Four Unrelated Things

Sometimes I like to do this

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash, rendered black & white by me

One

In Clarice Lispector’s Near to the Wild Heart, little Joana asks “What do you get when you become happy?” after her teacher finishes reading a story to the class ending with “And he and his whole family lived happily ever after”. “Once you’re happy what happens? What comes next?” and “Being happy is for what?”, Joana elaborates. She gets no answer, and the class is sent off to recess. Later on that same day, the teacher calls Joana into his office and says “Get a piece of paper, write down that question that you asked me today and put it away for a long time. When you are big, read it again. Who knows? Maybe one day you’ll be able to answer it yourself somehow.” 

This whole scene takes about a page and a half, and I’ve returned to it so many times that it's all stained and worn out. It gives me comfort to read and reread it. Sometimes I encounter thoughts that are too organic to articulate, so I photograph them instead. I try to perceive what they are about by creating an image and observing its colors, light, focus, composition. Among the thoughts I cannot articulate, some I cannot even photograph. Like, anything about happiness or other mysterious, ephemeral, elusive themes. 

Joana’s questions are simple and real. They produce a photo of her thoughts and write a clear caption underneath. They do something I’m incapable of doing. And the mere act of getting access to them gives me comfort. When I read and reread that page and a half, I don’t try to come up with answers. I’m just amazed at the beauty of the questions. Deep and legitimate in their simplicity. Coming up with them is like giving a voice to thoughts that I have, but don’t know about.

What do you get when you become happy? I think Joana’s teacher is right: happiness reveals itself in retrospect. 

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Two

I twirl my hair when I’ve got some thinking to do. The deeper the thinking, the harder the twirling. It's more than a habit, almost an obsession. When I try to concentrate, I twirl. When I try to read without losing attention or skipping words, I twirl. When I listen to someone speak and I'm interested, I twirl. This is my thing: I twirl my hair. I've been doing it forever. Mom says that, as a baby, I'd try and reach out to the hair of those who'd hold me. 

And of course I have my favorite lock to twirl. It varies, but for the most part it's one on my head's left side, as I like to twirl with my left hand. Cause I'm right-handed, and so I do whatever I do with my right hand, while I twirl with my left hand. There are moments when I realize I've twirled too much, and the lock has almost turned into a piece of straw. There, I stop, and shuffle my hair to let it go back to a normal state.

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Three

When I read a book by a native English speaker, I read it in English. When the author’s native language isn’t English, I read it in Italian. I tried to read a few French authors in French, but that’s a language I’m out of shape with. If you don’t use it, a language is like a body -- it gets out of shape. I didn’t know you read French, asked a member of my writing group. 

I studied French in school, a little. My teacher wasn’t really the best, but I did study it for a while. She was overly preoccupied with teaching us all the grammar rules and their exceptions (French grammar is full of exceptions), and we ended up knowing them all, but not being able to have a conversation. 

More importantly, I had a French girlfriend many years ago. One day, as a joke, she slid a ring onto my finger, shouting 'I'm marrying you!', and the ring wouldn't come off. We tried in every way, but it wouldn't come off. I wore that ring on my finger for days, until one afternoon, we entered a ring store somewhere in Paris, near Beaubourg, and after various attempts, they had to saw it off. The ring, not the finger. Anyways, back then my French got pretty good. But I lost it all. Or almost all.

Even if you don’t understand every single word, when you read a book in a foreign language you shouldn’t stop to look up things. You should learn to go with the flow and let the sense of the story come at you, or pull you in. Yes, you can go back and look up that word you have no idea about, but you can do it later, for your own sake. 

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Four

Browsing on Instagram a few days ago, I stumbled upon a photo of Washington DC from above, with a march of thousands of people for Palestine. There was a huge Palestinian flag floating on top of the crowd. In Washington DC, the heart of US politics, the epicenter of mainstream opinion lies. 

I went to the comments section, and got emotional. Hundreds of comments about how beautiful it was to march for this noble cause, others from near and far cities saying they had their march too, there, or they will have one in the next few days or hours. All comments were for Palestine, all so genuinely supportive. There wasn't a single one against Israel. And so I thought that this was beautiful, and I almost cried. 

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