Ihave twenty-four minutes to write a poem and leave the house.
As I wrote the header and that first line, my time was reduced to twenty-two minutes.
Twenty-two minutes to leave my bed, get dressed, tame my hair, put on my shoes, lose my keys, find my keys, get in my car and drive away.
Twenty minutes. I've been writing for six minutes. So much has happened in six minutes and I haven't even left my bed. My toes are still in the same position they were six minutes ago.
I feel the weight of my existence is too much for this hour, but I can't forget that everyone else in the world is going about their day, and their existence is probably a lot heavier than my own.
In the six minutes I've been awake, lives have started, and ended. Lives continue. Lives drag on.
I have it easy.
In the moments before my eyes opened, my biggest worry was whether or not I'll see you today, and whether or not you'll notice me.
I wonder how you'll greet me, if you´ll hug me. I wonder how much time will pass between when I first see you and when you finally approach me.
There are wars going on, and there are people imprisoned for standing up for what they believe in.
I'm not a stranger to this world where horrible things happen. I'm very much a part of it.
Oscar López Rivera spoke to me on the phone and I told him I study Literature.
He's been locked up in a gray cell for thirty-three years and I stared at the ocean telling him I study Literature. The most useless of all the useless subjects.
After four years (probably more) I'll have a degree in reading the bullshit others produce, and making up my own bullshit about it, pretending I know anything about the bullshit inside the writer's head. I'll have a degree in comparing bullshit from different eras, different places, different languages, different types of bullshit.
But in the end it's still bullshit.
Beautiful bullshit.
Bullshit that I love.
I try to think of that love as the redeeming quality of my useless major.
Because maybe if the people killing, and the people fighting while I wrote this piece worried a little bit more about what they love, things wouldn't be so bad. Maybe the little useless things we worry about are what make our existence a little bit lighter.
I worry about a tall boy with an infectious laugh and a useless major consisting of studying the infinite combinations of the same twenty-six letters. I worry about this because it's what I love.
It's been twenty-three minutes.
Lista de imágenes:
1. Maëlle Doliveux, "Writing fear", 2014.
2. Maëlle Doliveux, "Jealousy", 2014.
3. Maëlle Doliveux, "Compassion", 2014.
