Arab Strap
Ten Years of Tears

THE REVIEW

Take your list. Imaginary/real/incomplete as it may be. Take it on the A. Delete. Reflect. You don't know them, but some metaphysical, unreal bond, with a menacing and, why not, in its way languid and sensual profile, ties you to them.

Stories of employees. Sometimes not even of those. Of people who live with much but need little. Your stupid coupé will never be able to give you the same emotion as her smiling, the sun's reflection, blinding yet so intense and powerful, illuminating the often dull blue of her eyes, the nothingness around you, only the constant ebb and flow of an untamed wave, the enveloping warmth of unspoiled sand, her smiling at you and unable to stop doing so. It is not just gratification. Something indefinable, yet so often so well defined by others, in a different way, that this escape seems convenient to us. Cowards even in the sweetest hour. Your destiny.

Cowards because? Unwanted children of progress? Invaders of nightclubs? You don't have the rhythm. And it will certainly be useless to wallow in self-pity on late summer evenings, it will be in vain to uncork, to toast somberly to the fates of your dead projects, buried at their inception. A serious lack, you are placed beyond the magical/economic/love circle that dominates and rules over the posed fragility of your seeming to be alive. Don't involve me. This is the rule. I will never be one of you.

You are honestly petty, filthy, a mirror of a society in decline, willing to elevate you, and I repeat, to elevate you, to slaves. The thing seems to have a positive effect among the miasmas of mechanized monotony. You have created yourself as others have created you.

I no longer remember that image. It intrigued me, even though it was not granted to me, and on the other side of the temple even you showed a certain astonishment. I didn't expect it to enchant you. You are not able, cowards, to do so! I don't remember it, and it is terribly frustrating.

You know, once I was like you. I rushed out to catch the tram (always the tram), arrived late, felt sorry for it, found comfort/further reasons for despair in the little rituals that make you men. Even if it repulses me to define you so. I recall the smell of milk left to burn on the fire, of cigarette butts I had forgotten to discard in the morning, of life slowly moving on the same track. I remember I could communicate. A great achievement, that one.

Can someone like me regret the domestic hell from which he comes? He cannot. It was offered to me as a promotion. It was a difficult time, it seemed that the world had designated me as the next victim, with the taste and sneer that executioners find in every situation, in films as in earthly/otherworldly courts. We went out, among ourselves. We slowly and irritatingly rowed our way to a derelict harbor, though with a considerable pension, and we weren't unhappy. It was written in the genetic heritage of all of us that we would retrace the footsteps of our father, and his father before him, with similar features but with dignity underfoot. On the other hand, our grandparents did not possess the marvelous technological machinery that allows everything to everyone. Now you can talk to Sydney whenever you want! Unfortunately, I don't know anyone in Sydney. Oh well, I'll buy it anyway.

After all, I'm not doing badly. I judge you and terrify you, in the name of our decades-long friendship, in the name of personal hatred for normality. How many times have you offered me shelter when it rained and only the least reliable fantasies spoke of returning home? How many times a gift, how many a wink, how many a handshake, how many a proof of our unstable union?

Higher duties awaited me. I certainly couldn't stay with you and rot with you in another nursing home with a disturbing name, get buried next to you, maybe along with a deck of cards, a flower, something to remember our old age spent peacefully together. This I hate about you. You are static. You already know, I told you. You will never be able to equal me. It was written somewhere, perhaps in your hospital cribs, that I would win.

I beg you, for the last time.

Tell me about her.