No Worries

My pencil lost its tooth.

Just like that.

It must be terrible
to have just one tooth
and lose it
when you have so many things
to write about
and there is just one way
to stay in touch with your words,
which is your tooth.

Mom watched me close

while I was sharpening
my pencil,
and said:
„You should spread the books
on your toast
and eat them
the way you eat
your buttered toast.

Give your teeth

some hard work in this life
no matter how much money
you have to pay your dentist
to sort out your cavities.

And if you won’t be able

to make enough money
to care for your teeth,
no worries.

We are supposed to lose them,

anyway.

But never lost will be your bite

from books spread out
on buttered toast.”

People and spiders are just details

I continued my stroll along the corridor trying to recall the moment when that man seized me from the street and hauled me to the ambulance. I jogged my memory but that spot was blank. Not even a shadow or a flash of light. So I started to work on that blank spot and made up a story of my own, turning my saviour into a godly figure, godlier than Ceausescu and his Communist Kingdom, godlier than Iliescu and his Army of Miners. I imagined him carrying me away from danger wobbling on his feet and praying to God to keep me alive for one more minute. The man I just ignored earlier put his life in danger to save mine, a life of a total stranger. When had I ever done that for somebody? Never. And suddenly I remembered the day when I had stopped killing spiders. It was nothing compared to saving the life of a human being, but knowing how many spiders could have become my victims and they haven’t, made me feel that I was not totally lost.

The nurse was passing from one ward to the other turning her head often to make sure she hadn’t lost me. I was there, right behind her, thinking about spiders.

I had killed spiders since as far as I could get back in time. I had always seen them as intruders into my own space, a family of dangerous insects that populated the world just to give us a freaky feeling of threat. They were poisonous and creepy and I had killed them with pleasure. Until one day when I came across the father of all spiders. I saw it from the distance, a dominant presence within a hole in the fence working hard to finish up one of the most mysterious works of architecture I had ever witnessed with my naked eye: the birth of a cobweb. I watched the entire process for long minutes, and the more I did, the more I wanted to understand how that was possible. How come a tiny insect like that could be capable of creating such an awesome feat of engineering? The conclusion was simple: They were populating the world to inspire us. Their silent presence sent us a subtle message that each and every one of us can create something awesome. Each of us has a true talent that waits to be revealed, a talent that makes us special and unique in this world.

That day when I parted with the spider I felt useless, guilty and ashamed. Was there anything as clever, mysterious and accurate that I could create so I could compete with the skills of that insect? No. So how could I dare to crush it under my foot like you crash a cigarette butt and even get satisfaction out of that? It passed years since I watched that spider spinning its web and every time I come across one that lands on my hand or in my hair, I always do the same. I take it in my palm and let it drop in a safe place hoping that one day a child will see it at work and get as exhilarated as I was once by the mystery behind his work.

We probably save each other’s lives not because we know or love each other, but for a reason as simple as keeping this mystery alive. We are here to continue something that has no beginning and no end and we do that together, humans, insects and beasts, competing in an eternal present in which things are happening purely to reveal an amazing but terrifying potential, which is nothing else but our drive to show each other what a wonderful world we can create together. That day as I trotted lightly behind my nurse I decided that working at increasing our potential was central to the reason why we were all here. People, spiders, and all the rest were just details.

If the Earth goes Bang!

I stopped by the window and watched the people in the street. What floor was that? Fifth? Sixth? From where I was I could only see men in motion with their cars in motion and mums in motion with their prams in motion, all of them keeping the world in motion. Why everybody had to keep moving? What was so important in keeping all these things in motion? Hundreds of people were populating that street, each one of them a bundle of worries, false expectations and unachievable dreams, all of them in motion.

Streets like that were all over the world. Interconnected. A huge network of ceaseless action. What if one day the Earth would go Bang!? A sudden explosion and all of us would end up into a cloud of dust. Would anybody be left in this Universe to receive this news with a bit of regret or a tinge of compassion? Would it be anybody to say: “Oh shit, we lost the people on Earth! We lost that beautiful planet! Four billion years of activity, of motion, of hopes and expectations, and they are all gone, turned into dust.’ Would it be anybody to say that? I mean anybody to keep a picture of us, to write an article about us, to lower the flags to half mast in our memory?

I raised my eyes to the sky. ‘Hello! Is it anybody out there to give a damn about us?’ Nietzche said that in heaven all the interesting people are missing and I suddenly went sad. It meant that waiting for a decent answer to my question was just time lost. The sky was heavy with rain and through that thick curtain of clouds I didn’t expect anybody to see me, interesting or not. Down in the street the mums and dads and prams and cars continued to stay in motion against all odds.

I rolled back my sleeves and looked at my bruises. They were the shape of broken egg yolks but in a totally different colour, a sort of aubergine verging into green. I couldn’t believe that such a thing just happened to us in a country where just six month ago we all agreed to start everything anew. The hospital was full of people like me who were tied to beds and connected to drips, some of us walking with crutches, some others pushed in wheelchairs, hoping that one day we’d get back home as healthy as we left it. We were all recovering from a terrifying experience in which our historic miners who worked hard for a living and made good neighbours in their community, fathers with families and kids, turned into criminals. They ran amok the city and beat people to death, innocent people who went out in the streets to protest against false promises. They pillaged and ransacked the main offices of our new political parties determined to inhibit our taste for democracy. They did it for Miron Cosma, their leader, and Cosma did it for Iliescu, the Architect, who found in Cosma the perfect ally in the fight to consolidate his power. I was still standing there in the window asking myself: Were we all rising up to that level of merit to fully deserve being fondly remembered in case that the Earth went Bang!?