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/

Berlin

Maria, jetzt bist Du in Berlin, DDR. Du sitzt jetzt hinter dem eisernen Vorhang. Wie das alles passiert ist, weiß ich kaum. Nun sitzt Du da, aber als Du noch in Portugal warst, schien mir alles so verträumt.




Berlin, Dec. 5th, 1981

 

snow came at last dancing with the west wind a wild dance against my window. These days I have to stay at home and have no permission to speak (nor even whisper) or go out. I really can´t speak and the worst thing is that I can´t sing. I can only write. It seems to me that grey Berlin will soon be white with snow falling as on the first pages of Through the Looking-Glass. So I decided I would write you a letter.

 

I have been thinking how much my life has depended on letters in these last years, how many have probably been open by mistake, enfin combien de lettres portugaises j´ai adressé à l´étranger... It also seems a paradox that I should be needing communication so badly when I can express myself and communicate with people, sometimes even in a very peculiar and strange way - as if I were on the other side of the glass. I have been considering the strange circumstances that brought me here and make me live my solitude so deeply that sometimes I feel I have more in common with the wind and snow or with the sun and the stars than with my own fellowmen, although I do like people and enjoy their company. Sometimes I have the feeling I went so far and so fast towards the future, that noone can reach me where I am and that I write for people who "are not there yet" ("noch nicht da sind").

 

(a continuar)

 

In: Linha de Fuga - Flightline - Fluchtlinie, 1996

 

Fotografia de Luis Mariano Gonzáles, Noa al otro lado