Under Maintenance

M  A  I  N  T  E  N  A  N  C  E

Maintenance of the brain, a muscle, which thus needs to be exercised. Of the limbs, of imagination. Of the herd, or the garden. Of peace, of the weapon. Of friendships, of each ship. Maintenance everywhere, all around us. 

Maintenance is the humdrum of life, and without it there would be no life not even in a cell. Even in a monk's cell.

I have been not very good at maintenance, and I don't know if I ever possessed such skill. To realize the dimension of my ineptitude, all I need is to examine my home which has lately been maintained by me alone. It cries out for maintenance. I'm either deaf or enjoy the melody of its wailing walls.   

What if my brain is likewise in need of fresh paint, plaster to cover its cracks? 

Could I just disguise decrepitude with classic statues of missing limbs? Keep foreign music playing so that the visitor's brain is too distracted to notice the ruin? Glue newspaper clips onto the walls distracting the visitor even further? Leave poems on the rafters or boards that need to be replaced? Place olive oil scented candles in every room? And the sex scented candle, should I put it out?  

All I know is that this was written under maintenance.

Laziness and Overpowering Forces

for Jennifer


I was on the beach where my father took us year after year, belly down on a towel, feeling the sand in between my fingers and toes, and the graininess of that sand stuck to parts of my body, a few grains on my scalp, a few more hiding in my eyebrows so that they could escape those barren grounds and come with me when I returned home; feeling the towel wet from my swimming trunks, the salty drops dripping from my body, feeling the towel hot from the sun; feeling the warmness of the penetrating sun on my back 

[subliminal message: DON'T FORGET YOUR SUNSCREEN]

                        in contrast to those shivers the cold water I had just come out of provoked; feeling and hearing the breeze playing around my ears, feeling it caressing my left loin and my spine; hearing the distant sound of crashing waves invisible from where I was next to the lagoon; tasting the salt on my lips, those lips tasting my left arm, the youthful blonde hair on my arm tickling my lips; smelling algae and their iodine; my eyes semi closed so that I could see my eyelashes through which the sky blueness and the sand yellow came in into my brain as diffusely as bright. That was me being lazy--lazy yet more alive.

At that very same beach I went for a swim in the choppy North Atlantic, confident in my newly learned swimming skills even though I was still unable to float. There were other swimmers but all strangers to me. I dived and played under and over and through the waves, and when coldness finally defeated my thin layers of fat I tried to swim back to shore yet to no avail. The receding waters were dragging me back in. To the abyss--it felt that way. I shouted for help. No one seemed to have noticed. I swam again only to be defeated once more. I panicked a little--that little heart hard at work. And then. Then a true goddess, the one of Instinct, took control over me. I calmed down and waited for a favourable rush of water to swim back to the shore. And when the water receded each time, I let myself go; no resistance. After many repetitions, I felt the sand under my feet and walked the rest.

In the presence of overpowering forces, fight, flight, freeze? Or is it flow?  

Fuck! What the hell do I know?





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photo by Jorge Francisco Martins de Freitas
(Foz do Arelho, Portugal)