perhaps a great silence would interrupt this sadness
I am trying to write, and the more I try to write the more I come up with other things I ought to do. Like, organize my iTunes playlists and sort through my laundry (which I can't do until the end of the week, because I decided not to pay the laundry fee this month, and now all my clothes are dirty) and pretty much anything else that doesn't involve writing. Why is it so hard to come up with words?
It doesn't help that my body is rebelling against my cough; every time I cough, it reverberates through my entire body, and it would be bad enough not being able to breathe without having everything else hurt too. In keeping with still being sick, I slept for most of the day, and had a really weird dream in which I was kidnapped by this random lady who kept on asking me what my favorite Portuguese poem was, and I spent the entire time wracking my brain trying to remember a poem by Neruda (whom I am perfectly well aware wrote in Spanish, I have no idea why this was switched). I even managed to escape for a few minutes while we were in this little mountain cabin, and I spent the time trying to get a wireless signal on her laptop so I could look up the poem online. I do not know.
Now I'm going to go back to writing my ridiculously self-indulgent story about orphans. Sick orphans. Sick and lonely orphans who run away from a workhouse and end up on the streets of Victorian London. And I am not even ashamed. (At least, not very.)
But first, because I spent an entire dream searching for one, have a poem by Neruda:
Keeping Quiet
Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.
This one time upon the earth,
let's not speak any language,
let's stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.
It would be a delicious moment,
without hurry, without locomotives,
all of us would be together
in a sudden uneasiness.
The fishermen in the cold sea
would do no harm to the whales
and the peasant gathering salt
would look at his torn hands.
Those who prepare green wars,
wars of gas, wars of fire,
victories without survivors,
would put on clean clothing
and would walk alongside their brothers
in the shade, without doing a thing.
What I want shouldn't be confused
with final inactivity:
life alone is what matters,
I want nothing to do with death.
If we weren't unanimous
about keeping our lives so much in motion,
if we could do nothing for once,
perhaps a great silence would
interrupt this sadness,
this never understanding ourselves
and threatening ourselves with death,
perhaps the earth is teaching us
when everything seems to be dead
and then everything is alive.
Now I will count to twelve
and you keep quiet and I'll go.
-Translated by Stephen Mitchell
It doesn't help that my body is rebelling against my cough; every time I cough, it reverberates through my entire body, and it would be bad enough not being able to breathe without having everything else hurt too. In keeping with still being sick, I slept for most of the day, and had a really weird dream in which I was kidnapped by this random lady who kept on asking me what my favorite Portuguese poem was, and I spent the entire time wracking my brain trying to remember a poem by Neruda (whom I am perfectly well aware wrote in Spanish, I have no idea why this was switched). I even managed to escape for a few minutes while we were in this little mountain cabin, and I spent the time trying to get a wireless signal on her laptop so I could look up the poem online. I do not know.
Now I'm going to go back to writing my ridiculously self-indulgent story about orphans. Sick orphans. Sick and lonely orphans who run away from a workhouse and end up on the streets of Victorian London. And I am not even ashamed. (At least, not very.)
But first, because I spent an entire dream searching for one, have a poem by Neruda:
Keeping Quiet
Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.
This one time upon the earth,
let's not speak any language,
let's stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.
It would be a delicious moment,
without hurry, without locomotives,
all of us would be together
in a sudden uneasiness.
The fishermen in the cold sea
would do no harm to the whales
and the peasant gathering salt
would look at his torn hands.
Those who prepare green wars,
wars of gas, wars of fire,
victories without survivors,
would put on clean clothing
and would walk alongside their brothers
in the shade, without doing a thing.
What I want shouldn't be confused
with final inactivity:
life alone is what matters,
I want nothing to do with death.
If we weren't unanimous
about keeping our lives so much in motion,
if we could do nothing for once,
perhaps a great silence would
interrupt this sadness,
this never understanding ourselves
and threatening ourselves with death,
perhaps the earth is teaching us
when everything seems to be dead
and then everything is alive.
Now I will count to twelve
and you keep quiet and I'll go.
-Translated by Stephen Mitchell