I am in budapest. At the border e and I sat on the grass and what turned out to be some nettle while the buses were escorted through customs. A man with a nice smile came up to us and told me he was in love with my eyes. He gave us albanian cigarettes and chips which we so desperately needed. We got in around midnight and walked and drank and feverishly ate pizza and didn’t get to bed until 5am.
Belgrade was the most beautiful and I loved it deeply. Storm clouds coated. At the same time every day there was a gentle thunderstorm. The sky grumbled and lightening streaked and rain fell. Then the clouds would part and the sun would beat. The first night we walked alongside the river and ate Portuguese food and talked of our fathers and their harm and their love. We came across a club where there was really great live music. We danced and bummed lights by way of hand gestures and coy smiles and smoked until the show was over. There was a gallery upstairs that we had seen from the river. Its ceilings were impossibly high and we took all sorts of pictures on cameras we have yet to free them from.
The next night e and I exchanged tales of heartbreak with v and bounced around the city in search of good music. A tall Russian boy attached himself to e. He was friendly and a dj in dubai. I was moody and aloof and longed to be distracted but I couldn’t find it in me to reciprocate any advance. The thought made me sick so I danced. I made conversation with strangers and friends of friends and watched people find things to love in each other. A girl bummed a light from me and I was happy to pay my debt. It was 4am before e peeled the sweet Russian off her and we got to our apartment. I slept like a rock. We woke up 30 minutes before check out and threw our bodies in the shower and things together and parked ourselves at Mikan where we picked at warm bread and kajmac and grilled goat cheese and cherry pie and sucked down two bottles of sparkling water and the last of our cigarettes. I read and e texted. I continued to notice people in love. Girls with long hair and high cheekbones and sharp eyebrows. Skinny boys with their hair cut short. Women with lip filler and cat eyes. Men with bellies and bald spots.
We talked about descartes and our disdain for our generation’s irony and nihilism and their insistence that nothing is real, etc. Oh how violent dissociation and apathy are; it must be helped because it isolates and makes people awful and uninteresting creatures who are incapable of real connection and creation. Life is something to be felt and viscerally so. Then only is passion and care possible. Sure, I think therefore I am, but I believe what is True is what our bodies experience and the sensation we feel through them. It matters how we inhabit them. How we interact with other bodies and what wonderful and terrible things inhabit them and meld with what is wonderful and terrible in us. It is a greatest misery to be detached from one’s body, to not feel wonderful and bodily sensation. I didn’t for so long.
How bout:
I desire therefore I am. I love therefore I am. I long and swoon and my heart breaks therefore I am. I flirt therefore I am. I have addictions therefore I am. I am at the mercy of my body therefore I am. I must piss and shit and eat and sleep and cum therefore I am. I love things therefore I am. I attach to them therefore I am. I let them affect and challenge and mold me therefore I am. Other things make me gag therefore I am. I puke therefore I am. I sweat therefore I am. I cry therefore I am. I anguish therefore I am. Despair makes me howl therefore I am. I bear therefore I am. I sense therefore I am.
Last night we went to the hungarian opera and ate pasta. I wore black and e wore pink.