Day 1 Anaïs Nin
Nov, 2024
09:47
Real autumn has started. For months we had our windows open in the morning, curtain wound around the white wood of the frame. Tomorrow we might need to shut it; watery winds bring dead leaves and sharp rain. I do not mind waking under the coldness coming in, especially during winter, when raw temperature pulls me up faster. Yet on mornings when the stillness of a body counting minutes left to rest, echoes its throbs in strong headaches, I wish weather stopped stinging and would soothe instead. Today, especially today, I regret yesterday’s night. There are hours in the day unknown to my walking legs. Work has stolen them away, handing them over to a monotonous sleep, evenly disturbed by intense thoughts indicative of a personal economy of failure. Those hours I have to preserve, untouched, unchanged. It might not even be that late, but it’s two hours later than usual and that means less time for everything: work, our home, the dog, friends and myself. It’s not obsessional, I used to have so much fun when young tension was bracing me around the violence of some nights. I used to be that violence sometimes, ignoring the annoyance it caused to people who, for several reasons, were trying to protect themselves. I shouldn’t be thinking about that now. Last night, at the party, we tried talking about something, but I can only remember a mechanical flush of thoughts disappointing in terms of depth, yet pleasant for its humor or authenticity in recounting a mundane loss of desire. At the end I remained just like before, just like tomorrow, a version of myself with a heavy longing to either forget or remember more. On our way home we stopped to get yogurt for breakfast. Lately, our fridge is almost bare as neither of us has enough time to consider food like we should. It’s 2 am, the supermarket was almost empty, employees huddled around one cashier’s chair watching tiktoks together, sharing an unspoken understanding that none of us had to be there. On my way back to the car I thought again about how much I hate advice for revolting moods: stop it, relax, have a break, take it slower. Yoga, self-care, the endless suggestions to admire, to reflect, to ponder. The promise of city breaks, weekends away, holidays. What can a person meaningfully do on their own anyway?
I just read a couple of pages from Anaïs Nin’s Incest. Feeling estranged, empty of friendly language, with a voice turned sour. A dialogue with disembodied thoughts seemed right. I hoped that reading her would bring some kind of answer, some small comfort. Instead, her writing stayed sexy and dull. I received this book for my birthday, months ago, only now turning to it. A diary is something I enjoy reading in uncertainty, before or after being asleep. A diary is a rope of thick memories that I draw towards myself to feel human again. It usually has a lot to give. I look at the symptoms of life to see the world, to reflect on the favors changes bring, to know how to let others take me in. But what does this one want me to understand?
Women’s writing about sexual fantasies has something desirable for other women, for me, but not as much when I, when some of us, are dismissed and cannot use it. Incest starts in October 1932 and ends in November 1934. Dear Anaïs, I cannot like you today, as you willed the lack of desire in your lover’s wife against her and called her a whore. I cannot like you even though to say that whore incarnates reality is such a compliment. I cannot like you because, with each page, I hope you’ll tell me something about other women’s labours, the state of psychoanalysis in those years, or the conditions of life during the Great Depression. Or perhaps, that was also it – a time where sex’s naivety hid the familiarity of pain. Knowing so much about what turns you on and what you envy makes me question everything but that. I had to wake up as someone else to be more patient with you, more willing to worship you as I feel you’d wish, to care about Henry Miller, to ignore how the erotization of power spells power reinforcingly, domineeringly.
How confusing it is to use something, like this book for example, to dwell on its faults while seeing its faults as qualities and its qualities in its faults.
Day 2 Dream map
Nov, 2024
23:16
Lately, Duru has been appearing in my dreams. A long and rigid hand, red-gloved, points a finger to a beer refrigerator. It stays still for long, more like a signpost than an actual hand. The fridge door opens and for a second it transforms into the mouth of a cave – Alibaba’s, just like I pictured it as a child. The image dissipates and I see a huge ice cube inside the fridge. Frozen inside is my dog. I can’t tell if he needs to be rescued or not. The cube is gently sliding forward, as if the surface underneath the fridge begins to tilt. At first I don’t try to help him, I am probably frozen too. Then panic comes – what if he’s dead – and the hard ice begins to melt. The sharper the fear, the faster the ice is breaking. Realization lands: it’s panic that breaks the ice, so I can’t feel relief. Water is everywhere, my feet are soaking, Duru looks comfortable, same as in real life.
This dream is haunting me all day, it’s making me feel well. Wishing is a dog.
In the morning, I sat on a bench and watched Duru run through the park. There, half distracted, but content, I texted a few friends. On our way home, happy to have spent time sniffing wet grass and peeing on all trees, Duru kept turning his head around, his mouth with a grin, tongue swinging. I was suddenly ready for work and almost enthusiastic about tutoring. Lessons were light. One of the kids arrived 5 minutes late, riding in on a small scooter with his father. They had just returned from a fishing trip. The boy told me about a big fish they caught together, and to my surprise, he was in the right mood for class. The rest of the lessons went without any difficulties. Still, reflecting on the explanations I give to them, I rarely feel satisfied.
At 7 PM me and Luca went to see Alex’s play about work in textile factories and the fashion industry. We enjoyed it a lot and hope to hear good things about it. At home we had potato soup, thick and warm. Now, as we sit together on the couch, Luca reading his book, a wave of sadness sweeps over me, and I wonder if this day was really what I wanted. How could it be, when, except for brief moments of social interaction, there was no anxiety pulling me through? Isn’t this what the dream said? Thoughts shift to Roberta, who, for a couple of months when we were apart, shared maps of her dreams with me. Her return to Bucharest marked the end of our exchange, as if distance made dreams important.
Day 3 Letters
Nov, 2024
13:40
I haven’t written in days and I chose today in the midst of havoc. In the morning I read letters from A. and Y. Might be why I’m writing. The dog was very sick this week. His eyes were injured first and then his stomach had to suffer. Election results are enraging. Whenever someone sits down in the bus I wonder who they voted for. Whenever these thoughts grow roots another day is caught in the nets of doubt, of irrational fear, typical for a life lived in disconnection. I’ve seen some friends and missed some others. Regret surged from time to time. And joy too. Present and the near future are constrained. Chaos is common nowadays, it’s a gun. The gun is pointing heads but never fires, composure is lost and seeking begins. Safety is behind the gun, holding the hand at the trigger. We grew so cold that the warmth of the enemy’s body is pleasant. It happened before and it’s terrifying – feeding poverty of all sorts with promises that had none of it. The promises’ freedom is desired, it becomes powerful on its own.
Free + [word]
When this formula fails, confusion arises and looks for a different word. Sequentially. But confusion is the worst kind of opposition. How can it dissipate?
[word] – Free
I can’t shake off the feeling that, essentially, these thoughts are nothing. The less something is used the less it really matters.
LETTERS TO & FROM THE MISSING THIRD COLLECTIVE (TMT)
This collective came together in 2022. The boys and I would meet at the library and talk for hours. Wanting to expand our discussions and start reading with other students, we started a weekly reading group, focusing on texts written by other collectives. The group worked well as long as we stayed close, bound by proximity and shared intent. We often wrestled with how to protect acts of illegality, turning the law against those for whom it was written. The collective wrote together and spoke publicly, but fell away once I left Amsterdam and returned to Bucharest. This epistolary exchange tries to capture what becomes of a collective that grows apart, their members absorbed into different worlds.
*The second letter in the exchange is fictional. Any mention of illegal activities, historical references, or prison experiences are literary devices and do not represent real events. At most, they reference the collective’s theoretical approach to theft, lying, and killing that had in mind workers’ and womens’ rights.
Dear Missing Third Collective,
I think of you often. I try to dismiss many signs, distance between us needs a special kind of effort. Nostalgia only replays the terms of degradation and it’s against the heart’s political ambitions to drown friendship into it, so each time there’s doubt about whether something is bending or breaking, you’re with me again. I’m finally lost in my own country. At this point value dominates the eye, blinding others senses that could connect action to meaning. Here, like anywhere else, but maybe more apparent, separation devices – a stroll through the not-so-sterile city, a conversation at the office, a video someone recommended, dinner with parents – leave nothing to us but ruminations on self-betterment for the sake of capital. In the same park, we encounter people with jobs and people without, probably all of them thinking that they aren’t good enough. Kindness is a personal currency, so they do not gesture it to each other, as the logic of the commodity convinces them that they either shouldn’t care or they would nevertheless suck at it. Essentially, nobody knows how. This increasing reliance on the mediation of authority wears the mask of independence, hosting among us those who derive power from imitating those who pretend to have it. Consider this girl I’ve overheard speaking on the phone, weeping to her father, sinking in self-pity, for being “tricked” into giving away a large sum of money to an unhoused person. The transactional terms grafted on her encounter gave her nothing for herself, but the invisible experience of scarcity as social credit for those who can afford it. & so much more.
I feel an odd sense of being at the age when virtue is to appreciate not having it worse. I say it’s odd because I dislike how age is a label for a particular moment of one’s life in the infinite chain of material reproduction. In this framework, virtue and age are interchangeable, disclosing how much one can enjoy consumption. The rest can be read in terms of resilience and compensation – the more we ignore, the more we enjoy – as, from personal experience, the most pleasant things are those one understands. So when we’re alone, it’s either guilt or the absence of it that defines our worth, and social interactions are there to obfuscate this aggression, to cover it in a reinforcing manner. I do not say these things while pointing the finger at somebody, when the motor is precisely that which somebody is not.
Your missing presence brings these things back to mind – a kind of stirring that a collective should set off. Is this how we came together in the first place? Can you remember? I know meeting A. was an alignment of habits. The best kind. Y. came later, but it seems like the basis of our collective resides in a more or less unsystematic practice of disclosing those things one doesn’t know they’re lacking. We’ve read and complained a lot. We had fun in and out of distress. What else? I’m sorry for letting Y. down and drifting away in dirty waters, not managing to continue thinking and writing together on stealing, lying, killing. Maybe this letter will work as an impetus, I know I have it on my mind ever since I left.
Please tell me things about yourselves and your lives. About Amsterdam, maybe. Or anything else you see and later consider.
Dearly,
C.
Dear C.,
I appreciated your letter a lot. I read it over and over again. I tried to mimic your slightly ironic, covertly pissed-off voice with my mind’s ear, and by channeling your presence this way I was filled with joy.
Since we last spoke, I was arrested and falsely charged with perjury and armed robbery, based on the writings of TMT. They threw me in the Nieuw Vosseveld prison, until further notice. The food here is horrible and privacy is non-existent – save from the library room from where I am typing this. The worst part: the walls of this prison are haunted by the souls of political prisoners and resistance fighters, undocumented criminals and hostages held here until liberation.
You say you’re thinking about age. To be part of an age group is to be part of a consumer group, aka an object for marketing statistics. The past is haunted, the future is canceled, the present is captured. All that is left is a slow-burning bomb with enough explosive power to reset the calendar to 1 Vendémiaire, year I.
All we ever had to do was to be ready to join the fight when the time came, to add a critical mass that would tip the scale. Like so many others, we heeded the call. Then we retreated back to the shadows to lick our wounds. Nothing was lost for us: another encounter, gathering experience.
Your story about that poor girl who was scammed was tragic. Such good intentions, such an innocent heart. She should never learn her lesson.
Commodified transactions which are supposed to be calculated and reasonable are the scam of the Modern body politic. The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of. TMT’s politics of the heart aimed and shot at the heart of Politics. From the point of view of respectable leftists and other bureaucrats of upheaval, it could have only seemed frivolous. From our particular view from nowhere, it was terribly beautiful and so much fun.
The alarm is sounding. I have to leave the library. It could be a prison revolt, or maybe time for lunch. I don’t know because the sirens are monotone. If it’s a rebellion then I will join the fight again, with your missing presence beside me.
Always comradely,
A.
Dear C.,
“Thank you for this”, “Glad to hear from you”, “I really appreciate your message”.
I guess expressions like that summarize my everyday life. A stagnated repetition of politeness that excelled as a social techne – I hope that the vacuous verbalisms do justice to the posh shallowness of this “culture”. Despite attempts to Dutchification, I rersistently cannot escape the academic reserve army. I am accordingly “regretted to be informed” and in so doing, fail to be regretted in the first place.
But I think this is all good news! It is good, because, as my supervisor suggested, when he offered me a coffee meeting to condole me for my situation, I live the myth of the free (read as jobless) intellectuals who romanticize their own misery. To be honest, I found myself gladly enjoying this narrative. “It is not the conditions that determine who you are but your constant struggle against them”, they say. Sure. Still, it would be good to stop stealing for a day. Don’t get me wrong. We steal because of principle – our everyday revolutionary gymnastic as we wait for the next riot. But recently I have started to question whether I follow the principle we put on ourselves, or whether the principle has started following me.
Pessimism. I have to say something about it… You know though who would say more about pessimism? A. convinced me again to read collectively. So, we did. And guess what. Something is missing. Of course it’s you. But then are we missing our collective? I know I do. But we knew from the beginning; that our group will always miss a third – I remember the day we were dancing and you (fore)saw that the common days will end. Were we pessimists when we thought of our name? Or is pessimism a way to salvage our hope that one day we’ll be together because we knew that we won’t be together? (Do) we persist because we accept that we fade.
Of course these are pure bullshit. Words do not create reality.
We do
as we utter the words
or write them down
and invent new ways to find each other
Love you,
Y.
P.s. Ok and if we do, the dream is to become a movement against the present state of things.