Everything changes.
Somehow, as I’m getting older and have experienced more changes in my life, this reality is touching me deeper.

Where I’m walking is a patch of land that was a field after it was something wilder. Then it got the purpose ‘building land’, and idyllic sketches of a neighborhood with modern homes, a playground and people walking hand in n hand have adorned the local newspapers. But they didn’t build just yet, and so the wilderness took over again. Rare and common birds sing their songs, small beaches in the already brought in white sand with green trees and yellow flowers everywhere.

For now.

A few days ago a friend wrote that out favorite spot in a local forest disappeared because of harvesting of trees. No more dragon flies at a secret lake.

It’s not the first time. Many places in ‘my’ forests changed. People moved. Farms got torn down and newer buildings came into their place. No more cattle.

Kids grow up. My hair gets grey. Skin gets rough. Friendships come and go. Partners and lovers come and go. The work I do now, the message I bring now, isn’t the same as five years ago.

What remains?

Passion.

Passion remains. The desire to live, breathe and make changes.

That being lonely aged mocks humans very cruelly

Francesca Melandri (born Rome, 1964) is an Italian novelist, screenwriter, and documentary filmmaker. She was the recipient of the Rapallo Carige Prize for Più alto del mare in 2012.

"Letter to the French from their future"

I am writing to you from Italy, so I am writing to you from your future. We are now where you will be in a few days. The curves of the epidemic show us embraced in a parallel dance in which we find ourselves a few steps ahead of you on the timeline, just as Wuhan was compared to us a few weeks ago. We see that you behave as we have behaved. You have the same discussions that we had a short time ago, between those who still say "all of this for just the flu," and those who have already understood. From here, from your future, we know, for example, that when they tell you to stay confined to your home, some will quote Foucault, then Hobbes. But soon you will have other things to do. Mostly, you will eat. And not just because cooking is one of the few things you can do. Groups will appear on social networks suggesting how to spend your time productively; you will subscribe to them all, and after a few days you won't be able to take it anymore. You'll pull out The Plague by Camus, but won't really feel like reading it.

You will eat again.

You will sleep poorly.

You will wonder about the future of democracy.

You will have an irresistible social life, between aperitifs on instant messaging, group meetings on Zoom, dinners on Skype.

You will miss your grown-up children like never before, and you will have an awful feeling in your stomach when you realize that, for the first time since they left home, you have no idea when you will see them again.

Old disputes and antipathies will seem unimportant. You will call people you swore you'd never see again to ask how they're doing.

Many women will be battered in their homes.

You will wonder how it is for those who cannot stay at home because they do not have a home.

You will feel unsafe when you go shopping in empty streets, especially if you are a woman. You will wonder if this is how societies collapse, if it really happens this quickly; you will tell yourself not to have such thoughts.

You will go home, and you will eat. You will gain weight.

You will search the Internet for fitness videos.

You will laugh, you will laugh a lot. The humour will come out dark, sarcastic, depressing.

Even those who always take everything seriously will be fully aware of the absurdity of life.

You will arrange to meet friends in the lines outside stores, to see them in person - but at a safe distance.

You will become aware of everything you don't need.

The true nature of the people around you will be revealed: some will surprise you, others won't.

Intellectuals who had until yesterday pontificated on everything will have nothing to say and disappear from the media; some will take refuge in intelligent abstractions, but lacking the least bit of empathy, so you will stop listening to them. On the other hand, people you had underestimated will prove to be pragmatic, reassuring, solid, generous, clairvoyant.

Those who present this as an opportunity for planetary rebirth will broaden your perspective, but will annoy you as well: yes, the planet is breathing thanks to reduced CO2 emissions, but, at the end of the month, how are you going to pay your gas and electricity bills? You won't understand if witnessing the birth of the world of the future is something grand, or something awful.

You will make music on your balconies. When you watched videos of us singing opera, you thought “ah! Italians!”, but we know that you too will sing the Marseillaise. And when you too start belting out "I will survive", we will watch you, understandingly, just as the people in Wuhan, who sang on their balconies in February, watched us.

Many will fall asleep swearing that the first thing they'll do when they get out will be to get a divorce. Many children will be conceived.

Your children will take classes on-line, and will be unbearable. The elderly will defy you, like teenagers; you will have to argue with them to prevent from going outside, catching the virus, and dying.

You will try not to think about those who are dying alone in the hospitals.

You will want to throw roses at health care workers.

You will hear that society is united in a common effort, and that you are all in this together. It will be true. This experience will forever change your perception of people. But social class makes a difference. Being stuck in a house with a patio and a garden is not the same as being stuck in over-crowded public housing. And being able to work from home is not the same as losing one's job. The "same boat" in which you all travel to fight the epidemic will not be the same for all, because it isn't and has never been.

At some point, you will realize that all of this is really hard.

You will be afraid. You will talk about your fears to those who are close to you, or you will keep your anxiety to yourself, so that they will not have to bear it. You will eat again.

This is what we are telling you from Italy about your future. But it is a prophecy of just a few days around the corner. If we look to the distant future, the one unknown to you and unknown to us, then we can tell you only one thing: when everything is finished, the world will no longer be what it was.

© Francesca Melandri - Published in Liberation on March 19, 2020 - Translated from French by Google Translate and a human

Let there be spaces in your togetherness
…stand together, yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.

friends

We all have those friends who know everything about us. They know what we are going through and are always there to lend a helping hand or even an ear to listen to our problems. But in cases like almost relationships, these friends don’t really understand our troubles. Why is that? It is because they are used to seeing that on and off thing you have with your “almost partner”. They believe that it’s a temporary break and that you two will get back eventually. They cannot understand the fact that maybe it was never meant to be. Your friend will keep on giving you hope about a possibility to be in a relationship with that person. They try to make you optimistic. However this same optimism pushes you further back into believing that things might change. You don’t get over that person because you hope that may be things will turn out differently.

स्तब्ध शब्द...

स्तब्ध शब्द...
`भाषा कधी मरत नाही... ती मारली जाते’... भाषातज्ज्ञ डॉ. गणेश देवी यांचं हे वाक्य. खूप दिवस मनाच्या गाभ्यात घुमत राहील, असं... आजवर अनेक भाषा अशाच मारल्या गेल्या. काही अजूनही तरल्या आहेत. कारण भाषेचं मरण असं, अचानक होत नसतं. ते मरण पर्वतासारखं, हळूहळू असतं. आधी आजूबाजूचे दगडधोंडे अदृश्य होतात, मग माती दूर होऊ लागते.. असं दीर्घकाळ चालतं, आणि ते इतकं सवयीचं होऊन जातं, की डोळ्यादेखत एखादा पर्वत नष्ट झाला तरी ते लक्षातही येत नाही. हे झालं नैसर्गिक प्रक्रियेच्या बाबतीत! पण काही वेळा, कृत्रिमरीत्याही हे घडवलं जातं.
डॉ. देवी यांचं भाषामरणाचं हे विश्लेषण वाचतानाही, पर्वताच्या मृत्यूपर्वाची कल्पना डोळ्यासमोर तरळू लागते. मुंबईच्या आसपास पर्वताच्या काही लहानमोठ्या रांगा बघितल्याचं अनेकांना आठवत असेल. त्यावर अनेकांनी आपल्या बालपणातलं एखादं पिकनिकदेखील केलं असेल. त्या वाटेवरून आज जाताना, सहज नजर त्या ठिकाणी गेली, तर काहीतरी चुकल्यासारखंही वाटतं. अशा काही रांगा, डोळ्यादेखत नष्ट झाल्यात... त्या डोंगरांतल्या जंगलात पूर्वी जंगली प्राणीही आढळायचे. वांद्र्याच्या कुठल्याश्या डोंगरावरची कोल्हेकुई म्हणे, संध्याकाळच्या नीरव वेळी खालच्या वस्तीत स्पष्ट ऐकू यायची. आता हे सारं काल्पनिक वाटतं, कारण ते सारं स्पष्ट अनुभवलेली एक डोंगराएवढी पिढीही आता त्या काळाआड गेलेल्या डोंगरांसारखीच होत चालली आहे... पवईच्या तलावात आपलं प्रतिबिंब पाहणाऱ्या डोंगररांगा अगदी कालपरवापर्यंत अनेकांना आठवत असतील... आता तिथून जातायेताना, कधीतरी त्यांची आठवण आली, की तिथल्या भरभराटी नागरीकरणाचं कौतुक करावं, की भुईसपाट झालेल्या त्या रांगांसाठी डोळ्याच्या कडा ओल्या करून घ्याव्यात, हेच समजत नाही... ... मग, पर्वताचा मृत्यूदेखील जिथे नैसर्गिक राहिलेला नाही, तिथे भाषांच्या आयुष्याचा भरवसा कोण देणार, असं उगीचच वाटत राहातं. ...
दिल्लीत एका १६ डिसेंबरला झालेल्या बलात्काराच्या निर्दयी घटनेनंतर देशात संतापाचा उद्रेक झाला. त्या आरोपींना फाशीची शिक्षा सुनावली गेली, तेव्हा, असे गुन्हे करण्याची आता कुणाची हिंमत होणार नाही अशी स्वाभाविक प्रतिक्रिया उमटली. पण त्यानंतरही सामूहिक बलात्काराच्या बातम्या सुन्न करतच आहेत. असं जेव्हा होतं, तेव्हा या प्रकारांबद्दल प्रतिक्रिया व्यक्त व्हायला, 'शब्द सापडत नाही'. शब्द अपुरे पडतात...
अशा वेळी भाषेच्या भविष्याची उगीचच चिंताही वाटू लागते. अशा घटनांचा आणि भाषेच्या भविष्याचा तसा काहीच संबंध नसला, तरी! व्यक्त व्हायला, शब्द शोधावे लागणं, हे भाषेच्या समृद्धीला ओहोटी लागण्यासारखंच आहे, असं वाटू लागतं..
...हा विचार मनात आला, तेव्हा मला एक जुना किस्सा आठवला. गावाकडच्या एका वकिलाचा. त्यांचं ऑफिस घरातच होतं. कोर्ट, चालत जायच्या अंतरावर... वकील सज्जन, आणि संस्कृतीची शिकवण पाळणारे. आपलं पाऊल कधी वेडंवाकडं पडू नये, याची काळजी घेणारे. त्यामुळे, आपल्या व्यवसायाचीही कधीकधी त्यांना चीड येतच असे. घराबाहेर पडून कोर्टात जाईपर्यंतचा रस्ता, आडव्यातिडव्या वळणावळणांचा... पण वकील महाशयांनी मात्र, आपल्या सोयीचा एक मार्ग निवडलेला. त्या रस्त्यावरचं कुठलंही डावीकडचं वळण घ्यायला लागू नये, म्हणून... फक्त, कोर्टाच्या प्रवेशद्वारातून आत शिरताना त्यांना डावीकडे वळावंच लागायचं. पण ते त्यांनी स्वतःहून स्वीकारलेलं होतं. या साऱ्यामागचं कारण, सरसकटपणे समजणारं नव्हतंच. जवळचा रस्ता सोडून, वेड्यावाकड्या रस्त्यानं ते कोर्टात का जातात, हे त्यांच्या अशीलांनाही कोडं असायचं. एकदा त्यांनी कुणाला तरी हे कारण सांगितलं. रस्त्यावरच्या कुठल्याही वळणावर, डावीकडे वळायची वेळ येऊ नये, म्हणून आपण हा रस्ता निवडला, असं ते म्हणाले. कारण, त्यांच्या डोक्यात, वाममार्गाची कल्पना घट्ट रुतलेली होती. वाममार्गाला जायचं नाही, असं त्यांनी पक्कं ठरवलं होतं. त्या निश्चयाची आठवण रहावी, म्हणून त्यांनी उजव्या वळणांचा रस्ता स्वीकारला होता... हे वास्तविक जगणं, आणि तसं करणं म्हणजे सदाचरी वागणं नव्हे, हे त्यांनाही माहीत होतं, पण यामुळे आपल्याला आपल्या विचारांशी नातं राखता येतं, अशी त्यांची समजूत होती. मग, कोर्टाच्या प्रवेशद्वारावरचं ते डावीकडचं वळण?... तेही त्यांनी जाणीवपूर्वक स्वीकारलेलं होतं. कारण तो व्यवसाय त्या मार्गाशीच जुळणारा होता, तिथं डावंउजवं करावंच लागतं, असं त्यांचंच मत होतं.
ही आठवण झाली, आणि मला तो शब्द छळू लागला. `वाममार्ग !’ आणि, अलीकडे अनेक वर्षांत हा शब्दच आपण कुठे वाचलेला, ऐकलेलाही नाही, असं जाणवू लागलं. कुठे गेला हा शब्द? अचानक गायब झाला, की त्या, नष्ट होणाऱ्या पर्वताशेजारच्या अगोदर गायब होणाऱ्या दगडधोंड्यांसारखा, नकळत अदृश्य झाला? अचानक समोर आलेल्या अशा एखाद्या, जुन्या शब्दाच्या आठवणीनं उगीचच बेचैनी येऊ लागते. खरं म्हणजे, चारदोन अक्षरं एकत्र येऊन तयार झालेला एखादा शब्द असतो. तो असला किंवा नसला, तरी आपल्या व्यवहारांचं काही फारसं अडत नसतं. वाममार्ग हा शब्द ज्या भाषेतच नसेल, ती भाषा बोलणारी माणसं सदाचारी नसतील असं थोडंच असतं? पण आपल्या भाषेशी नातं सांगणारा हा चार अक्षरी शब्द, केवळ भाषेपुरता नसतो, तर त्याचं नातं थेट जीवनशैलीशी जोडलं गेलेलं असतं. या शब्दाला जीवनशैलीचे संस्कार जोडलेले असतात. म्हणून हा शब्द अदृश्य झाल्याची खंत आणखीनच बेचैन करू लागते. खरं म्हणजे, असा एखादा शब्द नष्ट झालेला नसतो. त्याचा वापर मात्र खूपच कमी झालेला असतो. म्हणजे, त्या शब्दाला `स्थगिती’ दिली गेलेली असते?... की तो शब्दच स्वतःहून `स्तब्ध’ झालेला असतो?... असं जर होत असेल, एखादा शब्दच स्वतःहून भाषेच्या वापरातून स्तब्ध होत असेल, तर त्याचा परिणाम जीवनशैलीवर होऊ शकत असेल? असा शब्द स्तब्ध झाला असेल, तर वाममार्गाची संकल्पनादेखील विरत चालली असेल? असे विचार डोक्यात घोळू लागले, की शब्दांची गरज लक्षात येऊ लागते. आपल्या भावना व्यक्त करायला शब्द सापडत नाहीत, अशी अवस्था होते... शब्दांचं नातं जीवनशैलीशी असेल, तर असे शब्द जपलेच पाहिजेत..

lonely soul

“I've never been lonely. I've been in a room -- I've felt suicidal. I've been depressed. I've felt awful -- awful beyond all -- but I never felt that one other person could enter that room and cure what was bothering me...or that any number of people could enter that room. In other words, loneliness is something I've never been bothered with because I've always had this terrible itch for solitude. It's being at a party, or at a stadium full of people cheering for something, that I might feel loneliness. I'll quote Ibsen, "The strongest men are the most alone." I've never thought, "Well, some beautiful blonde will come in here and give me a fuck-job, rub my balls, and I'll feel good." No, that won't help. You know the typical crowd, "Wow, it's Friday night, what are you going to do? Just sit there?" Well, yeah. Because there's nothing out there. It's stupidity. Stupid people mingling with stupid people. Let them stupidify themselves. I've never been bothered with the need to rush out into the night. I hid in bars, because I didn't want to hide in factories. That's all. Sorry for all the millions, but I've never been lonely. I like myself. I'm the best form of entertainment I have. Let's drink more wine!”