Friday, May 11, 2007
The Beginning
It all starts today, the 11th of May 2007.
Why today? What makes today so special?
Nothing, really! It is just another day, as yesterday, as tomorrow. It starts today as it could start any other day.
But it does start today. Today I felt like writing. I feel like writing most of the days, to be quite honest. And it doesn’t really matter how it starts, anyway.
What does matter is how it goes. And maybe I should say how it ends, or will end. Or maybe I shouldn’t. This is a journey, not a mean to achieve this ending or that ending. I want to enjoy the path, for I know I will be wanting to leave and start another one as soon as I get to something that might be called an end.
Some time ago, a long time ago or yesterday, depending on the perspective, I had recently split from a long-term relationship (again, depending on the perspective) and was heartbroken to the point of believing with all my strengths that I could never again love another person. Or maybe I was wrong. You, and you alone, proved me wrong. I wish you would keep on proving me wrong for as long as I should live. But we haven’t reached there yet. We are still at the beginning.
And this was how it began.
I was, as I told you, and as I am, but now for a different person (which is you by the way), heartbroken. I was, as I am, lost! How many meanings does this word was? It doesn’t matter; all the possibilities will most definitely suit me. And so in the middle of all those tears, that pain, that despair (that has been so strong and now seems to be so distant, so far away from the place my feelings come from, so remote in what I call my own life and own self), I found comfort on writing. Knowing this, a friend asked me why wouldn’t I write a blog?
I didn’t want to write one. Not before today, anyway. Maybe it wasn’t the time just then. Maybe I wasn’t ready. Or maybe I just didn’t want to write one because, period. But I did as my friend recommended and went to look for some blogs. One of them caught my. That one I read (I can’t recall for how long) and posted a comment. Was I making a comment to a specific post or to the blog in general, I don’t quite know. To the blog it was, I believe. I will do by best to translate what was then said.
Blog’s name: A infinita ausência
‘The infinite absence’ seems to be a fair translation.
Post’s date: 29th June 2005
Comment’s date: unspecified
Comment’s time: 12.05pm
And so it went…
‘Hi,
When I saw myself in a state quite similar to yours, the only thing appearing to have some meaning to me was to write, to scream to the wind and to the sea till the end of my strength.
When it was heard that I writing to the one I loved, I was told about the blogs and suggested to write one.
I saw the name of your blog, its address, and I opened it.
It was the only blog I read, and I believe I will be having no need to read another. After reading it, I also read the comments. There are those who can’t understand how is it possible to love like that, desperately (maybe the best possible translation, but not quite. It is never quite when we need to translate, I am afraid.). I do, and oh how I do.
I have read, in one of your answers to one of the comments that this blog is yours to her and not for the others. It exists so you can yell the words that are making you choke and live in despair.
And this was exactly the answer I gave when I was encouraged to write a blog. I said no, that my words would never be to anyone else.
You seem to pull strength out of writers’ wise words. Although I also like to read, my strengths have been pulled out from songs. I feel them and I make them my gift.
I have lived and, am living still, awful days. Also as my life lost its meaning. Also can’t I correspond to my responsibilities. Everything reminds me the one I love, and everything makes me feel close.
People say it will go away with time. I don’t believe so.
I was sure when I read your blog.
Time won’t wash it away, will it? This emptiness, this unceasing choking angst, this despair to touch who we can’t reach, this will always be, won’t it?
What can still bring some meaning to my life are the little moments when that smile fulfils me. Yes, we are close. Our closeness, the possibility to give another look to that smile, has been the only thing able to make a smile be draw on my lips, although it is simultaneously a joyful and despaired smile.
I don’t know how can you not see her. I can’t… It is painful when we are together, it is unbearable to wan to touch, to feel, to smell, to taste and won’t be able to, but it is endlessly worse not to see that smile.’
Answer to comment’s date: unspecified
Answer to comment’s time: 8.03pm
‘Thank you for sharing your story with me, and most of all for understanding and agreeing with what I feel and write. Most of the time I feel misunderstood and there are only a few people with whom I can speak freely about this forbidden and insane love… I don’t have your courage to face the smile. I have run away from it, and I still avoid it because I always hopelessly fell down the abyss every time I see it. That smile is too big for a fragile creature as myself. It shreds me, minces me, enthrals me, mesmerizes me, transforms me into the happiest person on the world, and a second later I am nothing but miserable.
Can time heal? It never heals, but it does relieve. I think you are feeling the way I felt 5 years ago, when even the breathed air would hurt with the absence of the loved one. Nothing makes sense. Everything is indifferent to us. Only the presence and the words of the loved one would give us some courage, a bit of light, a piece of sky, only the enough to keep on living, on dreaming, to makes us get out of bed.’
‘Creio que foi o sorriso,
o sorriso foi quem abriu a porta.
Era um sorriso com muita luz
lá dentro, apetecia
entrar nele, tirar a roupa, ficar
nu dentro daquele sorriso.
Correr, navegar, morrer naquele sorriso.’
Eugénio de Andrade
‘I believe it was the smile,
the smile was what opened the door.
It was a smile with much light
inside, it felt to
enter it, take off the cloths, stay
naked inside that smile.
To run, sail, die in that smile.’
Eugénio de Andrade
But all this was long ago, and it is to you I now propose to write.
Life is all but a straight line, and mine had undergone a different route.
What was then grief and despair is now something close to a quite peace of mind. I think most of it is still here, is still in me. But it is fading away. Although I think it will never be forgotten.
It is good to remember the happiness, the good times. Not so great to remember the pain and the suffering. But everything comes in pairs, every coin has a second face. And after all, this is LABRYS.
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