grave digger
Tuesday, March 30, 2004
Poem
My body is covered by the leaves of past trees
that lived for centuries and died of tiredness.
My body lies outside of me, in the dark, deep
depths of a dark, deep memory.
Thin drops of cold rain
Today, my mother called me after breakfast. "Don't worry, mom", I said. She complained about me not visiting.
I feel we work better if we are appart. We like eachother more. When we lived in the same house, we never missed eachother. Now, whenever I miss her, I sit down and I enjoyed it. It is assuring to know that, if I want, I may still reach the phone and call her.
My mother told me that my sisters called her. No news. I believe that must mean good news. Nobody was injured. Nobody divorced. Nobody died.
"So, are you comming for dinner tonight?", she asked. I didn't have to search long for the answer. I will go. I don't want to feel what I know that I will feel if I stay alone at home again.
When I got out on the street, the day was grey. Thin drops of cold rain were covering the skin of my face.
Monday, March 29, 2004
Intimacy
I look at every object you touched and I leave it untouched. I don't want to destroy the memory of gestures that you will never do again.
Maybe I should have told you the truth, but I don't know the truth.
"But for those like us, our fate is to face the world as orphans, chasing through long years the shadows of vanished parents. There is nothing for it but to try and see through our missions to the end, as best we can, for until we do so, we will be permitted no calm."
Kazuo Ishiguro, When we were orphans
. To postpone things
It is time to go home now. I don't feel like collecting all my things, like puting on my jacket and my hat. I don't feel like turning the key in the old door locker of my shelter house. I don't feel like getting in the car and driving home. I will enter and I will be all alone. I will start to miss you even more than I do now.
I will sit in the couch changing chanells in the television. For an instant, I will imagine your hands. The image of your hands will cross me like blades. I will not eat anything. I will smoke joints instead. For an instant, I will remember your voice on the phone. I will look at the phone like if it was going to ring. It will not ring.
I will not feel like going to bed. I will fall asleep in the couch.
It is time to go home now. I feel like postponing my life.
Nobody died
Nobody of the village died in the last couple of weeks. The land is soaked with all the rain from these last few days.
Most of the villagers are over sixty, but we are less and less. When I was a child there were about twenty boys and girls of my age living here. Now, there are about five or six left. All the others went to Lisbon. Some of them went to college, got married and stayed in Lisbon. Every year, in August, they come back for a few days with their packed cars, their wives and their children.
When it is not raining, I clean the graves of those that everybody forgot and I colect dead flowers left by old widows. I should take off some of the lower branches of cypresses any day soon. When it is raining, I sit by the door of my little shelter house. I imagine a lot of things while I watch the rain falling over the fields of olive-trees and cork trees that lie above the walls of the graveyard, smoking a joint and listening to "Helplessness" by Lacrimas Profundere.
Sunday, March 28, 2004
English
English is not my first language. I am not sure if english is my language at all. I always had a thing for english. I started with french on fifth grade, but I only felt that I started learning a foreign language when I started learning english in the seventh grade.
When it was time to get the grades, I was always among the best. I was always among the first ones to raise their hand everytime the teacher asked something. English was the only class in which I sat at the front rows.
Right now, writing in english, I feel that it doesn't belong me. Using it, I am someone that is almost me. I am a voice that laid unoticed amidst my voice.
It is a voice kind of thing. Your voice changes with different languages. My voice of speaking portuguese is not the same voice of speaking french. My voice of speaking english is not the same voice of speaking spanish.
I believe it also affects the style of writing, the way of thinking and seeing. It gives you a different range of vocabulary. The things you can't say are forbiden to you.
When I was a child, I would invent english words. I would mingle pieces of the words I heard on television. My sisters would laugh, would praise my inteligence and I would be happy. I believe they always thought that I would go to college and become an highschool english teacher.
Why did I choose to write these words in english? Don't ask me, I am not wise enough to answer such deep misteries.
I am the grave digger
Portugal. Probably you have heard about my country before. We are about ten milion souls wondering in south west Europe. Our ancestors have done big things in the past. But that's the past. That was centuries ago. Today, we are just a sad, small piece of land by the Atlantic ocean.
I would never write words like "Королёв", "lasagna", "sushi" or any of the kind, just to get more visitors to this website.
I live in a small village in the south interior of Portugal. No Atlantic ocean can be seen from my window. I left highschool about ten years ago. My name is Jose, but people call me by the shortened form "Ze". For a while, I tried that my friends called me "Corvo" (Crow). It didn't catch. Just Ze. Maybe I should be grateful that people don't call me anything worse.
I would never write words like "sex", "dildo", "naked courtney love", "drunken pope" or other of the kind, just to get more visitors to this web site.
I have been a goth since I was sixteen. It didn't happen from one day to the other. As I was discovering Sisters of Mercy and all kinds of goth bands, I started to give up on all coloured clothing. Today, I fail to remember the last time that I wore other than black clothing.
I would never write words like "interracial pictures", "japanese", "oi polloi", "paulo coelho" or other of the kind, just to get more visitors to this web site.
I have been working in the litle graveyard of my home village since october 2000. It just happened. The former grave digger died. I was out of job. Most my friends say it is the perfect job for me. It is the cliche. It is not my fault. I always saw myself as someone sensitive and gifted for arts. I have always imagined my future in that area of business. Slowly, I have been changing my mind. Digging graves is an important job. I take it with a sense of mission.
I would never write words like "samath", "gotmoor", "sot vokter", "tha-norr" or other of the kind, just to get more visitors to this web site.
It is not difficult to imagine that being a grave digger and having a goth lifestyle gives you deep and inspiring stories. That's what I will share with you in the next few months. I hope that you will join me in the ride. Believe me, one day someone like me will dig a hole in the dirt for someone like you.
