Translated by Seán McDonagh
- Here are the coordinates: 37°33'28.2"N 24°57'39.3"E
- Yesterday, I left for the island, and I’m wondering if, three years ago, you took the very same flight. There was 20% off for today only, but everyone knows it's never only for today. It's forever.
- Sat behind me on the flight was a couple, husband and wife, plus an old traveller who was telling them about his adventures around the world.
"I used to be the courageous type once," the husband says to the old traveller. Do you think it’s possible we get more cowardly with age?"
"It's possible," the traveller responds. "But I wouldn't know. Maybe fear is like an island. If you don't want to stay there, the only alternative is the sea.”
- Before leaving, the therapist told me to remove the word fear from my dictionary. Give it another name, a nice name.
"Like penguin?", I asked.
"Yeah, like penguin."
Penguin seems like an excellent word. They're nice animals.
- Fear, though, is more similar to a rock→ to a rock separating from a mountain→ to the colour of bleach→ to the sound of forks on celadon plates→ to the extraordinary intelligence of crows →
- In the seventies, a Hungarian sociologist wrote that fear actually has its own specific weight: you have to divide the weight of your own body by three and then you’ll obtain the weight of your own fear. Mine is twenty-three. The only penguin that weighs as much as that is the emperor penguin.
- So, since you've been gone, I have this emperor penguin.
- The day before leaving, a friend of yours told me she has a penguin of whales. I went to see her to find out more about you, but she doesn't know any more about you. To make up for it, she knows everything about whales. "The sound they make. Uuuuuuu, have you ever heard it? Awful", she says. "Truly awful. And then they go so deep. Really deep. Where the rays of the sun can't even filter through." Your friend really knows everything about whales. For about an hour, she spoke only about whales.
- Aeroplanes can fly. You just have to accept it. On a global level, around 2% of greenhouse gas emissions are attributable to aviation and we have to choose between cookies and pretzels. “Cookies or pretzels?” “How long’s left before we land?” “Cookies or pretzels?”
- How much did you used to weigh? How many cookies were needed to reach the exact weight of your penguin?
- I left so I could finish your book. It was Mom who gave it to me, around two months ago, on your birthday. She had always kept it hidden. From that moment, I haven’t stopped thinking about it, and you perhaps would have known why.
On my phone, before boarding, I made these notes:
-Finish F.’s book.
-Swim in the sea.
-Have no penguin.
-Finish F.’s book.
- And what about inventing a rubber aeroplane? Or if the earth was rubber? “We are now beginning our descent” is really not the most reassuring of sentences.
- I spent the night in a big city, in anticipation of taking the boat to the island. The smell of traffic isn’t always the same everywhere, and it’s not the same here. The smell of traffic is a smell like many other smells, that seems like something but isn't; it might make the perfect motif for a short story about travelling strangers. I bought a tray of grilled octopus and potatoes that cost as much as the book I was hoping to buy in an old bookshop. In the end, I didn't buy the book out of respect for the octopus. I needed to find the hotel. In the email, it said: hope to see you soon.
- You never said to me: hope to see you soon. You went and that was it. It was the day of your departure, and you hugged me. In that hug, there was something concrete, like when two rocks collide into each other and can never be the same as before, because despite being rocks, they break.
- In the city, I slept in a hotel room where they give you a remote that controls everything: lights, curtains, TV, temperature, door, alarm. I turned on the TV and lowered the curtains, I closed the door and turned off the lights, set the air con to 22 degrees, then to 23. Every window is lit up with coloured neon lights. It seems like the swingers' party that I was dragged to once by my agent. When you turn off the lights, the remote plays some symphonic music and then the message hope to see you soon
- The short-circuit started here→ thinking your life was void of purpose→ therefore of meaning→ so, all in all I can accept what you did→ but then I came to know that you had a purpose→ to finish the book→ and?→
