the end massacres me daily, I know it’s stupid, I ought to think about what I’ve got and not about what I cannot have, but in truth if I do think it’s because I believe, let me be struck down by lightning if I’m not going to live for ever,
we accumulate events like we accumulate trash so as to have something that isn’t ourselves to throw away,
mister lawyer,
may he rest in peace, but mostly in commotion, since not having a body is already enough for it to be a drought, right?,
it was his birthday recently, you don’t have to go far down his wall to see it, before that he’d been in the Dominican Republic, even in the Congo, he seemed happy with his wife, everything impeccable and he died,
how do you clean death off the internet?,
programmers need to be taught emotions, and so do I right now, every day so I don’t forget,
what would his final litigation have been?,
make it a poem, make it defy continuity, that’s what a lawyer ought to devote himself to while he’s alive, proving with no possibility of appeal that no man deserves to end, or at least that he should be aware of this, have you ever seen an animal depressed because it’s going to die?,
either immortality or ignorance,
when I die create several Facebook profiles for me, and maintain me bit by bit, or otherwise not at all,
LOL.
I’m writing to you today about the important ifs of life. Hold on to them, and then, when at any moment you feel alarmed, grab hold of them again. You’ll find you never want for anything again. I promise.
If you love with complete security, give up on loving, because, you should know, when you love with complete security you’re not loving in the slightest.
If you weren’t afraid of saying you love, of how you felt when you were exposing the vastest part of yourself, give up on loving, because, you should know, it’s only what makes us afraid that’s worth our being afraid to lose it.
If you didn’t go to sleep every night with an inexplicable desire to wake back up just to be in the arms of the person with whom you’ve fallen asleep, give up on loving, because, you should know, it’s only what makes us fall asleep happy while still wanting to wake up happy that is real love.
If you don’t wake up every day with an inexplicable desire to go back to sleep just so you can fall asleep peacefully beside the person you love, give up on loving, because, you should know, it’s only what makes us wake up happy while still wanting to fall asleep happy that is real love.
If you aren’t lost whenever you are without the person you love, even if it’s a few simple seconds, give up on loving, because, you should know, if you love you’re only in the right place when you’re in the same place as the person you love.
If you aren’t stupidly happy just to see the person you love happy, give up on loving, because, you should know, happiness when you love only exists as a pair, and when one of the two is happy without the other being happy it’s because both are unhappy as long as they aren’t both happy.
If you can’t imagine yourself growing into a little old lady alongside the little old man who is the person you love and if this isn’t an image that shivers you with happiness from the tips of your toes to the end of your hair, give up on loving, because, you should know, when you don’t understand that growing old is cool because it offers you the possibility of loving the person you love until the end of your days then probably you don’t really love at all.
If as you read all these words I have written for you, you don’t fancy coming with me round behind the science building and embracing me more tightly than you’ve ever embraced anyone before, give up on loving, because, you should know, I decided a long while back, when I saw you walk into psychology class for the first time, that you were love, and if there weren’t you then it had better be just me. After all, better to spend my life just dreaming of being yours than spend my life just pretending to be someone else’s.
With infinite love,
Pedro, from 10J (the kid who sits next to you in Portuguese class)
It’s pain that tightens the knots. The rest tightens little bows, at most.
It’s necessary to go deep into what already exists, to be able to bear what is yet to come. There’s always another layer of pain to experience – and only someone solid in every layer right down to this one can bear the impact of what will come then.
Living with the reverse of pain means not putting up with the reverses of life.
Abhorring pain without ever stopping facing up to it as something natural: that’s the secret to healthy survival.
Pain happens. There’s nothing to be done. Pain happens. And it’s unpredictable. Nobody can predict pain – at least not the way pain can hurt. Being ready for pain means knowing all its steps, measuring its every movement. And attacking it without ever stopping accepting it.
To deny the existence of pain is to deny the existence of life.
What binds us is what has hurt us. Nothing particularly serious. But what binds us is what has hurt us. We found ourselves to be capable, when the pain arrives, of joining together without yielding to the easy temptation of each suffering just for himself. Loving isn’t every man for himself; loving is everyone for one another. We save ourselves whenever there are tears to be shed. We don’t acquiesce, we don’t accept, resigned. But we save ourselves. If you hurt I’ll do it, I’ll take on a part of your hurt, share a part of me that does not hurt. And that’s how we regain our balance. You with half of what doesn’t hurt in me and me with half of what hurts in you. You suffer half of what you could suffer and I suffer half of what you could suffer. I don’t even think about the equation I’m solving. I think only that I’m extracting half of your pain. And that’s enough for the half of the pain that hurts in me, for even that, to be happy. And then the opposite happens. When I’m hurting, you come and share out what wants to kill me. And so we go on, we two, at the mercy of the tide, but always trying, all the time, to reverse the rushing of the waves.
A relationship without pain is not a relationship; it’s a performance.
There’s so little to savour beyond what puts us here, unique while still being so alike. We are made of the weight of the desire to live. We look at life the way a child looks at a toy. We want to know what it does, what it’s worth, how much fun it can offer us. And we have fun. Sometimes, of course, the toy does hurt us. A wheel comes away and needs to be replaced, the leg of a doll pops out and she needs to go to the doll hospital. That’s when we become the most responsible adults in the world. We accept the defects and go in search of solutions for them. We love each other like children mad about toys and we save ourselves like superhero adults. We are half irresponsibility and half saviours of the planet. It’s our way of saying that we are loved.
I love you irrationally. And with all good reason.
Use deodorant.
Say at least all the swear words you feel like saying.
Clean your teeth.
Do something that scares you.
Tell jokes.
Don’t choose what’s easy just because you think it’ll be easy.
Don’t eat with your mouth open.
Don’t do what’s difficult just because you think it’ll be difficult.
Love without looking at whom.
Eat chocolates.
Love only when you feel somebody.
Kiss with your tongue.
Dream about something impossible.
Be proud of every wrinkle.
Experiment with new sexual positions.
Laugh at yourself.
Dream about something possible.
Laugh at others.
Imagine your worst enemy sitting on the lavatory.
Laugh at everything.
Never think you’re playing too much.
Cry.
Skip rope.
Take someone you love to a motel.
Throw yourself in the sea whenever you can.
> Love the sun.
Hug.
Love the rain.
Forgive whoever you love.
Love the wind.
Forgive whoever you don’t love.
Have a bath every day.
Never give up on an orgasm.
Share.
Help.
Look.
Make a point of touching with your skin.
Smile at whoever wishes you well.
Hug tight.
Smile at whoever wishes you harm.
Don’t be afraid of giving up.
Be unique.
Don’t be afraid of not giving up.
Respect the majority.
Be happy with everything you’re scared of.
Crap on the majority.
Give all that you have to all those you love.
Go the opposite way just because you feel like it.
Use moisturiser.
Do what you really want to do.
Marry for love.
Laugh for ever.
Live for love.
Be a risk-taker.
Be a rule-breaker.
Be pornographic.
Get addicted to adrenaline.
Go on.
Keep moving.
Wash your sex regularly.
Do all of the above in the name of pleasure.
Love regularly with your sex.
Insist on being alive.
Come regularly.
Keep on with this list.
Every day.
All the time.
Right now.
The skin was there to persuade me you existed, and when
I touched you I also found proof of the existence of God.
Missing you exists to show me how small death is, because
after losing you only the certainty of extinction gives me rest,
and nothing
hurts more than looking at life and not finding you there.
I used to like defining immortality as if it weren’t
your presence in my mortality, I spend the day
attempting alternative plans, manoeuvres for entertaining my
pain, and at night when I lie down I swear I try to avoid
your smell of everything on the empty sheets.
Life cannot happen if you’ve stopped happening to me, nothing
happens
but the breathing, the obligation, the steps I don’t even need
to want to be able to take, because even bad things
stopped having a raison d’être because I couldn’t
digest them beside you, and there’s nobody to tell I love you
like a
madman if you weren’t here for me to love you like a madman.
The greatest madness is your being my sanity, needing
you to not fall into the dysfunctional me, into
the inability to bear what with you was mere life.
The secret of love is transforming it into mere life, making it
greater life, and even an ordinary day is unforgettable
when it’s done with you.
Either you come back to me or I’ll kill myself for ever, not
with weapons, but with poison or sterile suicides, just
like this, each day, living our death,
slowly, as though all the meaning of life
were going from me to you.
If you come back
bring me with you.
How many lives are there in your life?
‘When I die trample me to death,’ you used to say, that smile hidden behind your lips, you rascal, whenever anyone said to you that one day they’d have to go, the way everybody has to go. ‘Being alive consists of not dying,’ you’d add, ‘and actually I’ve been doing pretty well on this task of being immortal,’ and your whole gaze would bring me that detachment that I never knew how to have and you never knew how not to. Why is it that death only kills those who don’t fear it?
I spend my life trying to forget you and that’s why I remember you constantly.
Your place untouched on the sofa, your scent spread everywhere, so long afterwards (you’ve already been gone a year and you still haven’t said anything?) all over the house. You’re the person to whom I comment on the news (there’s a government now that’s even worse than the last one, did you know that? People are fed up but they don’t show that they’re fed up, they just wander on, talking but not moving), you’re the person with whom I watch those TV series that so often, into the early hours, we used to share. Me in my place and you in yours, the way it had to be. I swear when I close my eyes I can feel your hands in my hair (your skin; nobody ends up with skin like that when they’re dead), and all the tears make sense after having loved so powerfully.
I devote my life to your death the way I used to devote it to your life.
And I’m not unhappy, my love. Disabuse yourself of that, I’m still the same old woman, your woman, with the same old imperfections and the same old desire to see you happy. I know you no longer have a body, I know we no longer have our touch, but every day I still get up and go to bed in order to see you. Before you went I used to open my eyes and see you; now I close my eyes and see you. And maybe that’s what dying is, maybe dying is no more than an uncontrollable desire to spend more time with your eyes closed than with your eyes open.
I fall asleep to find you and I am happy.
The doctors are concerned, they talk to me about grieving, my family (your children are beautiful; Carlos has gone to college to do engineering, like his dad; Joana is the best student in the class and she’s already started dating – he seems like a good lad; and everyone loves you all the way up to death; and everyone loves you in death) ask me to detach myself from you, to abandon this house where we are happy and seek out other houses, other bodies, other lives. Poor wretches, they don’t know what they’re talking about. They don’t know that when you love the way we love death isn’t much, it’s a longer journey, that’s all. You’re waiting for me at the house that will be our last just as I devote this house to you until the last.
There’s always a ridiculous happiness when I remember you.
‘When I die don’t forget to go in search of what you never found because of me,’ you said, your white deathbed, the doctors with tears in their eyes (only you could make doctors cry, you and that sense of humour you had to your last breath; and that smile behind your lips, so naughty, so lovely it hurts), ‘and please, no fucking crying at the funeral; build a bonfire around the coffin and dance till sunrise’, you asked, the whole bedroom (it was number 23 on that floor of the building where my ground fell away beneath me) with insides wounded, and I no longer know whether you said anything else before your eyes closed far from me. The best tribute we paid you was to get the best DJ in the country to your funeral rave. There was dancing, happiness and pain, so much pain beneath the music, and no sound could silence your goodbye.
How many songs do I need to hear to stop hearing you in me?
Now it’s just the two of us again. I am living you in search of forgetting and that’s how all of time is scarce and at the same time useless. When you want me to go I know you’ll call me. Until then I’ll close my eyes whenever I want you. Like now, right now, I want you.
See you soon.
One day, perhaps, I might want to be free, but today I’d rather be yours. To wake up clinging to your skin as though there could be no alternative, kissing each of your lips like a wished-for punishment. To remain imprisoned in this little corner of freedom that we call bed sheets.
One day, perhaps, I might want to be perfect, but today I’d rather be fallible. Failing when you ask me to touch you without being precise or when you demand that I hug you without squeezing you to tears. And subsisting, inadequate, in the all-powerful moment of loving you.
One day, perhaps, I might want to be normal, but today I’d rather be strange. Trying out fear the way you try on a pair of shoes, walking down roads nobo
dy wanted to tar, and knowing that if people look at me with amazement it’s only, quite simply, because I am amazing. And in this way insisting, stubborn and happy, on the possibility of inventing impossibles that are as yet untried.
One day, perhaps, I might want to be a judge, but today I’d rather be the person being judged. Doing things that somebody might criticise, things that might never even be appreciated, or simply things that serve no purpose and which I do just because. And being illogically happy, being so giddy that all I need is to create to make me feel up to being alive.
One day, perhaps, I might want to be immortal, but today I’d rather be finite. Believing in the scarcity of life, in the limited world of the skin, even in the counting by sighs of the time when I’ve really known how to be alive. And remaining entire at the gates of death, wretched and euphoric, every day, always just about to die and always stupidly alive.
One day, perhaps, I might want to be independent, but today I’d rather be belonging. Belonging in your lap so that I have existence, at the moment when you look at me for me to exist as a look-at-able object, or to accept once and for all that it’s inside your body that I discover the existence of mine. And knowing that while for other people there’s a God, for me there’s you to make my faith in God endure.
One day, perhaps, I might want to end this piece of writing, but today I’d rather leave it as it is, incomplete and candid, waiting for you or someone (or simply life) to come along and find the concluding paragraph, the one that makes everyone go Aaah. And that’s how I go, without connecting the words, to your open body once again.
One day, perhaps. But not today.
The people I love.
The people I love have defects, their feet might even smell, they believe in eternal life, and they know that heaven is the moment when we learn to love. They don’t hesitate to try when the easiest thing would be to say ‘I don’t know’ and ‘I can’t’, they aren’t afraid of criticism whenever they’re exposing themselves by doing whatever they want to do. And they carry on, proudly, failing like lunatics and forever lunatics when they stop failing.
The Day I Found You Page 17