasure, and
people knew that when we were united the whole
building needed to know it, and I’ll bet that when
you came you were the diva whom everybody applauded.
I needed to find the science of ecstasy,
and the greatest human genius is having
observed the existence of happiness.
We lived in an amusement park, we recast
the definition of each room, and the kitchen was there
for loving, and sometimes also for cooking, the living room
was there for loving, and sometimes also for living in, the bedroom
was there for loving, and sometimes also for sleeping; everything
that was there for us was there for loving however much it might
also have some other purpose.
I needed to find the logic of the embrace,
and the greatest trick in the world is having invented unity.
At the end of the day I would tell you the inside of what
I had loved in you as I loved you, describe to you each
sensation you offered me, you closed
your eyes and tried to feel what was happening within
me, then it was your turn to tell me how
you moved, in what and when we were ourselves again
we no longer knew if the sensation that thrilled us was ours or
the other’s, and we understood that skin
and bone do not exist to separate us
but merely to protect us.
I needed to find the perfect words to say to you,
and regrettably the best result
I could find was ‘I love you’.
I feel trapped in our home, and
woe betide you if you let me go out.
Summer ends and the world restarts. The streets fill with people in a hurry, thinking about the best way to spend their lives to allow them to earn. At this point I like to understand what drives people, what’s going on in their eyes, what forces them never to give up. I sit at bus stops, in hospital waiting rooms, in cafés more or less full of people, on park benches where lives that are over come together to celebrate the end of the road with a little less pain. And it’s true what happens. A man has just hugged a woman. I don’t know his age nor her age, because their hug only allows a diffuse shadow to be seen. It’s as though they’d managed to disappear into each other, and if that isn’t the best way of loving then I don’t know anything at all. Later a curious child is looking for something behind the plants in the park. He knows he isn’t supposed to, but he does. He moves aside a plant, then a flower, glancing out of the corner of his eye hoping to spare himself from being caught. And he manages it. It’s a ball, a small one but the whole planet to that kid, which makes him happy. And there’s a whole philosophy infused within a boy who, though he knows it’s forbidden, looks for an insignificant ball that is worth everything to him, behind the untouchable flowers in a park. Children are the best life teachers that God has ever created, I believe they even come after adults, they are the evolution of what adults are. If there were a just order in the world that’s what would happen: we would be adults first and then children, starting out by fearing everything that moves because we’re adults and adults are afraid of everything ending because they know that everything ends, and then we’d end up fearless, with no terrors, looking for whatever we fancy wherever we fancy. And if that isn’t the best way of living then I don’t know anything at all. Further up, a couple is arguing about money. All over the world, at this moment, there are couples arguing about money, couples killing each other over money. She seems to be apologising, he seems to be insisting on the uselessness of the purchase. Then she replies, she talks about I don’t know what which cost I don’t know how much, and that’s when I decide to stop paying attention, because I understand that the best aphorism of the day has already come out of it, when the woman said that there’s I don’t know what which cost I don’t know how much. The notes are I don’t know what which are worth I don’t know how much. And if that isn’t the best way to define money then I don’t know anything at all. Night seems to fall and the street, after the worn-out employees and the worn-out people in worn-out jobs, starts to strip itself of anxiety, of agony, the cars are already thinning out, the horns lying down now until the morning of a new day, and all humanity seems to exist again. Men and women are no longer seeking destinations, and walk the pavement, savouring the pavement, through the park, savouring the park. When the day ends and the rushing stops, only the humans are still in the outside part of the world. The rest remain, at home now, in front of their television sets, in the wild search for some manoeuvre that will allow them not to give up. A goal on the football pitch, a kiss on the TV soap, even a death on a cult show. As for me, when humanity returns to the streets, it just keeps providing me with exactly what I’m always looking for. Your hand loving mine, your gaze, here and there, looking for me in search of validation, your head sometimes resting on my shoulder, and the words that never needed any rush to make them immortal: I love you.
Whenever I talk I use the first-person plural. It’s my way of having you with me, as though it were possible to use words to define what words define. An inversion of the natural order of the whole process of life: first you say what you see, then you see what you say you’ve seen. And whenever I see myself I see you with me.
‘It cannot be. It hurts too much.’
‘You’re going.’
‘I’ve got to go. I’ve got to run away. It hurts too much to bear.’
‘What can I do?’
‘Love me. Keep loving me. That is all I ask of you.’
‘Forget about bodies. Forget about touch.’
‘Remember bodies. Remember touch. Believe in the possibility of sometimes everything not even needing everything. Believe in the possibility of just a part perfectly fulfilling the role of the whole.’
‘I’ll be amputated from myself if you go. Tearing you away from me is tearing me away from me. You go and you take me with you. How can I live completely if I don’t even have myself?’
‘Think of it the other way round. Think about how if by going I take you with me, then you’re still with me just like you really want to be. If by going I take you with me, then we will be together for ever. Isn’t that what you want so badly?’
‘Yes. Thank you for making me happy.’
‘I’m going now.’
‘Go. Be happy for ever.’
You went. Whether happy, I don’t know. But you went. And now I understand it was the words, it’s always the words, you and that peerless capacity you have for convincing me of the impossible. You abandoned me and I thanked you. And I was left without you thinking I was with you. And the worst of it is that despite everything you feel like my wife to me even if I have no idea whose wife you are. I imagine you wherever you are carrying me with you, I imagine me wandering in Paris, arm in arm with the most beautiful woman in the city; I imagine you in your village, your whole family at the table, and you saying that we’re happy, the two of us, in this way we have of never being more than always together, then I imagine your mother saying to you once again ‘wise up, girl’, and you replying once again ‘there goes my mother always wishing me the worst’, and finally your father would appear, pacifying as ever, hugging you both and saying secretively so as not to hurt you too much ‘I’m so envious and so sorry for my little girl’, and there we’d be, the four of us, me in you and you in your parents, hugging in an impossible embrace that feels to me like everything; I imagine you everywhere in all the world because I know you’re crazy enough to go everywhere in all the world, but I know you’re not crazy eno
ugh not to take me with you wherever you go. Not least because, as you know, that isn’t up to you.
When people ask my name, I answer ‘we’re Pedro.’
Today I found the Facebook profile of someone who died yesterday,
oh God, the pain,
what is this whole technology crap after all?, a person dies and is still around just the same, as though he were alive, we’re exactly the same and we no longer even exist,
we’re not even a forgetting, if we are strict about it,
mister lawyer died yesterday and today his profile is intact, his health perfect and the same friends as ever, I’d bet it’ll be months before they even discover he’s died, some ironies are so sad they shouldn’t even be called ironies,
nobody touches our most intimate hand,
I can’t bear much of what I feel, I obsessively put myself on the far side,
and his children, and his wife, and his life?, fuck it’s so unbearable having death,
life is a long erasing,
each day we disappear a little, and we take a bit of those who love us, if heaven exists it will have a whole lot of my mother, probably her smile, the way the world opens up when she looks at me, a whole lot of my dad, I’d bet it would be his strange sensitivity, his unbearable egotism, a whole lot of the woman I love, no doubt her skin on mine when I wake up, her perfect lips inside mine, a whole lot of my sister, of my niece, if there isn’t a bit of each of them then heaven doesn’t exist, that’s for sure,
what I cannot be undoes my mouth like a gag,
the problem is the possibility, the existence of options, everything for the sake of making an attempt, the feelings, orgasms, connections, affection, and then the ending of them all,
ending is an insurmountable bullying,
The Day I Found You Page 16