Northern light

For a couple of years now, every time I get the urge to write a thought, a story, an article, a blog post, it takes me to despair. I look at the date of the last written page of my diary and it is always a few months before. I look at the date of my last blog posts where once I wrote, and it is even a few years ago (dariosorgato.it and paroleincammino)

In the meantime, I have not stopped writing completely, I have written articles for a blog (noisyvision.com) that has nothing to do with travel. I have written travel articles (tripwolf.com), which did not always have a relation with my direct experience or the way I live the travel..

I wanted to be a blogger or a writer. And they told me that if you want to be, you have to always write.

The less I write, the less I feel I am. If you do not have the need, perhaps this is not even what you are.

Sometimes I justify it, saying that everything needs a break, that everything comes in its time.

Other times I seem to be obvious, trivial. So that I do not even want to write for myself..

Things already written, words already spoken. Stories already experienced.

When I want to share something I write a sentence, a brief thought. A status on Facebook.

A little out of laziness, a little because I too got caught by speed and by the awareness that most of us do not watch that video or images, and that a written text must be maximum as long as this far,.

From this point onwards, the most readers are already tired. They received a notification, a ‘like’ and have shifted the focus elsewhere.

Or do we need a different technique? In order to capture the attention and take it to the end, writing sex stories, stories of scandals or humorous stories.

If I was talking about shit you would read it all. A little disgusted, but it would be like a conversation about the weather.

Instead I decided that this time I will write. For me. And only those who have the desire and perseverance to read some more lines will understand why. Maybe I can convey some feelings, like the ones still orbiting in the web since a few years, from when I was writing in the internet cafe in South Africa, of Brazil, or when I asked a donation to friends to be able to afford the expensive internet access in Havana. (this is the translation of that post)

The urge to write came back last week.

I overcame the obstacle of earlier date (October 28, 2013, the birth of my niece Rebecca), I warmed up the pen and wrote.

June 14, 2014, the day after my birthday.

I do not have the words.

I have written so.

A paradox.

I started writing but I had no words.

I waited. It takes training.

A wave came, moved lightly the glass on the table and I remembered that my blood knows the movement of the sea.

It was like smelling a perfume. I do not know what the chemistry of the nose is, but a fragrance evokes a memory immediately.

That little wave brought me back in the middle of the ocean.

I was on another water. On another earth, another air, but I was finally back in that part of me that I knew.

It was like meeting a good friend after a long time. Four years almost exact. But time does not change the friendship.

I was not there, anchored in a small bay of a lake in Brandenburg, north of Berlin, in order to make the comparison with the sea. It is not enough to float to say if it is better the taste of salt or mud.

There is nothing in common.

I could not even find similarities with what I knew so far of the lake.

I met a new planet. I met a new light and a spectrum of different colors of the last nights of spring.

That light wave only served to wake me up from a deep sleep of mechanic and speed.

It served to give me a new time.

Me, that I have known the slow time of the feet, I forgot that you can escape the hours,the minutes, and that sometimes I need to look at the long profile of a blurred horizon that is not the city.

Trees, grass, maybe a bird in flight that I do not know the specie. Sometimes my dazzled eyes not even distinguish a leaf from a needle. I only see the distant shape of the flat earth, a layer of wood in June I have never seen so green.

I do not know what lakes were, the northern ones. The waterways, the differences in level between a channel and the next, separated by heavy metal locls.

I did not know what was the north.

I saw the silver light of a full moon in October over a ring where I made love.

Now I know that in the north the sunsets are endless. I know that the moon rised shy behind the trunks, just above the reeds on the banks, hiding behind the leaves for a few minutes and then rises and illuminates twice the short night. From the universe to which it belongs and from that reflection on the still, almost perfect mirror of water where nothing flies. Maybe moths, or  mosquitoes too tired to get away from the coast.

And this is what I cannot write, because I can not even think about it.

I see a disk in the sky, I know it's far away, I know where  its light come from, but I never have enough silence to listen to this distance, no reason to watch the soft light of the moon on a pond.

Just looking at it, without having to tell anyone. Not now.

I needed this life. To remind me that I am small. I needed to measure up to the sky, to see it all around me. I needed to feel the cold wind.

It does not push the sails and carries no distant song.

The north wind repeats the verse of ducks, a bird I do not know by name.

If there was no moon there would be a few drops of rain.

There is also water in the air. I want to drink.

Suck an ice cube, a lemon zest.

I do not have salt on my lips. And no smell on the skin, I do not feel it burn.

The north is mild

Water lilies and feathers.

Not even the stars.

I have not seen as I do not see for years, but no one told me about them. She would do it for me. Stars are for lovers.

We are six, we are in the midst of this immense sky and at the same time as small as a pond.

We are loud. But I do not understand many words.

I have said that I have no words.

Neither mine nor others.

I do not have time and do not know where I am

I'm in a strange place that one day I'll know that it was Germany.

I met the ocean, that has never stopped, I saw the land disappear and here it never does.

I knew the light on the little waves of the evening, soft before resting

There is no route but even no roads, there is no compass, but there is depth.

This is also to navigate.

Slip noisily inside the silence. And swing without sickness

I've had 36 years for 24 hours, and I saw myself crazy. I laughed to myself. I saw this flower sticking to me with filaments of lymph that didn’t want to break.

It was true.

It was a poem that one day you can read to me.

When the numbers on my skin are gone.

And yet you, one morning, woke me up brushing.  Before it was day.

You were torturing me and did not let me sleep.

It was already day, 
it was the same day.

It was only yesterday.