“Aqui neste lugar onde tu não estás tudo é descartável.
Como se para fazer uso do mundo precisasse de ti.”

                Pedaço de fim de ano

O tempo do ano que o vento fica mais forte

Onde as folhas caem confortavelmente nos pés das árvores

Onde o banco do parque não fica mais ocupado

Onde seus braços enrolam-na como um cobertor

Digerindo-a com sua proteção

“Writers aren’t people exactly. Or, if they’re any good, they’re a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person. " F. Scott Fitzgerald

“This tremendous world I have inside of me. How to free myself, and this world, without tearing myself to pieces. And rather tear myself to a thousand pieces than be buried with this world within me."

—	Franz Kafka

We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still. We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean. We are ready to set sail for the stars.

“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality.”

—	Shirley Jackson We create because we want to live.

‘Syzygy’

Definition: when three celestial bodies are aligned - ie, the sun, earth and moon.

“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.”

—	Pablo Neruda, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

It seems to me that everything in my life has been born out of a loneliness. I was born because of two lonely people promising each other something that neither wanted. I was born in the middle of a thunderstorm, and the world is an incredibly expansive place. Every conversation I’ve had, every book that I’ve ever read. All of it was to find some place where I could finally rest. Every word I’ve written has a lingering, spreading sense of loneliness. And I am afraid that this feeling will eventually arrest all of my senses. I do not want to be struck by a perpetual sense of loss, because at the moment I feel like I have lost a part of myself. I feel like I am in one of those soapbox cars. I am made to be struck by matchsticks.

I am a master of imaginary conversations. 
The people in my head are often more real 
than people I can touch and see. 
But this kind of madness is allowed. 
It is the only way I can keep living,
by fashioning alternate endings
and shaping new realities. 

She travelled across a desert with the sun on her back, gathering beads of diamond sweat in the seams of her elbows. Slowly, December starts to pull underneath her feet and the world is losing bricks and mortar. No more do curious eyes come to rest on her hands. Sometimes she is glad that she has left civilisation behind. It is the sand in her eyes that engraves itself firmly. The nights are bitter, a game of chance between a pitched canvas tent and an ailing life. This is what she was born to see. The walk would clutch at her thighs and stretch her consciousness. Sand forms fissures in a hungry void, and she is afraid that she might stumble deep into the black. Her life is wilting. But there are still hundreds of steps to take, and only she can take them.

30

Bart Cubbins' art.

When you decide to die, little things begin to happen. You stop looking both ways before you cross the street, you start answering the door without asking who’s there. You don’t hold onto the railing when you go down the escalator, you don’t buckle your seat belt. You play with matches. You smoke, and breathe it in, actually praying it will make a difference. Deciding to die is actually almost nice, in a way. You stop caring. Even if you are not pro-actively looking for ways to kill yourself, you stop looking for ways to survive.

He can’t stop crying, and he won’t get out of bed and feel worth something. Last month was his twelfth birthday. On the night of the sixteenth, he closed his eyes and wished that everything would be happy. His eyes look dead now, as though they have had something taken away from them. I rub my palm against the curve of his back, telling him to stop. I have seen this all before. I have seen the flinching words, the red swelling that has to be explained away the next morning. I have felt thunder underneath the eaves of my home, but yet I do not know what he is thinking. I do not know it, but I can guess. It is like coaxing a deer out of a thicket. I am slow, gentle. I do not say anything harsh, make no sudden moves. His clothes are laid out on the foot of his bed for him. It is as though an explosion has occurred, and he is the victim of a deep silence that has forged itself into him. We walk towards the bathroom, and I help him into the shower. There, at least, his tears can mingle with the running water. There he can cry without being seen. He can be invisible. His sorrows can evaporate. This is my hope.

“I look up at the sky, wondering if I'll catch a glimpse of kindness there, but I don't. All I see are indifferent summer clouds drifting over the Pacific. And they have nothing to say to me. Clouds are always taciturn. I probably shouldn't be looking up at them. What I should be looking at is inside of me. Like staring down into a deep well. Can I see kindness there? No, all I see is my own nature. My own individual, stubborn, uncooperative often self-centered nature that still doubts itself--that, when troubles occur, tries to find something funny, or something nearly funny, about the situation. I've carried this character around like an old suitcase, down a long, dusty path. I'm not carrying it because I like it. The contents are too heavy, and it looks crummy, fraying in spots. I've carried it with me because there was nothing else I was supposed to carry. Still, I guess I have grown attached to it. As you might expect.” 


 Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

“He awoke each morning with the desire to do right, to be a good and meaningful person, to be, as simple as it sounded and as impossible as it actually was, happy. And during the course of each day his heart would descend from his chest into his stomach. By early afternoon he was overcome by the feeling that nothing was right, or nothing was right for him, and by the desire to be alone. By evening he was fulfilled: alone in the magnitude of his grief, alone in his aimless guilt, alone even in his loneliness. I am not sad, he would repeat to himself over and over, I am not sad. As if he might one day convince himself. Or fool himself. Or convince others--the only thing worse than being sad is for others to know that you are sad. I am not sad. I am not sad. Because his life had unlimited potential for happiness, insofar as it was an empty white room. He would fall asleep with his heart at the foot of his bed, like some domesticated animal that was no part of him at all. And each morning he would wake with it again in the cupboard of his rib cage, having become a little heavier, a little weaker, but still pumping. And by the midafternoon he was again overcome with the desire to be somewhere else, someone else, someone else somewhere else. I am not sad.” 


Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated

A Chegada da Caixa de Abelhas, Sylvia Plath

Encomendei esta caixa de madeira
Clara, exata, quase um fardo para carregar.
Eu diria que é um ataúde de um anão ou
De um bebê quadrado
Não fosse o barulho ensurdecedor que dela escapa.

Está trancada, é perigosa.
Tenho de passar a noite com ela e
Não consigo me afastar.
Não tem janelas, não posso ver o que há dentro.
Apenas uma pequena grade e nenhuma saída.

Espio pela grade.
Está escuro, escuro.
Enxame de mãos africanas
Mínimas, encolhidas para exportação,
Negro em negro, escalando com fúria.

Como deixá-las sair?
É o barulho que mais me apavora,
As sílabas ininteligíveis.
São como uma turba romana,
Pequenas, insignificantes como indivíduos, mas meu deus, juntas!

Escuto esse latim furioso.
Não sou um César.
Simplesmente encomendei uma caixa de maníacos.
Podem ser devolvidos.
Podem morrer, não preciso alimentá-los, sou a dona.

Me pergunto se têm fome.
Me pergunto se me esqueceriam
Se eu abrisse as trancas e me afastasse e virasse árvore.
Há laburnos, colunatas louras,
Anáguas de cerejas.

Poderiam imediatamente ignorar-me.
No meu vestido lunar e véu funerário
Não sou uma fonte de mel.
Por que então recorrer a mim?
Amanhã serei Deus, o generoso – vou libertá-los.

A caixa é apenas temporária.

"Things aren't easy, anyhow," she stated.
Obeying an impulse of genuine affection, Henry spoke.
"Promise me, Katharine, that if I can ever help you, you will let me."
She seemed to consider, looking once more into the red of the fire, and decided to refrain from any explanation.
"Yes, I promise that," she said at length, and Henry felt himself gratified by her complete sincerity, and began to tell her now about the coal-mine, in obedience to her love of facts.
They were, indeed, descending the shaft in a small cage, and could hear the picks of the miners, something like the gnawing of rats, in the earth beneath them, when the door was burst open, without any knocking.

Virginia Woolf, Night and Day: Chapter XVI

É essa criatura que pesa na alma, essa coisa perversa com apetite insatisfeito. Corroí-se os nervos e se banha no sangue. Morde as medulas e rói os vacúolos. Dá voltas de raiva e estremesse de amargura. Afunda os dentes serrilhados na angústia até que não haja mais nada. Mais nada. De todos os parasitas, é o mais difícil de se livrar. Apatia, eu te peço, corre para longe de mim. Eu quero sentir novamente.

Existe uma razão para esse sentimento de querer sem fim, um querer que me deixa alcançar e agarrar o horizonte. Deixa os meus ossos vazios e ocos, como um pássaro. Mas pássaros não eram para ser capazes de voar - asas estendidas, gloriosamente, caindo pelo céu do inverno?
Ás vezes, o querer dói de mais, de um jeito profundo e silencioso que não pode ser descrito. Ás vezes o querer é apenas um eco de um sussurro na nuca do seu pescoço, mal notado e depois esquecido (mas esperando, sempre esperando).
Mas o que você pode saber desses fragmentos sem formas? As sentenças e frases e palavras e letras tão nítidos e cuidadosamente arranjados por seu poder ou beleza não revelam nada. Esse sentimento não pode ser descrito pela linguagem - é uma profunda e antiga dor na sua barriga, que não tem nenhuma escolha além de irromper num grito gutural de saudade.

Cerro os olhos e cai morto o mundo inteiro
Ergo as pálpebras e tudo volta a renascer
(Acho que te criei no interior da minha mente)
Saem valsando as estrelas, vermelhas e azuis,
Entra a galope a arbitrária escuridão:
Cerro os olhos e cai morto o mundo inteiro.
Enfeitiçaste-me, em sonhos, para a cama,
Cantaste-me para a loucura; beijaste-me para a insanidade.
(Acho que te criei no interior de minha mente)
Tomba Deus das alturas; abranda-se o fogo do inferno:
Retiram-se os serafins e os homens de Satã:
Cerro os olhos e cai morto o mundo inteiro.
Imaginei que voltarias como prometeste
Envelheço, porém, e esqueço-me do teu nome.
(Acho que te criei no interior de minha mente)
Deveria, em teu lugar, ter amado um falcão
Pelo menos, com a primavera, retornam com estrondo
Cerro os olhos e cai morto o mundo inteiro:
(Acho que te criei no interior de minha mente.)
                                                          Sylvia Plath - Canção de Amor da Jovem Louca