Travelling,
you realise that differences are lost: each city takes to resembling
all cities, places exchange their form, order, distances, a shapeless
dust cloud invades the continents...
– Italo Calvino
Any
progression, whether
by aeroplane or steam engine, deserves a sense of reflection.
Perhaps it is no coincidence that the two words are not quite as dissonant
as one might expect, despite their not fulfilling the demanding rigours
of poetic form. When I pass through the tunnel, when all goes
black, it is the moment before everything else—it is the moment
before language in which I learn that touch (sheltered by shadow)
is the primary instinct. It is the moment in which I mourn you
most for the fingers on my own hands are nothing like the calloused
ones on yours; the touch is an anachronism, it does not work because
we did not work.
At least this is what the sudden delve into blackness tells me.
The sudden lamp-posts emerging; the flicker of life in gas vapours
along the sidelines of the track. There was none of this; there
was none of that. I think of where I once was (wherever it is
I happen to be coming from, returning from) and where I belong—which
is not the same as my destination but which, things being as they
are, I must name as such.
How can I name something as my own when you are no longer mine?
The unsaid cry echoes through the aeroplane or the train, its cabins
bustling with what-ifs as though whatever I might cry out in the darkness—those
things I cannot say in the light of morning with another body beside
me; those things I cannot say to you in the light of day as the dead
must always have their rest—seems contagious. The others,
if there happen to be any others, shudder and jolt. It is not
because of the captain or the driver. There is actually a sudden
shift of air; no one can breathe—the sense of drowning becomes
close, closer, until we all realise that we’ve moved.
Moving does not imply anything involving possessions. It is
not the scuffling of furniture—this is yours and this is mine—along
the already-cracked wainscoting. Moving is not moving at all,
and the aeroplane and the steam engine know this as well as you and
I.
Moving is remaining stationary, keeping you harboured in the safety
of a travel valise. Moving is sensing danger, keeping you quiet
from my oppressive lover. Moving is keeping the ashes close
to me in case I happen upon a body of water that resembles the one
you saw in flames.
There will be no other. I am not sure what you want me to do
but I am absolutely certain of what it is you need. And so I
go on. The cities change their names, their languages, their
symbols, so that everything looks hieroglyphic—except for the
sensation of touch: my fingers on your cheap pine box. My heart
wrapped somewhere in that plastic bag even though I carry it through
tunnels—of night and of day—to do your bidding.
I always will. And you will it so. The sense of place
determines how I feel but I promise you, wherever you are, that it
is never different from the first moment. No. I swear.