The Persistence of Memory

We believe she has forgotten how to sleep. Last night, we saw her tossing in her bed, counting amber lions leaping over a fallen tree. We heard her walking around the house, barefoot, until the moon in her hand went out with a soft hiss. We felt her warm forehead leaning against the window and we felt her shiver from the cold. In her pillow, there was a scent of a persistent nothingness.

It is beginnings that worry me.
Beginnings, they are always a little tricky. Most of them have always shown a lot of promise and were at some point someone’s favorite student; some people – those who usually don’t pay too much attention to anything in particular – would say that they’re bound for nothing but greatness. But there’s always a streak of illusion woven into the silver fabric of every beginning, so you should be very careful when taking the first two steps on the path of a new story.
Your hope might turn out to be too heavy for its young shoulders to bear.

I went to see the old Gypsy woman the other day. I wanted her to read my future from my fallen out hair.
The old clock on the wall was ticking away the heavy waves of time. She was sitting at the table reading a newspaper. Her coffee cup had left a perfect round stain on the front page, where large font letters were screaming at the top of their lungs about the world’s disasters.
There was a lamp in her room, and the lampshade was peach-colored.
In its orange glow, sadness began to melt away until it became a sweet, sticky puddle at the bottom of my consciousness.
I didn’t care to know my future anymore. We talked about flowers.

The Arts & Crafts

I re-invent my self every morning. At night, in my sleep, I fall into a hundred pieces – some of them round and smooth like lead beads, some coarse to the touch like bark; some crumble into glittering dust the moment you breathe on them.
So, I wake up with my mind all over the place.
I carefully collect those parts of me that have fallen off the bed and mischievously rolled under the closet. They feel cold when I hold them in my hand, just for a second, before they all click into place and pretend they have never been anything else but a seamless sense of integrity.

I am only passing through. I’m on my way to somewhere else whose name I temporarily forgot. I need a place where I can keep my coat, and a thick blanket to wrap around myself on a cold night, and maybe some conversation about the day’s petty problems and occurrences of little meaning. I might stay long enough to buy a plant, or hang a colorful picture on my wall, but no, I won’t get myself a cat or ever learn the names of my grey worried neighbors. I am a floating ship without an anchor and I sail swiftly onwards as soon as the sun elbows its way through the grumbling mass of clouds.

My name is not Alice. I am not groping around in the dark with my eyes wide open and with dirt on my face. I am not lost inside my head, running around in circles in a green labyrinth that smells of damp spring nights (there’s something pulling at my skirt, a twig snaps..).
I am myself and my own reflection. I am the mirror and the mirrored. My eyes reflect my eyes, and my eyes reflect my eyes again, and there’s a million reflections that pull you down… suck you down… and you whirl like a snow flake, falling … into the rabbit hole.

I have been thinking about the woman in a strawberry dress in Venice.
I was sitting in a café when I saw her pass. The whole street saw her pass. All heads turned to look at her, and the street rolled its winding body dotted with vendor carts to follow her, too.
She stopped at the corner, and swayed a little on her high heels. The sound of them clicking on the cobbles continued for a little longer, apparently oblivious to the fact that the source of its existence was not there anymore. The breeze crept along the edges of the creaking shutters.
She pulled a silver gun out of her bag.
The strawberry dress drifted to the ground with more grace than her body did.