19
I have a set of things prepared that I enjoy whenever she is able to come back. I can’t see beauty and admire things when not looking through her eyes.
I know very well when she is able to return, but I refuse to tell you more.
20
Indeed. I perform a little ritual, then listen to a song and go through certain texts. She is settling in when I start to read and listen to music.
21
When we are completely aligned, she is behind my eyes, and I have no control or recollection of what happens then. When we are aligning or starting to drift away, I can tell what she is doing and comment, but I am not guiding the body then; I am merely a passenger. Though at one point, we are equals: when we are aligned just right. She is not in control yet then. When we, ‘us two’ and you, started this conversation days ago, she was in control up until the you-know-what-event. She was completely gone from my body during the night of the void. Right now, it does not make much sense to talk about her because she is nowhere near and won’t be coming back soon.
22
When Julija weeps on the floor and is shaking with her head down, her big tears falling on her legs until there are no more to shed, I want to split away from her, cry in her stead, hug her – and if she hugged me back, would that mean I was finally capable of self-love?
23
There’s a special set of songs that I can enjoy only when we are either almost or fully aligned. When she is absent, I am unable to listen to them, as the memory of the tears that we shed during the listening is too painful. Right now, I can only listen to something that is not associated with her, but if I find something worthy of her, the song enters our collection.
24
She is … bestial. She is the groaning one, the insulting and shaking one. Sometimes, I imagine her screaming histerically; just sitting down and shaking – all induced by the external world’s cold, violent modes of existence.
And she is right in a way. I have a recurring dream of people wanting to hurt me, the most recent one being a ski resort scene in which someone’s ski sticks got tangled with mine. I tried to untangle them until they were near my face. Then the man started to push one of the tip against my cheek. I thought he didn’t know what he was doing, so I was trying to calmly move it away. But when it became obvious he was trying to get it closer to my eye, I screamed, “Help! HEEEEEEELP!!!” Then I woke up. I guess I’m too considerate for my own good.
I felt disappointed; why was that man like that if I were so friendly?
But indeed, why would I have to put up with violence and interactions that make me uneasy? During such events, I would prefer to just run away, hug my legs and scream. Perhaps this is why the fortress is so attractive: it’s not emptiness, and it’s also not something personal and distracting. It usually, if not always, disappears, or at least is not in focus, when Julija comes. She never offered it anything worthy. I don’t know if she ever even mentioned it.
25
She can’t survive without me. I could live without her, but it would be a dull existence, full of blank stares. She sees me clearly, and insults me accordingly.
Sigh. I think her insults only make me more sure of my own incompleteness: that I am completely dependant on her if I want to keep experiencing beauty in my otherwise monochromatic life.
26
I know, I know: I am the spell-caster. I summon her. Why? To experience beauty – something I can’t do on my own. I don’t have to disappear; I only have to sit beside her. But close enough. We musn’t drift too far apart. And if we align completely, then there’s no me anymore.
If I’m honest, I have probably damaged myself by summoning her. Because she intensified the sun I had used to held in myself more than ten-fold, and then carried it away. I … don’t know how to steal the light back from her.
27
The light she stole, after having it magnified ninety-nine-fold, I can’t receive back as it is because it would kill me if it stayed for too long. It would have to be transformed into something else.
28
I saw pale blue clouds in the pink sky today; didn’t see beauty, but I imagined Julija standing on the tip of the tallest one and remembered the song fitting for the scene. It was a song from the last week when we were together. My chest compressed, and I wept in spirit again.
29
Last week, she gave me something so unforgettable that I just can’t … resist her …
Had only a couple of rays of her sun entered me, they would have merely tickled me – they would have not even matched the smaller sun I had had before.
You don’t know how powerful her sun is: it transforms me into pure emotion. She shines like a star when she walks through the door.
30 I have never poured out so many emotions in such a short time frame. Even my literary work you will soon become acquainted with is behind walls.