Today, and: Substitution, and: In the Stairwell

Abstract

Today Today I wanted to buy shoes, a person must take care of himself: everything depends on that. Although I find it hard to believe, each passerby in the street is hungry and naked under a coat of worry, each one of them a windmill whose blades turn endlessly around itself. See how the beavers build their dams with such small hands, their lips moving voicelessly above the water as if they were counting money or praying. Look at the bees' financial ballet - hot from sun and sap, tiny envelopes in motion in the post office of hunger. [End Page 61] The earth hums and dances like a simmering stew. Tired, I want to sit on the edge of the world, to go on strike. But I continue onward so no one will see the short distance between me and the homeless, between them and the pull of the floor, a divider thinner than skin, and it's only that they have a bigger imagination or sense of the future. Watch out, Nurit, I say to myself, only the dead have less ability to care for themselves, and you can imagine how they look when they're being removed, slowly or quickly, like swept leaves, or eyelashes closing in on a lack of talent for living. Substitution You can't go on living without the art of substitution. Mud replaces water and so the forest grows. To substitute for yourself means to stop living: once again I lose my love, once again I buy a dog. In this way I've had more than one dog and more than one house, not to speak of umbrellas. How can I live; will I find another love? If only each thing could substitute for itself. The new dog's eyes are glued to me as if it weren't possible to part or abandon. I have a friend who waited 24 hours for her lover's train until the world counted its way onward. [End Page 62] Houses are loyal to themselves until they crumble. Now I understand why those who believe in lies die for their religion. Whoever thinks like that will never improve on the art of substitution. I tell myself: put your foot forward into the impossible. In the Stairwell In the stairwell eaten by the sea, walls yellowed by the groping hands of night tenants, she doesn't believe she's made of more than tin or paper, hasn't been born yet, or has belonged to the walking dead for a long time now. The young woman climbs up behind the wall of the man's back and doesn't know what chills her more, guilt or effort; she's a stone that needs to be warmed in cupped hands with puffs of breath to return to life and all this without believing in miracles. On the spotted mattress against the outlines of other people's sleep, opposite the window covered by a lopsided curtain, and afterwards, at the broken marble sink: she examines her image in the mirror uncertainly for what's missing or added. He hurries her, washed clean of the scent that might give him away; he hurries from diversion to the main road. At the edge of the tunnel between the houses, a moment before longing, [End Page 63] she suddenly sees, deeper than blue, a color that turns into air, into water, beyond her imagining, there it is, since the days of the Greeks arriving from the vast continent, forgetting themselves in a cry: Thalassa, Thalassa, Thalassa.