I like for you to be still. (As Glenn Close reads Neruda).

(Cartier Bresson)

One thing I’m going to miss about the world when I leave it–whatever “leaving” means, when your life is all you’ve ever known–is not the people, because for better or worse, I can never get rid of those that mean the most, they’re like a (good) plague of the heart.

No. It’s the little beauty overdoses–I call them “non-collectible life collectibles”–that gently interrupt my every day.

They deserve to be put in a flesh and bone album, but you can’t collect them anywhere, because the moment you want to hold on to them, they’re gone. They can serve as a metaphor for our own lives, as seen from a distant planet.

Ever since I let go of perfectionism, I’m no longer too busy to notice them and the moment is always “perfect.” When they come, I leave everything. I abandon, take out my mental camera and shoot.

I don’t know the mechanics of love but I think it must be something like this: after giving, you have to learn how to receive.

We seem to focus mostly on the giving (or the lack thereof). But every now and then, hidden inside the busy “I”, there’s a timid “me” waiting for us to notice and do nothing.

So I shut up. And what I hear then is achingly beautiful.

*****

Today’s Non-collectible Life Collectibles.

Let’s start with the most intimate and magical reading of Neruda, by Glenn Close.

I wish I could pack this in a box that reads: “Fragile” and send it away.

 

I like for you to be still: it is as though you were absent,
and you hear me from far away and my voice does not touch you.
It seems as though your eyes had flown away
and it seems that a kiss had sealed your mouth.

As all things are filled with my soul
you emerge from the things, filled with my soul.
You are like my soul, a butterfly of dream,
and you are like the word Melancholy.

I like for you to be still, and you seem far away.
It sounds as though you were lamenting, a butterfly cooing like a dove.
And you hear me from far away, and my voice does not reach you:
Let me come to be still in your silence.

And let me talk to you with your silence
that is bright as a lamp, simple as a ring.
You are like the night, with its stillness and constellations.
Your silence is that of a star, as remote and candid.

I like for you to be still: it is as though you were absent,
distant and full of sorrow as though you had died.
One word then, one smile, is enough.
And I am happy, happy that it’s not true.

*****

Of course, if you’re the kind that falls in love too quickly, you don’t let go as quickly. So you’ll browse through your day (or through YouTube) for more. And you’ll find Andy García reading another Neruda and it’ll take your remaining breath away.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write for example, ‘The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.’

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to a pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that’s certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another’s. She will be another’s. Like my kisses before.
Her voice. Her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that’s certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

*****

And finally, if you haven’t passed out yet, you’ll run–as if by chance–into The Cinematic Orchestra, specifically this:

And you’ll remember everything since before the world was made and you’ll understand (but not really) why things are so small and living, so little.

Like this Dostoyevsky, one of your ex, dead lover’s hundred quotes, that seems to go hand in hand with all of the above.

“I am a dreamer. I know so little of real life that I just can’t help re-living such moments as these in my dreams, for such moments are something I have very rarely experienced. I am going to dream about you the whole night, the whole week, the whole year. I feel I know you so well that I couldn’t have known you better if we’d been friends for twenty years. You won’t fail me, will you? Only two minutes, and you’ve made me happy forever. Yes, happy. Who knows, perhaps you’ve reconciled me with myself, resolved all my doubts.

 

When I woke up it seemed to me that some snatch of a tune I had known for a long time, I had heard somewhere before but had forgotten, a melody of great sweetness, was coming back to me now. It seemed to me that it had been trying to emerge from my soul all my life…”

 

{White Nights}

 

So you edit all this in your heart even though you know that time will soon delete all your edits.

But you’re okay with your day being beautifully ruined for ever. Because who really knows how many shots there are left in your mental camera?

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