Two worlds, me and you

Posted on by Rob Moscaliuc

She said to me, would you like that, would you like to be like all the others, would you like to have that? I thought, my love, I haven’t been blessed like you did, with beauty and looks, and all the rest, I haven’t been blessed with an exceptional ear for the music that sets the world into rhythm, I haven’t been blessed with the hand of a genius writer. She said you still don’t know what you have. You’ll probably realize it later. I knew she said that because somehow she felt the growing distance between us. It was like saying that I will surely realize it later but she won’t be around to see that. And she wasn’t around. I knew she won’t be. And then we said goodbye because there was somebody else waiting for her at the entrance. She said we’ll keep in touch, and we did, yet I was the only one trying to reach her. Anyways, she was too good to be true. She found loving arms somewhere else, and then somewhere else, and she never came back. She once told me she will always love me. Maybe she still loves me. She disappeared, just like that, to wake up in another man’s warm bed. Why are beds warm? Today my bed is cold. The world is filled with cold beds, one sided beds, undisturbed on the other side, huge windows and closed doors. Today my bed resembles my cold, one-sided heart.

We haven’t been blessed, my love, not like that. We have been blessed with fear.

Have you met him before? Have you seen him before? Father was furious now. No, I said, I had not seen him before, yet I felt like I knew him for ages. Don’t you find that strange? Don’t you think there had been a connection between the two of you? How come you saw him and instantly fell in love with him? The mind forgets but the heart never forgets.

The world is not as you thought of it, Father. There is no happiness among us unless we do what we want and our will is to find that happiness and consume it as soon as possible. Life does not follow intricate plots with mysterious people watching us, their eyes glistening in the dark on badly lit streets. There are no faceless people unless we pathologically fall in love with them. We do not travel to foreign cities to have intricate relationships with strangers. Here, angels appear unless we want them to appear. The instant we hold between the fingers is as elusive as light.

Still, there is no reason for you to find love and affection into the arms of another man, that is against everything we have fought for, everything we believe in. The future will be empty because of you. Father kept talking saying that it is a vice against family values but as he talked this shadow crept over his shoulders covering him.

I don’t need you, Father. And he fell silent.

I have come this far, I won’t go back.

The three lighthouse keepers

Posted on by Rob Moscaliuc

[Listen to this song while reading this post]

We’re the three lighthouse keepers leaving behind six months’ worth of food and equipment without leaving a note, words would only stir the passion in those we desire to leave behind. There’s no time to say goodbye, we have to disappear before sunshine, before the lights in the lighthouse have moved from one corner to the other, before we can hear the light being switched off, before we begin to understand the movement of the waves and the sounds they make. There’s no time to acknowledge the beauty of the morning, the waves have never been the same, and they’ll never be the same. We’re the three lighthouse keepers leaving behind six months’ worth of food and equipment, warm beds, I’m pulling my trousers knowing that soon the warmth in our beds shall die along with the memory of sleep, and that there’s no trail behind us. But before we even think of leaving I count nights one by one. Three more nights, two more nights, one more night, this is the last night we never had, our sleep like a web and the furious waves like the spider hunting for lost souls, and before I wake up I tremble, morning has set a city made out of nails at my feet over which I’ll have to step, and as I look ahead I see the other two lighthouse keepers weeping silently, I’m so sorry one of them says, the waves have never been the same. I keep you in my hands and I try to talk, say nice things to you, and you say you are happy, two more nights and we’ll finally be together, at last, no more making plans, and I say the same, no more making plans, love, no more making plans, and I think I must be such a bastard because I say that knowing that you’ll keep making plans but those plans won’t involve me, they’ll involve somebody else. But then, as I say that, I hope for a miracle to happen, I still hope the devil will listen to my prayers and save me from disappearing completely from the series of plans you’ve made for me, because every night I went out and sat on top of the lighthouse and prayed silently until the devil became the savior. I am one of the three lighthouse keepers leaving behind six months’ worth of food and equipment, my bedside lamp and my reading shoes, I sail in the evening sky trying not to think of you, saying that I’m actually going out with the other two lighthouse keepers and you say how nice, how happy you are for me, three more nights like these and no more plans, and I say the same thing, no more plans, my love. And I call your name once more into the night, and while you say you’re the happiest man on Earth I say the same thing, but in fact, the night has set a city of burning coals at my feet, my love, I’m afraid this is goodbye. We’re the three lighthouse keepers leaving behind six months’ worth of food and equipment, and I’m leaving you behind, no more plans, love.

About writing

Posted on by Rob Moscaliuc

Most of the times it’s like making a deal with the devil. Or, maybe even worse, becoming a devil yourself, miming the act of creation which has already been done majestically by more brighter gods. And your work is never good, your inner editor keeps saying that. It’s like the words you use are never there, never at the center of the problem. Never the body itself, but an outline of the body, never life itself but the margins of that life. That’s where you need a deal with the devil, to help you cope with that, to help you cope with the inherent imperfection which occurs every time you give life to something through the medium of language. It’s like a devil’s doll made out of mud, it will work only for a few hours then fall back into the silence of lifeless bodies. And then there’s the urge to cut everything, to delete the life that has commenced with the first word you’ve written down. And then there’s the fight between you and the world that – once switched on – will claim it’s rightful place into existence. But the truth is, it’s not so much about using the right words, but rather about using all the wrong words, the more marginal vocabulary, the vilest and most obscure emotions, things which would make others throw up and, most importantly, think, see things, smell things, and face that life which so many things try to suppress it, eat it, digest it, making it more beautiful for the sake of the children. A man might deal more successfully with erectile dysfunctions in fiction than in reality. And it’s not about growing disgustingly long beards, and writing in the middle of the night when your neighbors are having the time of their lives while the children are sleeping, or masturbating, or throwing up while writing just because masturbating and throwing up might just add a pinch of surrealism to your writing, and, I think, it’s not about having sexual intercourse with as many ladies of the night as you can, as often as you can. Because, in writing, the effort is only yours, and everything else is just a procrastination of an ailment which sleeps undisturbed into your flesh. Writing is the indirect expression of that ailment, just like a pile of unwashed dishes is the indirect expression of a condition, namely that of (1) having to clean after doing something which is physically pleasurable, and (2) having to think about the benefits of an automatic dish washer, or of finding a partner that might just wash the dishes unconditionally. Writing is never pure body. Writing is always synthetic body and synthetic smell. That which you need in order to know that what you are is not just inert matter, but matter capable of creating desire and suffering when that desire is not satisfied.

Something about happiness

Posted on by Rob Moscaliuc

This morning I woke up thinking that, in fact, there is no truth in the already well-known idea that every human being is beautiful in its own way. The truth is, I think, that every human being is beautiful in all the possible ways because each of them bears the potentiality of doing something beautiful (let’s face it, we are capable of great things when we’re passionate about something, Lincoln for instance). Anyways, some of us sing (badly, while under the shower), some of us paint, some of us write, and some of us are just beautiful. We manifest beauty. And well, here’s to beauty…and happiness.

P.S. I wrote this while in Reggio Emilia. If you were there, this is about you (yes, you).

Forgive me, father

Posted on by Rob Moscaliuc

Forgive me, father, ’cause I have sinned. Somewhere, inside the house father is sleeping, alone. Mother is working nights. They meet only in the morning when father’s aftershave lingers on the white pillowcase. The lights are dimmed, and it is two in the morning, and I can’t find my sleep. The bed seems to be curved in such a way the only thing I could do is stare at the cheap fan flying ceaselessly around the room. As it moves the light goes on and off. Finally, I say to myself, the talk is over. My neighbor’s little kid has finally gone to sleep. Now I’m alone with my thoughts. And you. And the brassy NYC wallpaper I bought for two euros. I look around the room and everything seems in place. My desk sits silently, fully submerged into a bizarre game of shadow and light, nauseatingly keeping its mouth shut. It knows too much, I whisper to myself. Once, using a short pencil, I wrote on it I wanna have sex with you, then immediately wiped it. Then, I wrote I love you and I wanna live with you. After that I found a picture of you. You were half naked and I touched it so many times the colors started to fade your face and body distorted by my fingerprints. I cut the picture in little pieces and threw it into the toilet. I had to flush twice until all the pieces were dragged into that whirlpool of water. I felt so guilty when I kissed you for the first time, not because it felt wrong, but because I wanted to do it again and again until my lips would go numb. Strangely enough, I felt like something was wrong as if our lips didn’t fit one into the other. As if they resembled each other too well. And then we did it again, and for one moment I felt like father was too asleep to overhear us while we joined our lips in the silence of breathing. Father, forgive me, ’cause I have sinned. And you took my shirt off and I took your shirt off, and you said I like how your body resembles mine. A mirror wouldn’t do it any better. And I said no, and you said yes, we’ll have to do this sooner or later. And this call was so alluring I couldn’t resist, like the sinner for whom sin is no more than a drug. Be silent, I said, father is sleeping in the other room and I wouldn’t want to explain this to him. He wouldn’t understand it anyway.

…

The beast in the tall grass

Posted on by Rob Moscaliuc

Born in that summer morning, we both stood outside in the tall grass without the fear of snakes. And the apples grew yellow and red, and the sky was of a constant blue, cloudless. I could see the sweat running down your forehead and I wanted to wipe it off, but the world wouldn’t let me do it. At night, I would cry because I knew that later on, even yawning will have a dark significance. The body will grow big, and the mind will have to develop techniques to understand it. I wish I could say I love you. Because I do. But this word, love, comes from a place of confusion. And if I tell the truth that truth will consume me, and it will take you away from me. And I don’t want that. Let us remain and forget about the inevitable storm. Let us touch, but only in our minds, let us make love without the truth being present. You’ll lie down, and I’ll be right beside you and the sky will have a whole new meaning. Smile. The sun is just right. What shall we do, you ask, when grandfather or even father, shall find us sleeping in the tall grass, attached to each other in the fury of the evening? We’ll hear only the sound of the steps cutting through the yellowish grass and the sun and the sky. We’ll do nothing, I say. We’ll wait in silence, so as to hear the wrath of those steps as they walk away, shoes filled with knowledge. We’ll have, by then, nothing else but our love and our bodies attached to each other. By the time the steps have vanished our gods would have disappeared too. Father, how could it be? How come from a body like yours a beast like me could have risen? How could that architecture go wrong? By means of a thought? As I go home, taking after father’s steps I watch you sleeping covered in light. I know at home I’ll find this silence multiplied by ten and sprinkled with anger. Why did you keep this away from us? I was afraid, father, I’m afraid of what might come, of what will come. I’m afraid it’s nothing, and how could you live on nothing, how could you? Of all the people in this world, how could you, father?

Dear Friend (from the 5th of May, 2011)

Posted on by Rob Moscaliuc

Thank you for your last letter. I didn’t get it yet, but thank you anyway. I wonder. Why does it have to be like this? There are some laws, internal to the universe, which I simply cannot comprehend, let alone work/ function according to them. They say, one day, you’ll reach a point when everything will be clear. Yet I fear that day may come too late, at a point when I won’t be able to enjoy it. I do not wish to grow old and, a few seconds before I die, realize that everything has been in vain, and that everything stops there, in that realization, and that there is nothing else to look forward too. I couldn’t imagine a world without love, as I couldn’t imagine a world without beauty. So, I need to say this to you, dear friend. If you are indeed reading this and if you do have a sudden revelation while reading, don’t let that feeling go. You are special to me, and I wish you all the happiness the world could offer you. These words are not in vain. I know we pride ourselves with having one of the most sophisticated means of communication, language, but you need to know that words remain, and they will go deep, as deep as they can, and they will stay there for as long as our organic life shall permit. Words can fall in love, and you could fall in love with words too. They can seduce you, caress you, make love to you at night and before dawn. That is why I’m telling you this, dear friend, ’cause if they can love, they can also hate, they can also hurt you. But you already know these things, there’s no need for me to tell you that. I’m actually telling you this because I’ve tried it on my own skin. I fell in love with your words, and every night I pull those words to my chest as if they are alive. Yet, maybe they are. I’m sure they are. I need them to be alive. Otherwise, I couldn’t feel you as I do, breathing between the sheets.

The empire no-more

Posted on by Rob Moscaliuc

You need a certain tone to talk about this. Sit on a desk if you have to, in front of an imaginary sea of students, your feet swinging like those of a child licking a lollipop. You are the professor, that means you know things, you’ve spent more than fifteen hours a day reading stuff and trying to write about them, make them understandable for the unripe minds of future generations. Emphatically, you’ll raise your voice and say that empires do fall, oh, they do, oh, a most unfortunate condition for any type of societal construct, actually, a most unfortunate condition for any type of pride there is. At this point, please notice that your students stand frozen looking at you, wondering whether you’ve gone mad or it is only a transitory moment of rebellion against everything, the state especially, politics and morality, and all those boring things that make a life complicated. Some of them will rejoice because, at last, they found a leader for their youthful hipsterism. Why do they fall, professor, why do empires fall? Because some of us get creative, you’ll say after a dramatic pause, and while waiting for your students to write down this immense idea. There are norms, you’ll say, norms to which some of us won’t comply, or can’t comply. Roles that some of us shall refuse to perform. Oh, how grand you’ll sound, but only in your mind. Your students will laugh, though not in your presence, only then, when they’ll see your humble figure haunting the dark corners of an obscure public library. Later, they’ll say it was an attack against same-sex marriages that lead the world to infertility and empty wombs. Oh, look how the empire is crumbling! You’ll die in the meantime, professor, and your students will never know what you meant. What a pity, and a most unfortunate condition that is…

Dear friend

Posted on by Rob Moscaliuc

Thank you, I’d say, for your last letter. I’m really glad for you and the things you have achieved. From your tone I understand that you are happy with everything at the moment, your new apartment, your new friend, she seems nice from what you’ve told me. I’ve been looking at that picture again, for hours on end; it’s the one on the white boat, with your sister and your mother, and the bluest ocean I have ever set my eyes on. I do miss the old times. Do you remember those grapes? We used to eat them in the evening, when the sun was just good. I know you’ll keep telling yourself that this can’t be, that this is just a text, and it has nothing to do with real life. Well, if you are reading this then know that I do love you, that this text is me, forced, shriveled into words as I am right now, but this is really me, trying to fit this page just like I try to fit a category others have made for me. So this letter must have a degree of immediacy so that when you read it you’ll feel like I’m standing right beside you and you’re trying to keep up with my hand, or I’m trying to keep up with your moving eyes. So that we’ll meet in this fatigue of language that gets me every time I try to write something for you. Really, you’re the only person I’m writing for. Sometimes I fear there’s nobody else out there and that I need to make you up out of the experiences I never had. Then I’ll have to make you out of the cup of coffee I had in the morning, and the short chats I have with my hairdresser, and those faces of those students and those people I see drowned into their thoughts, books, cups, hands held together. You’ll turn out to be many things when you’re actually one and you wear your cape with dignity. You know, that cape made out of the night and a garbage can, and the no-smoking sign. You look like a pineapple in it.
 
You’ve asked me about the angels and the saints. They’re really beautiful; otherwise I wouldn’t consider them angels and saints. One of them has these white wings, and (s)he sells flowers. I see him/her almost every morning. Then there’s the saint I don’t really know because I haven’t really seen him/her, only his/her shoes lined up, drying in the sun.
 
Things are good here, I’m happy, but you probably know that. I’m searching for new ways of telling you that I’m actually happy. So you need to be happy too. You must be. I refuse to think otherwise. You must be patient, you must love, and care, and do, and pray, because people will want you and you’ll live out of that want, and you’ll want them. You are born out of others’ wishes like you were born out of mine.
 

Bodies of fear

Posted on by Rob Moscaliuc

So he lights a cigarette. His lips curl around it, the firm grip of two yellowish fingers, and then he looks at me with a look that only a youngster can have. He’s innocent, I know, but his smile says otherwise.

Do you like me, he asks.

I am afraid of my own body, I tell him. I was taught to be afraid of my own body. My mother tied my ankles to the bed during the night, so that my hips won’t rub onto each other. I slept in sessions. Every fifteen minutes I woke up, sweating, my sides aching with that numb pain solitude brings to old people. In the morning she came. I could hear her footsteps, and then the door would open, and she came, and she untied me, and I would squirm between the sheets smelling of urine and sweat, and I would drag my knees to my chest like friends hugging each other after a long time, and I would talk to them while the pain subsided from my back. And I hoped. I cried over my knees and hoped that wings would burst out of my back, and I would be transformed into this sexless archangel. A renegade of the body, neither male, nor female, split but in one piece, so that I could see my mother’s face then, reddening with shame and my father throwing me out of the house saying I’m not his son anymore. I’d say I’d always wished to be a son but wasn’t able to, because this body is filled with shame. And you taught me that. So I hug my knees. I can’t hug those people I want to because this body won’t leave me alone. You can’t stop it mother. Tie my ankles to the bed. There’s a slippery slope to pleasure.

I do like you, I say.

Don’t tie my ankles to your bed. I want to feel good while I’m with you.

But this body you see, it won’t let me. Count my ribs, do what you want, just don’t think while doing it. A child’s game, one, two, three, going down, four, five, then stop, I’m afraid you won’t like me; you won’t like the rest of me. I’m already pushing against you as I try to count your ribs, one by one, with my mouth. One, two, three, I’m trying not to think, four, five, my ankles are taped to the bed, and my back aches, and wings burst out of your body and you fly.

Mother! Father! I need to tell you something.

I say between my teeth, sweating.

I slept with an angel last night.

And he was beautiful, and I was beautiful too.

There are no such things as monsters, they say, now go back to bed, they don’t hide under your bed; they don’t hide in the closet, go back to bed. How did he break loose? Go and tape him back to the bed. He fucked an angel all right, and the angel fucked him.

So I tape myself to the bed every night on my own, without my mother’s help, so that the angel might return.