"Things are more like they are now then they ever were", someone clever said after The Big War.
I saw Mark shortly after Xmas in Thirsty Garry's. He pushed a simple truth brewing in me to the surface. Having seen Maria at Xmas, seeing her not seeing me was pushing me over the edge more nights since then than I care to remember. I was doing my daily Hejiras to TG like always but was getting happier and happier.
That was not good, because after she broke every contact with me it slowly became obvious to me that I can not be happy anymore without becoming aware just how unhappy I was. And I was getting happier all the time. I was going out of control.
"You're playing with fire", Maria said one of the first times I was in TG, dancing. She was playing pool. So what? I like playing with fire, I just try not to get burned too much. Boy, did I get burned since then!
"It's no problem here, Sinisa, just don't do it elsewhere", one of the two Prophets always present in TG would say to me, after I'd come the next day and apologise for my behaviour.
It wasn't serious misbehaviour, but eventually after I'd carress the loudspeaker pretending it was Maria and I was dancing with Her, I'd eventually start walking quickly and nervously around the place, on one occasion hitting the wall with my foot. I shaved my head after Xmas, to mark the new beginning, the New Year. I put my hair in a plastic bag with a "Grace" CD from Jeff Buckley and left it in TG hoping it would reach Maria. She always liked my body hair. It's delisios, she would say just like that, "it's so soft, I have to call my mother and tell her what has she been missing!" On two or three occasions I'd get out and thrash my bag against the wall, the ground, anything. I've damaged several books that way and once I forgot I had my laptop charger in the bag. The new one cost me 80 euros, few days before my laptop got stolen.
Now, Mark and me, we don't really know each other. I have a generally good opinion about him and he has (I believe) more or less good opinion of me. He's a short, strong fellow, always wearing a black pull-over wool cap. But somehow, when he looks at you with his small Richard Gere eyes, you know he means bussiness.
Opinions are like assholes, everybody's got one. He was talking nonsense, that I'm a butcher from the Balkans, that I hate myself, that Maria can not come to TG because she can only go there if escorted by police and blah blah blah. Such bullshit.
I am my own butcher. "I don't hate myself", I told him - "You don't know me", I added Maria's popular refrain.
But Mark is clever, he burried the simple truth in that dirt so that I would have to find it and see it shining at me: he said I was making other people unhappy with my own unhappiness. Now, that got to me, I Saw It.
I think on a subconscious level I wanted to be banned from TG, my only regular safe refuge, my only real home in Rotterdam. If I wasn't there maybe Maria would start going there again. TG must be even more important to her than it is to me, she was working there six years, knows everybody. Everybody loves Maria. Anybody loves Maria. My body and soul are acheing from Emptiness, from the void she left in me.
It's better now. I'll start working again soon, Maria's reportedly staying in NL and she can work again, also. She's happy with her ex-ex. I'm trying to be happy for both of them.
Now I usually manage leaving Thirsty Garry's before I break into tears. I cannot live without that place, it's the closest I ever come being in Maria's presence. From Her to Eternity...
Post je objavljen 09.02.2008. u 10:49 sati.