The Write Thing

When are we dying? Are we dying when doctors diagnose a fatal disease, or are we already dying even when no tumors are threatening our cells with a conquest that sooner or later will happen? There is death in life. It may not be easily perceived because we still breathe, and we go about our daily chores with nonchalance, as if death could never happen to us. But it is still there, lurking.

There is too much death, or possibility of death, around me this year. I have seen a child die, and people I once knew diagnosed with serious conditions. I have even flown close to my own chance of making it to the surgery room, although it did not happen. Of course, I have also seen the death of a form of love…although I think it was more the abortion of a possibility. How frail life is! We sustain it with infatuation, work, food, trips abroad, and we think it is worth it in as much as we can keep all that circus going. Now, you scratch the surface a little, and it gets really scary. People around us are touched, regardless of their age, and there is no explanation. When a doctor comes out of an operating room telling you bad news, you really want to think that it will not happen to you because you did things differently. I don’t know, perhaps you did not eat so much fried food, or you drank less wine, or you woke up at normal hours or you simply…were lucky.

That is it. You were lucky, and it still did not happen to you. So you take the hand of the woman next to you, the one you have chosen to love, and you hold it tight, thanking life for not dying on you for real. Or you go and accept that proposition of two 30-year-old European women who simply want to have sex with you in a threesome. Or you write your blog, because it makes you happy. Or you go to bed promising yourself that you will treasure tomorrow twice as much, because now you know this is all it is about… living (or dying) day by day.

Two weekends in a row of birthday parties. First, that of a dead man whose work is universally acknowledged among the greatest in world literature. Barrio Norte, Buenos Aires. Selected crowd of guests, some of them rather prominent. My role was to accompany someone else, which is rather interesting when the milieu is foreign. It helps to create impressions and, I must confess, I sometimes can thrive on that. It is external passivity taken to the most active internalization of surroundings, people, manners, behaviors and — of course — food.

I like these gatherings where people really do not have a purpose to be there, but they are. Some were there to celebrate l’anniversaire de l’absent whereas most simply wanted to pay due homage to the hostess and continue to be in her radar. A song starts to play as the party draws to a close and the moment to cut the cake arrives: Pink Floyd’s The Wall. The man apparently liked it a lot, once more confirming — as if it were necessary — how simple literary genius can sometimes be. White cake, white frosting with a touch of coconut and dulce de leche, really good, even while I did not have any, only indulged in watching my valkyrie eat her small piece. And off we went, having mingled with a variety of characters that ranged from the most ridiculous to the most interesting (the last group, unfortunately, was rather scanty). The hostess preserves the tradition and the memory of her love for that man unblemished. He probably would have enjoyed the irony of death as he was being wined and dined in absentia.

The weekend after. Las Cañitas, my own birthday. I went through the details, the organization, and enjoyed it, for the first time in my life. I recognize my own behavior as a sign of growth. People I love and cherish, people whose friendship I value with a certainty that only deep feelings can award, were there to laugh and cheer as the day progressed into the shadow of its own cyclical renaissance, leaving me with a new definitive number from which I should be drawing a life for the next 365 days of my existence. I have plans, I am being born again into and out of myself. First inside, where it all lies. Then outside, to enjoy the world, breathe life into a wiser soul and thank the mystery of existence for shining some light along the way, and bringing her to me in her splendor. It really feels like happiness.

In a previous posting, I referred to my feelings about poetry. I have been doing a lot of thinking about that in recent days, and have been very prone to reading challenging verses in my explorations around town. It struck me that there seem to be some associations we could make between writers, even when they may have never met, or may not even come from the same countries. By this I do not mean “influential writing”, the kind Borges is known to inflict upon incautious readers. I am speaking about connections, similarities in the ways of seeing the world, or suffering it, for that matter.

The case that comes to mind today is that of Sylvia Plath and Alejandra Pizarnik. Plath (1932-1963) was born in Massachusetts, and Pizarnik (1936-1972) in Buenos Aires. I remember reading Pizarnik’s Sala de Psicopatología almost a year ago on a Saturday afternoon in Buenos Aires, as I was sitting in my balcony. Many years before, I had read Plath’s The Bell Jar and, later, one of the best poems ever written: Lady Lazarus*.

It is at some point striking (at least it was to me) how both writers approach the subject of death and suffering as worn-out souls in a world of less sensitive beings. The harshness of Pizarnik’s taboo Spanish, the sharp and cutting sounds of Plath’s monosyllables in her own inverted eulogy to everything and nothing are the meeting points of their synergy, which is particular to each of them and common to both in nature. I have read lengthy discussions on the authors’ death techniques, the repeated suicide attempts and other alleged similarities, but I do not really think those are interesting themselves. Their writing and the distinct communion of chance it holds are far more important to me in drawing a common line. I see these more as Double Vie de Véronique traits than as a mirroring reflection of mutual admiration. I ignore Plath’s or Pizarnik’s actual knowledge of one another, and it is far from relevant. The key element seems to be parallelism instead of imitation, art that emerges unique in the form of two different but resembling realities.

*If you click on the link you will be able to access the BBC website, where Plath’s own reading of the poem is posted. A “must do” if you want to enjoy a blissful moment of perfection.