Take Me Back to ... Happiness

Remember ... ?

 

Bookblogs, bookclubs, meetings, ambition, broken hearts, memories, Pride, Words and Friendship ... what do we really need from all these?

We are all in search of Happiness. We all need people. We are humble, fragile, little beings, little children, too scared by the haunting of our yesterdays, by the abyss of tomorrow, by the emptiness of today. We search ... for what? Glory, love, stability, ourselves? We rise, we fall, we hug, we hate.

Take all my little words and destroy all my worlds. Take all my ambition, all my memories, crush them under your feet, and give me back my Happiness, give me back my voice, so that one day you can hear me. Because it’s ironic, dearest Friend … ironic and cruel. To be heard by a world, and to be mute in front of the people that we really need. To create and to destroy, to paint and to erase, to play with waves and hurricanes, and suddenly, to stumble across beating hearts, to dare, terrified to death, to believe … haven't you taught me to Believe? ... You leave behind all your games with words, all your ironies, and you shape with them vulnerable, deep emotions, so vulnerable and so deep that all your egos, all your memories kneel … in front of a strong, unheard beating from a heart. But now, ironically, your words are not listened, are not understood, are not recognized … Why? …

Take all my little words and destroy all my worlds. Take them all and create from all of them the real meaning of my language.  

HAPPINESS. For me, happiness lays in tiny things, in banal things. Happiness is simply a winter silent day, a white rose, a smile, a walk. Why would I need more? Why would the Human inside of me need more than this?!  Why do people need cars, gadgets, houses with big rooms, big balconies, power …?! Why do we need so many things, why don’t we see that HAPPINESS, real HAPPINESS, without Nietzsche’s quotes, is HERE, among us, in insignificant things?! Why don’t you hear me, why don’t you see me? Why do we search for definitions to happiness, why do we suffer so much, why don’t we listen to it?

Dear God, dear Friend ... take me back to the start. Take me back on the green, peaceful field; take me back on a branch of my tree, naked of memories, with an unwounded heart. Take me back, dear Friend, to a winter silent day, where snowflakes, tiny snowflakes dance on the blue sky ... take me back and take my hand, in Silence. And in this Silence, dearest Friend, learn to hear me. Because only this Silence, this death of words, can make you hear my soul.  

Bookblogs, bookclubs, landscapes and me. We all have a road to follow, we all go in search of Ithaca, we are all Humans and gods. Fragile, little Humans, broken by other fragile little Humans. ’Cause we are equal. We are all gods, capable of making a difference, unique in our structure, owners of our lives, responsible to make a change. And we are all alone, and we all need someone from time to time to REMEMBER us who we really are …  in darkness, in waves …   

Bookblogs, bookclubs, meetings, ambition, broken hearts, memories, Pride, Words and Friendship ... what do we really need from all these? Going back to the Past, flying in time, in search of THE Ithaca that has always been inside of us. Going back home, remembering. Happiness. My real happiness lays in small things, in walks and dances, in breathing gently, in peace.

Be gentle now, unwrapped me of words and memories, and take me back, after such a long road, to my forgotten Happiness.

 

 

"Shall I Dare Disturb the Universe?"

Last week, one of our professors told us that literature is on the verge of dying. People don’t have time nowadays to read as they used to, writers don’t have new subjects, new themes ... in short, we are all bored of literature.

As I already said my opinion here, I would like to add a few lines from a poem that I found very interesting (a poem that I used in my essay), a poem that, ironically, proves to me that this dance of Literature cannot die so easily ... that there are still words, games, worlds to be discovered in this domain, that the human mind has got a lot more to offer ... how would it be to accept that this is all, that the show stops here? ...

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

T.S. Eliot

 

S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse

A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,

Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.

Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo

Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,

Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.

LET us go then, you and I,          

When the evening is spread out against the sky             

Like a patient etherised upon a table;  

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,           

The muttering retreats         5

Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels     

And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:    

Streets that follow like a tedious argument       

Of insidious intent         

To lead you to an overwhelming question …              10

Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”     

Let us go and make our visit.    

..............................................

There will be time, there will be time   

To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;     

There will be time to murder and create,           

And time for all the works and days of hands   

That lift and drop a question on your plate;                30

Time for you and time for me, 

And time yet for a hundred indecisions,             

And for a hundred visions and revisions,            

Before the taking of a toast and tea.    

               

In the room the women come and go           35

Talking of Michelangelo.             

               

And indeed there will be time 

To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”        

Time to turn back and descend the stair,            

With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—                40

[They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”] 

My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,            

My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—    

[They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”]   

Do I dare                     45

Disturb the universe?  

In a minute there is time            

For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.             

               

For I have known them all already, known them all:— 

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,                 50

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;           

I know the voices dying with a dying fall             

Beneath the music from a farther room.            

  So how should I presume?      

               

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—                        55

The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,  

And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,              

When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,   

Then how should I begin            

To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?                60

  And how should I presume?   

----------------------------------------------------------------------        

               

I should have been a pair of ragged claws          

Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

      .      .      .      .      .         

And would it have been worth it, after all,         

After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,            

Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,             

Would it have been worth while,                    90

To have bitten off the matter with a smile,       

To have squeezed the universe into a ball         

To roll it toward some overwhelming question,              

To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,      

Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—           95

If one, settling a pillow by her head,     

  Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.    

  That is not it, at all.”    

               

               

I grow old … I grow old …                     120

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.               

               

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?   

I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. 

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.          

               

I do not think that they will sing to me.         125

               

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves              

Combing the white hair of the waves blown back          

When the wind blows the water white and black.         

               

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea  

By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown             130

Till human voices wake us, and we drown.        

  

  

New York, New York ... sau in cautarea lui Neverland

I want to wake up in that city/That doesn’t sleep/And find that I’m the king of the hill/Top of the head.

"Give me your tired, your poor,/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,/The wretched refuse of your teeming shore./Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,/I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"/

(Emma Lazarus - the poem written on the Statue of Liberty)

Cum a trecut ceva vreme de cand nu m-am mai plimbat pe aici, cum am incercat sa arat ca identitatea/istoria unei natiuni e doar apa de ploaie in fata identitatii/istoriei individului, cum oboseala ce m-a acaparat in ultimul timp pare a fi rupta dintr-un rand din cartea lui O’Neill, si cum cica disertatia mea [fara prof’, fara subiect] ar avea legatura cu imigrarea/felul in care vedem un oras, m-am gandit sa visez acum la New York.

Alunec rapid pe-o panta a amintirilor si-mi amintesc de-un alt eu ... ti se intampla si tie cateodata? Imi amintesc de-un eu mai ambitios, mai tanar, ma increzator ... sau uneori, mai batran, mai lenes, mai pesimist. Alunec printre evenimentele de azi si ma trezesc in fata celei ce visa candva la o schimbare, la cea care visa la un alt oras, la o alta lume, la un nou inceput ... ce s-a schimbat oare intre timp?  O atmosfera, un decor, un gand, o rafala de vant. E ca si cum m-as uita intr-o camera plina de oglinzi, ce reflecta alte parti din mine, alte perioade, alte stadii ... a te schimba sau a nu te schimba, a-ti recunoaste sau a nu-ti recunoaste trecutul e o alta tema de gandire (prezenta de asemenea si-n cartea lui O'Neill), azi vreau sa ma gandesc la New York. La New York-ul din cartea lui Joseph O’Neill.

Cartea lui Josehp O’Neill, Netherland, (roman distins cu PEN/FAULKNER AWARD, si nominalizat la Booker Prize 2008) e una dintre cartile not for college, citita printre Black Boy, Beloved, The Joy Luck Club, Ceremony, si alte cateva. E o carte, pentru mine, in primul rand despre prietenie, apoi despre New York si imigrare, despre omul matur, care descopera o lume fara dulcegarii si alte cateva mituri, despre cricket (desi eu una ii las pe altii sa-si spuna opinia), despre 9/11, despre dezradacinare, despre rebuilding, reshaping ... Un roman cu o furie mocnita, ascunsa in actiune si printre cuvinte, care te invata sa privesti lucrurile (viata, dragostea, prietenia, orasul) din mai multe unghiuri, cu mai multe umbre si culori.

Unul dintre lucrurile pe care le-am admirat la aceasta carte a fost ironia subtila, care incepe inca din titlu. Desi o buna parte din carte este despre New York, si doar o amintire sau doua ne duce pe strazile Olandei, romanul, plecand de la o istorie a orasului american, este numit Netherland. Pe mine una mereu Netherland ma duce cu gandul la Neverland, la lumea lui Peter Pan, unde totul este posibil ... asa cum New York-ul este vazut de multi dintre noi. Numai ca povestea lui Hans ne arata ca povestea unui oras, ca felul in care vedem lucrurile din jurul nostru, nu tin atat de traditia/istoria locului respectiv, ci de propria stare, poveste, traire, etc. Hans porneste in calatoria lui, trezindu-se la jumatatea drumului intr-un oras al terorii, singur, parasit de sotie, de fiu, de legaturile cu Olanda/Londra, intr-un oras al tuturor, al ironiilor, al miscarii, si al vietii. Pentru el insa, si alte cateva personaje, tot focul si toata aceasta miscare se estompeaza intr-un cerc repetitiv, de la o incercare (mereu esuata) de a face o schimbare, pana la indiferenta adusa de suferinta.

Am spus la inceput ca pentru mine, acest roman este si o carte a prieteniei (masculine). Motto-ul cartii,

„Mi s-a aparut in vis un oras care nu poate fi biruit, chiar daca s-ar napusti/asupra lui tot restul pamantului, si era noul Oras al Prietenilor ...” (Whitman/Am visat un vis)

anunta bizara prietenie intre Hans si Chuck, personaj ce mi-a amintit de Dean M. Din The Road, a lui Kerouac (Chuck fiind de altfel motivul rememorarii perioadei din New York).   De asemenea:

„Trebuie sa-i declar ei, sau tuturor celor interesati, ca sunt extrem de indurerat? Ca, desi 2 ani poate ca nu-mi fusese dor de el, acum imi lipsea teribil? Trebuie sa le spun ca l-am iubit pe Chuck? Asa ar trebui?” (340)

Ce mi-a ramas dupa citirea romanului, pe langa ideile pentru disertatie, e refrenul lui Frank Sinatra: New York, New York ... mi-a ramas un gust al New York-ului, al orasului viselor, al nostalgiei. Mi-a ramas ideea identitatii personale, mult mai puternica decat identitatea sociala, un regret subtil pentru neincrederea din mine, neincredere ce-mi asigura ca New York-ul si toata America vor ramane pentru mine un Neverland mult prea indepartat.