eachword-eachday

Wise friend,

I found your email from December 2001; you let me read what you had written to Jonathan.
***
I took a walk in the Central Park; the day was glorious.
You’re always on my mind; however, it’s getting lonely like this, from a distance. I saw two movies – one Australian (“Lantana”) and the other American (“In the Bedroom”).
“Lantana” was about marriages and infidelities – an excellent movie.
“In the Bedroom” was about the lack of communication between a woman and her husband. During the movie, I felt agitated. I felt guilty because of our frequent phone calls of the last few days, and because we didn’t manage to stay cool-ish.

I felt shrewd and tempting evil, instead of letting you think and focus on what is essential. I want to apologise a thousand times.

I have to take control of myself so that you can be at peace. I’ve been thinking how difficult must have been for you to plan everything. All these worries, and complications with your daughter, how would you have the strength for other changes? In the end, you’d collapse. Please take care of yourself. How much more energy do you think that you’ve got? Yes, you have to think about everything we talked about and everything about which we didn’t even consider. My dear, you don’t have unlimited energy, and I feel that you’ve exhausted your reserves. I can’t be next to you and take care of you. I would have loved to wait for you at home, open the door for you with laughter and music, the dinner table ready and to spoil you until this spell would be over.

The reality comes back to us: each one of us returns to the two single bedroom apartments, and of the fact instead of helping. I’m so aware and gully to have become the main reason for the events that you have to go through. Isn’t it too much for you?

I’m not mad, and I see what is acceptable – my heart is insane for you.

With you

Dream, dream, dream, poetry. So beautiful!

Dream, dream, dream, poetry. So beautiful. Too beautiful!

Lies, dream, lies, poetry.
Dream, lies, dream, poetry.
Goodbye!
I’m so hungry that I’m turning around towards reality.
I’m much too romantic to get stuck with dreams: I want what it works.
So I can, in reality, live some of my dreams.
With him. 🙂
————–
The day the toddler girl started toddling, she walked the length of the room. She reached the table, touched it and fell. “Oh oh!”, she said. “Oh oh”! dad said. She smiled, stood up and toddled on.

You were somehow wrong, wrong, somehow wrong!!!! Moreover, both of us will be forever somehow ‘wrong.’

I’ve told you before, and you seem to believe that I know exactly what you think and what goes in your head, that I understand you fully by reading between your words.

What I might do, more as a survival instinct than anything else is not to read between the lines, and instead to ask for explanations of the words and expressions that tend to have a double entendre. Asking makes my answer sound “politically correct.”

Indeed, the charm of it soon thins out. No question that with friends that I seem to meet face to face frequently I end up learning their reactions, facial expressions, hand gestures, I hear the voice modulation, and the emotional patterns. Once I reach a level of comfort, I allow myself to read between the lines. Even then, sooner or later I ‘validate’ my assumptions.

I do that because one of these people might bring up an older discussion that we had had and with that, they tell me their interpretation of that discussion. Not rarely, I’ve felt dumbstruck.

Why? Well, after spending a reasonable amount of time together, I expect some of my friends to know me close to as I know myself. When I hear their take, I suddenly realize that the friend saw in me somebody else, different from who I am, someone I don’t recognize. Sometimes a friend interprets my reaction as emotions I never had as if the friend placed me on a path I never, ever intended to travel.

Ironically, I don’t always challenge that, due to lack of time or due to the tension that would create by trying to redress their take. Many times, I don’t even intend to address it via an email or whatever communication means we might employ.

I have a feeling that you did the same. You read my words mot-à-mot. I’m reviewing the discussion we had at the time, and I’m sure that what I wanted to convey was: “I enjoy receiving your messages and your comments.” It was my response to you stating about yourself that you were a bore. It was a way of my negating what you said.

Indeed, it intrigues me that you were hurt and left with a bitter taste. It is because I didn’t understand what you meant and you expected me to read between the lines.

“Spiritually Enlightened.” What does it mean? Who belongs to this clique or group? Who decides? What does it say about the rest?

I feel unrest.

Two somehow similar tragedies have happened far away on other continents. They weren’t the results of thunderstorms or floods – I think that the word ‘tragedy’ is not accurate enough. They happened because some people planned them and took to action and affected the lives of other people and anybody close to them. They have touched many of us, remote from them. We seek to explain. One person addressed a plea of help for understanding and moving forward to the “spiritually enlightened.”

Who is the “spiritually enlightened” one? The Buddhist? The Christian? The Jew? The Atheist? The demanding Jubu? Maybe the elitist? Who?