Embarassment

my gum
hits it--
--my skin twitters,
and I recall how stupid I was in the first place
like to suck too much on the wooden popsicle stick
-the feeling is the same-
but now's aftermath includes external punishment
unintentional painful blushes
because blood rushes twice in my face,
on my behalf, on yours as well.

So I look comfort on windoshopsthatIhavenevercared
and the potential denying you of something
that you reassure me you deserve by right

and I comment on teapots
while you pretend what I did never happened
and I point at stationary with hidden watery eyes
while you agree that pens are better black.

____ March 2004

THE HALF-WAY HOUSE
____ March 2004

1.
Dearest:
And finally, I took a decision, not the most sensible one but it's the only choice I truly have. Before I continue, I wanted to show you the cards that Aine read for me a couple of months ago when I asked her about you, she made a celtic cross? You know I don't really understand this, it was always Aine and you the ones who were involved in this things that I at most find interesting:
1.-Interest: 2 of cups // 2.- Obstacles: Ace of cups // 3.- Knight of cups //4.- Thoughts and Feelings: The Sun // 5.-Past: 6 of cups // 6.- Immediate Future: 6 of swords // 7.- Attitude towards the question: Queen of swords // 8.-Influence of other people: 5 of swords // 9.- Hopes and Fears: Ace of Disks// 10.- Final Result: 9 of disks.

THE HALF-WAY HOUSE

2.
So I don remember what it meant exactly but I do remember that what she said made perfect sense in that moment and I wrote down the spread because I thougth that you would be able to make sense out it. Blunt, it was very blunt.
And now that we have seen that play together the other thursday (Pinter's my favourite) I think this is my line to disappear. I don't know for how long, you know things are difficult for me to cope with and it takes me time so I decided I would step for as many months as it shall be necessary.
As I have already told you (in the pub, while playing pool), this is not easy for me and is not doing me any good and the truth is that the first time we talked about it (November?) I used a lot of understatements from which I apologise, and by attraction what I really meant was that I'm head over feet

THE HALF-WAY HOUSE

3.
and the thing is that with you everything ocurred backwards. Generally I don't made friends with people I fall in love with and I don't fall in love with friends. But your case was different and when I think about it, it seems nothing but logical that I ended up in love with you. You became very important in no time, you did not move from my side when I was going through it and I was fragile then and you helped me making me constant company

THE HALF-WAY HOUSE

4.
and I noticed that you did it with honest and real worry. Sometimes, when I think in those days I'm sorry that you met me when my mind was at its weakest point and I think "It would've been so much fair if you had met me sane" but then again, I would not be sane if it weren't for your help, your company and love. Believe me when I say that there is a big possibility that I owe you my life.

THE HALF-WAY HOUSE

5.
So, after all what you have done for me, it is not only understandable but it is only fair that I fell in love with you. And while I'm writing this letter and exchanging lyrics with you by e-mail I feel sad that I shall not see you anymore in a long time. I will miss you horribly because I love you as a friend, because you make me a little bit happy and because I know you love me too.

THE HALF-WAY HOUSE

6.
But I lost this battle of willpower and I cannot anymore hold this feeling of sickness that feel when you don't correspond me, when I think of the chance that you are with someone else and it is not fair for you that I become and obstacle for you and it is not fair for me to go through this pain, I didn't choose to fall in love with you after all but that doesn't make that I stop feeling that way towards you.
And so I disappear, writing on napkins with crummy eyes, in love and heartbroken.

THE HALF-WAY HOUSE

7.
I'll keep on loving you, but I need to start loving you without feeling like shit about it and not being in love with you anymore. I promise I'll do my best, I truly love you after all. Time to wave goodbye now.
I'll miss you, I love you and I will never ask for forgiveness for doing so again.
Please, accept this hug.
Tristram.

Before Twelfh Night...

...I had not admitted yet that something inevitably broke when you stayed and I did not and the being that you did not care about the pieces nor the object before it broke and now rather that picking up and sweaping the shattered glass we have rather ignored completely the existence of the vase -because, because a vase is a lame object after all? - but I'm cutting the skin of my feet and I certainly do not like bleeding and you certainly do not like stains on the carpet but I blamed you when it was my fault and I blamed myself when it was yours so Laurent had to die, he had to die because you would not and I do not desire to go before you do, so Laurent was the unfair, not sufficient, unproporciate scape goat that stands for (_________) it's funny how the previous one was for you as well even though it was for her too and so many months before who would have thought that Amsterdam was that pub really where I do not remember if I drank something or not
I admit it now, it broke, and it's been a month or two since Ash Wednesday and a week or two since I decided to erase the grey cross from my forehead, it should have never been there, because I am not sorry, I hate that it had to break but there's no more regret than the one I feel for even being sorry about the whole thing.

(el poema que no encajaba en el poemario, ni tuyo ni mío)

when my arms freeze
and glue to my torso
you've got an idea what this
is all about
in a place of intentional bad light
I can only fake my eyes' movement
and pretend
that I don't know about
the memories
and
the time that your saliva was once on my face
just by my lips
my fingers just by yours
the time I was frozen falsely

there are chances somewhere else, someone else.

Birthday (esto va al principio pero no inmediatamente después del principio)

• AROUND MY THROAT AND AND...

- I think you should speak more

-hmm?

-I think you should talk more often, you should speak more

-Maybe I should

-You don't say enough...

-... there is something eeriely tranquilising in the up-side down Hanged Man, he floats while he's dancing, he's not hanged anymore

__________.______________.___________

"Happy Birthday," he said and handed a wrapped thin rectangle-shaped item to Andrew who smiled guessing already the content although it did not count really as guessing when achieved due to repetition.

-"Several Perceptions"

- Yeah, I thought you might like it

-Sometime I wish I had a book in my library without you name writen in the first page

-Books in Norway are in Norwegian

-They don't have books in English in Norway?

-They do, but I bought that one for me first

-Is it good?

-Yes, someone sets a ferret free from the zoo at some point

-Oh..... is that why you bought it?

-Mostly

-Sounds good, I'll read it. This is awkard.

- More people coming?

-Yes

-Even more awkard to me then.

-Laurent and Lou are coming.

-We'll drink until we forget that I wasn't here for time enough to create unconfortable silences

-I like them

-Maybe they are not

-What?

-Nothing

-...

-...

-...

-...

He was sure about Tristram's thoughts. He looked at him, he thought he could pierce through Tristram's wall of immutability. He studied all the calculated gestures, every glance controlled, Tristram and his subconcious kinetic appriopiateness, his re-readings of On the Road every time he was in a long train journey and The Waves read three times since he was fifteen when he would re-read when he turned in a multiple of 5. He was the same, Tristram was obviously feeling the unsettling sensation of his return numbness. He was afraid, the attempts of smiling deceive him thought Andrew. After studying him quietly he was ready to predict. He will rub his knees with his palms, he will stop when Andrew looks at his movement, the he will sip his cup of tea as not to talk, he will not sip, he will fake it, he will not want the tea to be finished, he will need to sip their silence dry. He will now ask something trivial. No. He will now bring a memory so they can laugh and forget the abyss Tristram created by imagining its existence

-Remember when you fell in

-The lagoon?

-Yes.

-...

-...

Now, he will say too happily, "That's the door, someone's knocking door" and smile honestly. Tristram, he created the unconfortable feeling thougth Andrew.

Al Aeropuerto

-“Lo voy a solucionar,” le dijo a su hijo. Sabía que su padre no lo iba a hacer principalmente porque no podía, no había forma de solucionarlo. Le creyó de todas formas, siempre confiaba en él sin importar qué y es que parecía tan lógico todo, podía entender lo que estaba diciendo completamente. Sabía que su padre no podía arreglarlo pero no podía no sentirse aliviado después de escuchar su afirmación.
Quería apoyar la cabeza en la ventana y sacarse el cinturón de seguridad pero no lo hizo, estaba seguro que él lo iba a encontrar extraño y le preguntaría por qué estaba apoyando la cabeza en la ventana y la respuesta “porque tengo ganas” no sería satisfactoria. Aunque realmente nunca necesitaban hablar sintió la necesidad de empezar una conversación trivial ¿Quizás sobre el clima como dicen que hacen los ingleses? Afuera estaba nevando.

- “¿Son los Rolling Stones?”
- “Hmm, no sé, parece”
- “¿No era esta canción la de ese programa de la guerra de Vietnam? ¿Cómo se llamaba?”
- “Ah! Sí, ‘Misión del Deber’ aunque

Debería haberse llamado…

debería haberse llamado ‘El Llamado del Deber,’ ‘Call of Duty’”

No sabía mucho sobre los 60’s y 70’s como le hubiese gustado que él supiera, pensó que de cierta forma a él le habían robado su adolescencia, que no había vivido en ese tiempo realmente.
Habían razones para confiar en él, todas esas historias del “Antartic Dog” cuando se iba por tres meses y arreglaba tractores de nieve, desaprobaba como los otros atornillaban piezas de metal en un ala de algún avión ruso y mandaba a todo el mundo a la mierda con ingenio, eficiencia y rudeza, Dorian Gray, MacGyver y ¿Clyde? El no era tan rudo.

- “A veces no nos parecemos”
- “¿Qué?”
- “Nada, que, a veces no nos parecemos tanto”
- Ah, no
- ¿Cuando no estamos juntos quizás?
- Puede que no…
- …
- Ya hablé con la gente que tenía que hablar y con el abogado y está todo bien…
- ..bien encaminado… que bueno, que bueno que se estén solucionando las cosas.

Miró por la ventana de nuevo, quería hablar con él, ya habían hablado de la radio y de ese capítulo de “Conquest” donde mostraban como las herramientas de cultivo de los campesinos medievales eran armas efectivas contra un caballero. Abrió la ventana y dejó que entrara el frío y un poco de nieve, quizás sacar la cara, sólo se asomó, y no lloró.

(Attempt)

(Este creo que sera el comienzo del cuento que llevo tratando de escribir desde el anio pasado y ya no sera 50/50 ficcion realidad, creo que se pondra mas y mas ficticio, escribo en ingles as a defamiliarisation process, necesito flitros y me siento comodo usando el traducir del ingles al espanol como filtro)



His first suicidal thought came after an idea hit him like a rotating red brick on his forehead making his neck bend backwards. With his fists tightly clutched in his brown worn out coat while looking at the snow spotted hills he listened to the announcement in Norwegian that possibly said something like "the train from Bodø will arrive in a few minutes to take you the hell out from Fauske," and right there he realised that not once he had stopped to think about anything. The Train from Bodø was coming and he had nothing but maps, diagrams, future conversation outlines and floating faces in his head. On that bench on that train station in the middle of nowhere he would end up his life and he would remain there as a memorial of 2007, the year when a young amateur backpacker realised there was nothing to think about. It would be constantly shit on by pigeons, vandalised by bored youths and people would take pictures by it with innocent vulgar visual innuendos.

He Looked around, the hills still had some snow and the wind kept constantly blowing making his sunburnt face ache.

"I'm so self-indulgent that I make myself sick" he thought.

He finally got on the train. He felt relief, not only because we would be warm for the next 17 hours on the train to Oslo. In a way he was happy he was going back home, he really tried to block this feeling, for ages he had tried to leave Scotland. He remembered his longs conversations with Andrew where he would listen to him patiently, it was alway the same, andrew thought ardently that Aberdeen was a trap, that its soil was knitting slowly and labouriously their feet to the ground. Andrew was too full of conviction and he moved his hands way to frantically, Tristram did not want to agree with him, not publicly, not aloud, not too comitted. He wanted to stoic and work his way out of Scotland quietly, he would nod at Andrew's statements and enquire "And then? What happens after you leave Scotland?" Andrew would sip his wine first maybe as to have more time to answer and would finally reply "Then I start living." The desperate cliche for an answer, Oh! there was going all credibility sinking in a pond of childish rebelious attitudes.

Tristram wouldn't say anything, Andrew had humiliated himself enough, or maybe he didn't, he wouldn't let Tristram's sourness to mess up with what he wanted, moreover, Andrew knew they both shared this longing.

For three months he had been rambling in Scandinavia. One day he noticed he had enough money to leave somewhere and he chose the remoteness that was closer and he fled to cease his longing. When he arrived in Helsinki he decided he wouln't have a future plan until one popped up. He considered joining a Sami community, becoming a bartender in Stockholm or trying to find his way on the small ancient Cod fishing business in any of the islands in Lofoten. He wasn't truly convinced by any and he was running out of money.

On the train while crossing the snowy semi flooded moors where he thought the Arctic Circle was he felt that a sensation of self-sabotage was hauting him, he stared bluntly at the shoes of the man across, something in his shoes suggested fjords. He eagerly wanted to stop thinking that he was unvoluntarily sabotaging his plans of leaving Scotland. He thought of what he had managed to do. He thought of the strings he cut to free himself from Aberdeen. He quit his job, blatantly ignored his family wishes and he willingly got to not to miss his friends. Now, the next 50 hours were carefully scheduled like cut patterns on heart surgery.
In 17 hours he would be in Oslo in the early morning, in the afternoon he would fly to Glasgow, spend the night there and take a morning train to Aberdeen.
There were duties waiting for him in Aberdeen, Lucien's existence seemed to be getting more and more vague and Andrew seemed to be going mad. He thought that if he really tried he might make a difference in his friends' life for the very first time. For now, he was just crossing rocky hills crammed with pines.

"There is nothing wrong with a purposeless life," Lucien thought "for we live as if travelling on thunder, and that's a bless, and there is no time for stopping to finnish things since that would get us off the speed of life