Trafika Europe 2 - Polish Nocturne

B3: What We Talk about When We Talk about Killing Ourselves

ime has been returned to me without my asking for it. Absolute Love is hard work; it absorbs a lot of time, a lot of energy. I had mirrored my time to his. My schedules to his. My age to his. And I was all too happy to do so. Ever since I was little I’ve been afraid of having too much time on my hands, but this has never happened in the last sixteen years. Because I added his activities to mine: Even if I wasn’t the protagonist of his, even though he was living them and not me, I was there; I was always there. If someone were to ask me what I was doing, where I was, for instance, on the day the World Trade Center collapsed, I couldn’t tell you for sure. But ask me where he was, and I know exactly where and with whom. When we were apart for a few hours, my mind always accompanied him. And when we were together, his inner climate—his every smile, his every sign of irritation, his every new dish, his every emotion—regulated my mood. In a word, to be left suddenly without an occupation of this import clearly transforms the time that lies ahead into an interminable desert. So much for time. As for space: on arriving in town after being gone since Friday, I experience an unsettling feeling. Have you ever had the impression that everything around you is a set, a fake landscape, a stage identical to the familiar one, yet absolutely strange and never seen before? T

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