Berlin


(...)

The second strange feeling concerns time. Time is for us life-time and indeed the measure of all things, subjectively and objectively. We have time - what a terrible phrase! - it slips from one's fingers, it flies away and I have no power whatsoever against this. The lines on my face - who would ever be able to read them?

The third feeling concerns place: since I came here I totally lost the sense of where I belong. Coimbra had turned into a puzzle with no place for me, and Berlin is a fiction...

Under the circumstances, no wonder that little by little I began feeling outside time and space, lighter and higher as I went down, somehow everywhere, living light years from my aerial perspective as in Velázquez Las Meninas. They mean one almost feels the air as one steps into the painting; for me, it means the perspective of the outsider, the person who's got nothing left except the spectator's part, the situation of someone who is absent, distant, absent-minded - but perceiving movement more deeply, sensing development from the future's side.

Mein liebes Kind, Dein Brief ist sehr poetisch, aber ob wir auf der Zukunftseite sitzen, das bezweifle ich sehr.

Perhaps I should apologize for having written such a long letter; but today I'm not in the mood to be formal. And you know something? People usually think that wisdom comes from grief and sorrow - they are still to discover that happiness can be so much more mysterious and productive. It's happiness that really matters - and life that really is most important and urgent.

I wish you most of all what you most wish for yourself -

Linha de Fuga - Flightline - Fluchtlinie (1995-6)

Cont. do post de 6 de Dezembro de 2010

Imagem: Diego Velázquez, Las Meninas (1656). In: http://www.artchive.com/