{"id":5288,"date":"2024-12-02T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-02T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/?p=5288"},"modified":"2024-12-04T10:04:36","modified_gmt":"2024-12-04T09:04:36","slug":"penelope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/2024\/12\/penelope\/","title":{"rendered":"Penelope"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Author<\/strong>: Ags<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read whilst listening to \u2014Futile Devices by Sufjan Stevens\u2014 if you want to<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dear De
Hello.
Hey,
Sorry for the delay.<\/s> I got your letter. I know it\u2019s been three weeks. I\u2019ve been meaning to write, but it seems I don\u2019t have a pretty enough picture to send. Your presence is all over these pages. With the flower petals dried out and stuck to the side, and that decorative tape you always add in front. You even bother to circle the letters of my name. \u201cTo make them look 3D,\u201d you say. And those Alfons Mucha cards from your favourite shop in town! I swear, I could almost know the vendor from how much you speak of him.
Well.
I, unfortunately, don\u2019t have tape. Or flowers, in fact. I tried; I did. I stole some of these plumerias from the train station I was in last night. The petals dried up in my suitcase. And yes, I know you love it when I send you these cards from the countries I\u2019m in. But seriously, airport postcards are just the most soulless things I\u2019ve ever seen.
Anyways, this may sound like an excuse for the delay of my answer. It\u2019s not. I promise.
I\u2019ve been moving, as I\u2019m sure you know. In fact, I haven\u2019t really set foot on the ground since the last time I heard you say, \u201csee you soon.\u201d
It\u2019s never really \u201csoon\u201d per se. We both know it though I am particularly skilled at denial.<\/s> It\u2019s more of a tradition, an embellishment to our goodbyes, like those little led lights you cover your room with despite the sun that peeks through your windows. It\u2019s a promise\u2014a way of saying that we\u2019ll wait, that time is just a side character to our plot.
See, there\u2019s something I understood recently about us<\/s> about you. It struck me when you left my house last October. I remember I told you, \u201cI\u2019ll be homesick.\u201d
The strange thing is, I wasn’t the one leaving home for once. Were I more articulate, I\u2019d have formulated some poetic verse about how the absence of you shuts out colour or something like that.You know that part in “Tintern Abbey”? When Wordsworth writes:

\u2014 And now, with gleams of half-extinguish’d thought,
With many recognitions dim and faint,
And somewhat of a sad perplexity,
The picture of the mind revives again<\/em> \u2014

Yeah\u2026 that. The feeling a place changes when one looks at it again. Only for me, it\u2019s not so much about time passing; it\u2019s more about how different a place feels when you\u2019re in it from when you\u2019re gone. Like a picture that loses its tint, you know?
See, the images in my mind, they all include you. We don\u2019t need to be talking; we don\u2019t even need to face each other. But you\u2019re there in the frame. And when you\u2019re not, it\u2019s like the little filmmaker in my mind decides to add the muted filter to everything I see.
I\u2019m not saying I don\u2019t like moments without you as well. It\u2019s just not the same camera.
So, it gets complicated when I see you once every eternity. It seems my life doesn’t like me picturing things too long.
I\u2019m sorry I move so much. Sorry I can\u2019t stay in a place long enough to find my words with you. Sorry I fail to send you those airport postcards just because I feel jealous of your gorgeous letters. Sorry that, despite your constant efforts, I fail to breathe a bit with you.
Workaholic, anxious mess of a mind, I\u2019ve subscribed to decades of guilt whenever I take the time to imagine myself settled. And you know my parents, of course. They like to stare at paths and remind me that change<\/em> is the only way not to close any of these doors. You don\u2019t turn down opportunity<\/em>\u2014not in my family. It\u2019s like some god you can\u2019t refuse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This \u201cneed” to see the world, to flee from your comfort zone like it\u2019s some fruit of Eden, it gets tiring. With it, ignoring an open door is like missing out on half the world. And then you come in, and I take a moment to sit with you, chat. One conversation, and it feels worth traveling the entire earth. One day together, and I\u2019d miss out on seven planets for all I care.
I wish I could show them\u2014my parents\u2014how much I get from you. How much you bring me. It\u2019s not that they don\u2019t care; I just don\u2019t think they see how traveling makes you need something else to grasp onto.
I hang onto things\u2014letters, books, posters that wallpaper my room. But then again, I can\u2019t be taking everything to each new place, can I? Clothes unworn for more than a year, comics read more than twice. Posters fall away along with the houses. Every move sheds something or someone.
Gods know the times I heard and said, \u201cWe\u2019ll stay in contact.\u201d Gods know how many people I\u2019ve forgotten the names of.
Switching between stations and airports the way I switched schools through childhood, the way you switch clothes. Spending holidays on trains in the hopes of seeing a glimpse of you before I have to leave again. Running between houses that don\u2019t feel like home. Countries just cannot seem to stick.
I work in two languages, aim for seven different futures. The possibility of an exchange, the opportunity of a job far away. I don\u2019t keep diaries; descriptions and images I try to paint of my everyday sound blurry and unsure. And the memory compilations that my iPhone suggests every month just don\u2019t do the trick to build a frame.
But there are exceptions to every rule, even those that structure your life. Every postcard needs a focus, and my camera seems to like your smile.
I thought places defined people. I travel, I change, I lose some and gain some. It\u2019s a cluster of changes. I\u2019ve moved four times since I\u2019ve known you. And when I came back for a year, you went off to some successful school. Naturally, not the best way to secure a grounded relationship. It\u2019s like a dance on a seesaw where we just can\u2019t find our way down at the same time. And I just assumed it would pass, the feeling of missing you, like so many other times. But it didn\u2019t. And I just kept working for the moments I got with you, as short as they were.
But this isn\u2019t a sad story about how I can’t seem to be happy since we met. You\u2019re a little more special than that. You crossed the borders with me\u2014in phone calls, through letters. With the way you have of actually keeping track of what\u2019s going on with me, miles away, making me feel like you\u2019re in my story.
And me? I guess my brain won\u2019t let go of your name so fast. People come and go, but places remain. It was on a post once: Artists like Jean L\u00e9on G\u00e9r\u00f4me paint a harem in the 19th century, and the public claps at how similar the halls look today.
I\u2019m not here to debate how resistant the harem walls are to centuries. But as you left me last month, when I told you I\u2019d be homesick, I understood how wrong that saying was. You remained\u2014more than places, more even than some memories. You stay on my mind, by my side. You watch ruins fall apart at museums with me, read poems about how everything disappears one day. You call me through time zones and different languages.
And yes, places change just as much as people. Halls fall apart; they erode, they grow. But when I close my eyes and think of a place to settle, you\u2019re the most stable part of it. And when you tell me you’ll be there when I come back from my courses, when I text you that I\u2019m passing by, when we hop on a night bus to the edge of nowhere or open the door to another creaky Airbnb, it\u2019s like coming home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Comments by the jury:<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“An optimistic take on relations with plenty of sentiment\u2026but that is perhaps a nice change of pace from what\u2019s in vogue in literary production these days.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The writer manages to pack many layers into a short piece of writing \u2013 their appreciation for letters, and the way they cannot return them. … This reader finished the piece hoping they will find what they are looking for.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The language is so fluid and lovely to read, it’s almost like a train of thoughts but well-curated.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Author: Ags Read whilst listening to \u2014Futile Devices by Sufjan Stevens\u2014 if you want to Dear DeHello.Hey,Sorry for the delay. I got your letter. I know it\u2019s been three weeks. I\u2019ve been meaning to write, but it seems I don\u2019t have a pretty enough picture to send. Your presence is all over these pages. With […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1002515,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[37,83],"class_list":{"0":"post-5288","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-2024-winter","7":"tag-prose","8":"tag-short-story-competition-people-and-places"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1002515"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5288"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5484,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5288\/revisions\/5484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}