ELLIPSIS

Listen

There he was, again: ”You can do better than that. Bring interesting thoughts to the fore. Don’t think you have to please people.” This time we were sitting on a terrase viewing Valparaiso at night. I had invited both of them for a Pisco Sour. I looked at the lights, the sea and the dark reflections moving in the cold summer wind. Soon it would be autumn, in April. This was just another thing I had to get used to; inversion of rythms that meant clashes and conflicts between my body, it’s stubborn habbit of orchestrating itself by seasons, daylight, weather. Now I could only submit and it, my body, didn’t like it.

I registered his presence next to me, how he was attentive for an answer, or more, a response. ”But I cannot do that, you cannot expect me to be clever on behalf of being displaced, uprooted.” … ”I’m exhausted, I’m trying, but I really don’t know what to do. I can only register, I can only take in; I can smell, look and listen as far as my body lets me do it.” … “And just to let you know, to register is a phenomenological methodology; always first register. And this, I want to follow.” (1)

Now our voices were loud, in front of us was a smiling face, a smiling, but investigating face. What are they doing, why are they word fighting? Why this clash?

Today, I learned that ”soy” does not only mean I am in Spanish, but also spoken word and woven material in Dogon language. (2)

Yesterday, a woman told me she by chance had read my story on returning to Denmark. She really liked it. It made her hair rise. ”It’s Sisi who’s writing this!” She didn’t know I liked to write. Or, like to write.

That’s another thing. I’m learning a language. A new language. One day I wrote in my diary: ”Today I said the rr-sound correctly for the first time.” I felt like a baby registering its own first word. It’s on this stage I find myself, like a fragile being without words in a new world. How does he want me to reflect, to bring interesting thoughts to the fore?

What felt in the fore, in front of me, was a wall. I met it everytime I went out. ”So, what are you doing here?” ”Do you know Spanish? Oh, you’re learning. You really have to improve your Spanish to get somewhere.” (I know that, I’m not stupid, why do you think I’m spending my savings on private lessons?) ”What would you like to do here?” ”Oh, you came here because of love? I suppose that’s good, I mean, or what….” ”Do you have any plans for your future?” (What do you think yourself, I do, of course, but how can I make plans in a situation I cannot control, a situation I don’t know?)

One night I told someone that my future doings would not only depend on me, but also on the place, Santiago, my new city. She got aggressive, it did not depend on the place, but on the attitude. One can make it everywhere, it only depends on one’s attitude. I retrieved from that discussion. Didn’t care and didn’t dare. Too much, just let me be, don’t look at me, don’t reflect me, I don’t want to face myself.

Today, an other woman told me: ”There’s a difference between seeing oneself as a link in the net and being subjected to comparisons of oneself to others.” (3) It helps me to retrospectively answer back that other woman, the aggressive one. I don’t want to compare myself, “to make it.” But maybe this is what people see in me, a Western woman coming here to make it?

Traditionally, I cannot be an other woman as I’m from the West, from Europe. I have red hair and milk white skin with a bit of freckles. I cannot be Other. My body tells the world so. And yet, I feel so other, so otherly other. It’s nice. And it’s completely horrible – like when the nasty speaker in the conference wants secretely to know about that wonderful woman in the back. Viejo verde (4) was a clever response of an other older woman. She’s been in the business for some years. She has found her way.

This is what I’m trying to do; find my way. I get small confirmations on the way. Like reading this sentence: ”To be an other among others can be a profoundly transformative experience.” (5) This is what i want. I want to be transformed, I want to experience, to live and to love. And this is what I am doing, what makes me so utterly happy. But also what rubs off so otherly many sparks, so much heat that it’s not only nice and warm, but hot like hell.

-

It was today he played the song that said I love you badly. We were sitting in the same room in front of each a table. Writing and reading. Concentrated. The refrain made us look at one another. This is why we’re here, we’re here because we love, badly, too much. We sleep close, we eat close, we bike close, even our desks, our books, our clothes want to be close.

And here we are, now, again, he’s looking at me, with a smile. An investigating smile. Why is she so concentrated, what is it that she’s writing? He hasn’t known me always, he’s still learning. But he knows. He approaches me and kisses me. Just in time, at times, I guess. (6) Outside, Santiago is turning dark, the cars are flickering together with light from commercials. Champagne and socks. The Madonna is still there, on the hill, holding her hands over the city together with the 80’s cell phone shaped building. We have to finish, we have to go out there, to become embraced by noise, smell, pollution and the many encounters, between people, in nets, among others, among each others. Once again, I ask the tissue of neighbourhood to grasp me when I’m falling. I think it likes me, I think it’ll grap me, rescue me and give me a hand everytime something pushes me over the limit. Up, again, we’re here, we’ll hold you, as you’ll hold us.

1: Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge, 1992, p. viii: ‘It is a matter of describing, not of explaining or analysing.’
2: Minh-ha, Trinh T. Woman, Native, Other. Bloomington: Indiana university Press, 1989, p. 128.
3: Minh-ha, Trinh T. Trinh T. Minh-ha’s Films Featured at Documenta. An interview with Trinh T. Minh-ha and Genevieve Shiffrar. June 26, 2002. Page last visited May 10, 2009.
4: Viejo verde means an old man who likes young women in Chilean slang.
5: Minh-ha, 2002.
6: Bowie, David. “Cygnet Commitee” in Space Odity, 1972.