I HAVE ALREADY SEEN THIS PLACE…

by JAN DEVETAK

I have already seen this place, but it was in another place.
I’m in love.
I persevere in taking trains, “metal caterpillars.” I feel like I’m in the eye of a storm at night, when I have to fall asleep.
Because I have to fall asleep.
Last night I couldn’t sleep.
A strong sense of restlessness prevented me from doing so… A few hours before I found myself at home, I passed through an internal courtyard that I hadn’t seen for years. In cinema it’s called double exposure: “a technique in which two different images or shots are imprinted on the same portion of film or on the same frame.” I imagined myself there at that moment, arriving, and the me of years before leaving. It always happens, in places: they are containers of life.
In the house in Gorizia, where I grew up, I went through everything. Sometimes the exposure is not double, but multiple: it is the noisy, glowing whole of all the moments ever lived.
That same door.
Those same stairs.
The column in the middle of the living room.
My parents’ bed.
The window overlooking that same magnolia. Then all the corners of the house that have been rearranged over time and of which over time I forget the ancient image.
“I feel nostalgic for my room as it was before, for a space that still exists and at the same time is no longer there.”
I’m in love. I finally understand myself: I need to try everything at the same time. Of strong emotions, so strong that they make me overflow.
This same body.
I am in love with life. Do you ever think about it, how much life awaits us?
I find myself having dinner with a couple of friends and three people to whom I have just introduced myself.
I find myself telling about Gorizia. I explain to them the splendid paradox of a border: a flint-space. The line that separates two states but that passes through a single square. The differences that create wealth: it’s not rhetoric, I really think so. And in my story, transported, I find myself enjoying the term: provincial, at the edges.
«My Gorizie,» a concept that I metabolized by leaving. »Moje Gorice,« or the places I love and where I feel at home. Even if far from the origins.
Metal caterpillars.
I often return to a story of my father’s, a dream he had and which he took care to note: »Bila sva ti in jaz. Bil si otrok, imel si pet ali šest let. Hodila sva v temi, ponoči ali skozi tunel. Ni mi znano kam.
Naenkrat se je za nama pojavil volk. Črn, shiran. Oči so mu bile zalite s krvjo. Imel je dolg gobec, spodnja čeljust je bila napol odtrgana in je visela.
Približal se je. Ko je bil na tem, da me bo napadel, si se spremenil v psa, čisto majhnega psa, in se postavil med nama, da bi me zaščitil. Zarenčal si in meril na njegovo odtrgano čeljust. Definitivno bi mu jo odtrgal, če bi me naskočil in poskušal zariti vame svoje čekane.
Volk je odnehal, nekoliko nazadoval in se spremenil v kovček, star kovček s koleści, in naju še naprej z razdalje zasledoval.
Ko je bila nevarnost navidez mimo, si se spet spremenil v jana in hodil ob meni. A za kratek čas. Volk je znova šel v napad, ti pa si se znova spremenil … Tako znova in znova, v neskončnost.
Spomin na sanje ima danes konsistenco animirane risanke, a ni zato nič manj strašljiv in istočasno tolažljiv kot tisto noč, ko sem te sanje izsanjal.«
I dedicate it to Z, because when I met his human, I had no idea how to relate to a little Maltese. Yet time passes and binds us, inevitably: I have been tormented, recently, to know that she is sick. From there I developed a thought that I write about later in this same text, about love that passes from one connection to another, that transforms.
Cut: sometimes I have the tendency, for some annoying, to stare at people on public transport.
Once, a stroller, with a child inside, asks her mother why an elderly woman walks so slowly.
Another time I wonder if my grandfather and I, if my grandmother and I, look at the same clock with different eyes.
That time I stop to think: I’ve seen this place before, but it was in another place. “And did you know that all things with a name don’t die?” (Or was it the other way around? Now I don’t remember.)
Cracks on the asphalt, as we talk. Then the interior of a bar, the coffee machine that would need maintenance. Was there a time when everything was new? A time when all the first times were possible, right?.. Now I’m more fascinated by the last ones.
I love repeating the same gestures, dialogues and itineraries with different people. Bringing them and finding them in the same places, leading them into similar situations and creating analogies between my yesterday and today. It’s a game, a manipulation… It’s how it should be: leaving the house at dawn and returning, even days later, at sunset. Because all cyclical things are the same.
I recently downloaded a weather forecast app. At the same time, I bought an umbrella. I started ironing my shirts again. I keep accurate track of the expenses I make.
Fortunately, I still can’t get train tickets in advance… The smell outside the house, now that it has just rained, I associate it with the smell of when it is about to rain.
To my parents, who gave me everything. To that love so simple and total that I don’t write about, because it doesn’t even define itself.
Love passes from mother, father to daughter, son, from granddaughter to grandmother, grandfather and vice versa. It passes from friends to friends, from lovers to lovers. It passes from those who raised us to those who will raise us, from those who taught us to love to those we will love. And so it continues, from person to person, until I tell my son that the failure of a generation is actually the failure of fathers. I will say that the failure of a generation does not exist…
When I got that call, I was in another city (which is home now), in another life (which is my life now). »Moje Gorice«: Even before I answered, I knew that it would never be the same afterwards. And, even though I was prepared, I wasn’t ready for the broken voice on the other side of the phone, because I heard it so rarely… »Sedaj smo malo več sami,« Dad begins: «Now we are a little more alone.»
Noni in Nonotu.
V naši družini ni nič nenavadnega, če se kdo ukvarja s pisanjem.
Zame je to običajno konjiček, včasih prava potreba: v trenutkih, ko mi glava podivja od vseh konceptov in idej, ki jih moram nemudoma preliti na papir.
Večinoma pozabim, kar sem si želel zapisati. Kaj potem ostane? Nocoj ne morem zaspati.
Čutim močan nemir … Pred nekaj urami sem se znašel na notranjem dvorišču, ki ga že leta nisem videl. Tam se za trenutek ustavim, nato pa se vrnem domov.
Končno se soočim s praznim listom. Na papir izbruhnem vtise in občutke, ki so se vame nabrali v zadnjem času, v upanju, da me bodo bralci razumeli … Včasih, ko neham misliti, sta zame kraj in čas eno in isto, hkrati.
Writing is tiring. Feeling is also tiring, but in a different way. (Odločim se, da bo besedilo dvojezično, kot moje otroštvo.)
Writing requires care. My mind, on the other hand, wanders madly, instinctively: it is as if everything I have put down on paper so far has been the result of a single moment: the one that has just passed.
It’s the first day of a new autumn, I smile at a passer-by who I’ll probably never see again.
When I look down on myself, I love the change of perspective. When I think of the most intense moments of my life, I think of the trains I took, never the missed ones. Finally, when I watch Z’s scar heal, I think, “This same body.”