Tu Cosa Fai Stasera?

Tu cosa fai stasera?

Rimani ancora un po

Sara quest atmosfera

ma non mi dire di no...

What are you doing tonight?

Stay a little longer.

It may be this place

... but don't say no.

Desire. Rhymes with. Hmm FIRE.

What do you want?

What are you waiting for?

What do you WANT?

God. These are just the questions that you dread hearing because you dread to answer. Why, you ask? Oh, not because you don't have an answer, or that you do not know what you want.

It's because you know that what you want cannot be had... And isn't within reach.

Saying what you do, in fact, deeply unabandonedly truthfully desire out loud and knowing that you cannot have it...well. It breaks you. It breaks the walls that the world has created around your being. A wall that has named itself 'Reality'.

Instead... I will step into that mirror and look that girl, a woman now, in the eye and bravely but very slowly answer, as if I were standing on a plank of wood that on which the slightest hint of movement might overturn and send me drowning into the mercurial waters of hopelessness: What do you want? What are you waiting for?

...silence.

And a pause.

Because I want my words to shake the ground that I stand upon with every syllable I'd utter and give to the world which hangs onto every word I say as if already planning my downfall and using them against me; to mourn me, to laugh, to belittle, to spit at me.

Sometimes, the world is nothing but a rowdy crowd that holds up rotten banners which is good for nothing except to bleat loud noises and scuffle outside the Casa Rosada. You don't know whether it desires your undoing or the rise of your being. All that you know is that it is loud and it goes wild when you raise your hand in acknowledgement.

I want...

I want him to love me.

I want him to know how I have been waiting all of these years and I want him to know how I feel: That he is the only one in the world for me.

I want to travel the world. And sometimes, especially as of late, even more than I want him. As if I know that the knowledge trotting to and from places which my soul flies to when I am asleep is enough to satiate my restlessness, my strongholds, my passions.

There are so many things...

I want to write. I want to sample the local fish from Sutri and drive up to Rome to watch the sunset over the Coliseum. I want to walk through the halls of the L'ouvre and hold back tears at the centuries of Beauty and ages that I would be beholding. I want to know how it feels to remember how I had fantasized and dreamed about doing so when I was a little girl and be amazed that I am standing where I would be standing.

I want to travel by train throughout Europe and find myself being surprised at how beautiful Germany is (which I had never imagined it would be) and be blown away by the feeling of peaceful pain that my feet would endure after walking through the vineyards of Marseilles and Provence. I want to walk down the backstreets of Tokyo at night and watch the reflection of the citylights on the stars that would wink down at me going, "Stop smiling like an idiot, Kiddo. You're happy. We get it... We're happy, too." I want to eat with my hands in the Scottish highlands and fantasize about shaking hands with Nessie. I want to visit Manarola most of all and get lost in the simple magnificence of its colours.

I want my writings to be published. I want to talk to people about the stories they would find in my books and explain how my style which they would call Magic Realism is actually just another fancy term for the words Reality is Pure Magic.

I want to buy a house where my family and extended familiy could live, sort of like a private village.

I want my brother and I to fight just like old times when every other sentence coming from our mouths would emit a punch from one or the other or both. It is much preferrable than the adolescent silence we share now.

I want my Mom to be happy. I want her to support herself once more because she still has so many gifts to give out to the world. My grandmother and mother are so wise...so wise...and flawed. Which makes them irreplaceable in my book.

I want to paint the local market scene in Aruba and visit the temples in Cambodia to pray.

I want to buy an I HEART NY t-shirt in New York City and not spend a moment asleep as I flit from one Broadway musical or play to another.

I want to freefall in a bungee jump in Niagara Falls.

I want to stop now...

And listen to myself sigh.

For now, it's best to continue to take the planned steps to realize all these desires, these wants, these unopened treasures I am patiently waiting to open.

Now all I have to do is keep dancing the dance....

Revolution.

I asked what she thought, and she said: I don't know.

I smile as I wrought the blue from the snow.

She asked, 'Of what do you believe when you are asleep?'

and I said: My desires don't show because they're buried too deep.

She yanked back her grin and rolled back her eyes,

'Don't start - you're starting. You come as no surprise.'

'Ah, but there you are wrong you prodiguous snake.

For when he talked to me, my heart forgot to shake.'

... A conversation with a close friend of mine. Only recalled and engraved now in rhyme. Don't ask. I have no clue either. Her question: "What happened?"