A bag of leftovers

Called by another life, the life in which we were… us. It knocks at our door, timidly, almost hopelessly. In the vain expectation that we might remember who we were. Almost as if it were reluctant to burst our bubble, knowing how much it would hurt. It sees us from the other side. Loving us, pitying us a little. But above all, craving for an impossible reunion over time and space. It looks at us with such intensity. And something within us almost remembers… Almost.

There is a fibre inside that vibrates. We cannot look anywhere else. As if we knew… but we have no memory of it. Our logical mind discards it. But our heart clings to an implausible hope. To something that did exist, maybe. Something that was true, maybe. And we want to press the button so badly. We want to get out of here. With it. With Her. We look at Her, desperately. She stares at us, knowingly. And the next second, she’s gone. No… No… I know you now… I know you… I know you.

She had tried to spare you this moment. Sometimes a tiny drop is enough to trigger a tsunami. You remember everything now. Are you grateful? Was it worth all the pain, knowing? A ridiculous question: it was. It validates all your dreams, all your questions, your uncertainties. Now everything fits… or not. But you can rest at last. Peace. You are here. Now. There is just one thing left to do: to die.

But how do we let go of ourselves? How do we board a ship and simultaneously waive ourselves goodbye from the dock as the ship sails away? Who waives goodbye and who leaves?

It’s sticky, the ego. Fingerprints everywhere. Like a whole life lived in here. Is the house left empty, then? I wonder, should I organise a funeral… maybe not with honours, although he tried… groping his best in the darkness.

But I’m not there yet.

The books on the shelf almost threaten me. They want to fall on me, bury me in their stories, swallow me. I belong to them, I guess. My library is so tall and I am almost insignificant. A lifetime packed in shelves. A lifetime that does not want to leave, let go, die. The books cling to my flesh. They claim my body, my soul. He’s ours, they say. They are right. I was… But you see, I am yours as you are mine. You are part of me now. Let me go. A part of my heart remains within your pages, but it’s time to say good bye. The hero must die and you are part of him. You must die too, assume your physical reality, become just paper and ink and, with time, ashes, memory, legend, nothing. Good bye and thank you. If it weren’t for you , my friends… my dear friends who do not exist but in me.

I am the writer. The one who writes. The vehicle. The hands of the puppet master. The amanuensis. I write because I want to see. I want to see her, the muse, my anima, floating around.

Look into the fire, look into the clouds, and as soon as your presentiments come and the voices in your soul begin to speak, surrender yourself to them and don’t start off by asking whether that suits or pleases your teacher, your father, or some God or other! If you do that, you’ll ruin yourself.

Hermann Hesse, Demian

I wonder if by remembering others, by repeating what they said and making their words become alive again, we are keeping themselves alive. I don’t know if there is life after the death of the biological body or not, no one knows for certain, but I think that by keeping their work alive, by the mere repetition of the words they said, they still live.

I thought about these things as was running in the treadmill, looking at my facemask in the mirror. I could see how it was looking at me, with its eyes, its nose, its mouth. I could see how I was breathing life into it, out of it. I could see how it was looking at me with its neutral expression. Sad and happy at the same time. The little god in the facemask that exists because I exist, that breathes because I breathe. No guilt, no joy, just the glimpse of a question. Can’t you see that there are no answers… that the existence of the question is in itself the answer?

These were disparate fragments that had been excluded from the main text of their mother posts and had not found their way into a new one. When reading them together today, it felt like they had a strange connection. A sort of irrational flow. And also… they help disguise the fact that I didn’t have much new to say.