swim through life as a duck
swims through the river
experiencing every
current every
bank every
overhanging branch every
glistening pebble every
rippling reflection of the sunrise

swim through life as a duck
swims through the river
experiencing every current
and not getting wet

like a pool of clear water
in the breeze rippling
sparkling with joy;

and in silence, reflecting
you show me
my own self.

you are grasping
scratching at the surface
as it slips away
from you. stop!
let go
let the angels carry you home

mask

then one moment, you realize
the mask you put on every day
won’t come off
the mask has become your face.
what is your reality?

- x - x - x -

but you still breathe the same air
wake up to the same sunshine

it’s always the little things
that count

little unimportant things
a particular smile,
the convenience of
soundless communication,
trusting blindly.

little unimportant things
your fingertips want to do,
just out of habit.

but your hand is missing.

shards of glass
glisten, the colours
glow, sparkle

ragged edges bleed shinily
is it the colour stain, pain? or
glinting sunlit joy?

more beauty, shattered, stained
more than a dull blank clear sheet,
of glass unharmed. unarmed. framed.

happiness from sorrow
beauty from pain
life from death
are people too, like window-panes?

an old one. but i live my life by this.

a single drop
reflected in the water below
a point of imagined truth

coalesces
tentative, tense, then tumescent
yet still unreal until

it bursts upon the world in a moment of fleeting beauty

and is gone
to the wonderment
of the eternal seas.

11 february 1996

spring and sea
spark and cinder
droplet and splash
sapling dead tree

every line has
a beginning
and an end

except those
some magical nights
that circle.

the full moon.

I stepped off the pavement, walked backwards a few paces looking up, and, from the middle of the street, brought my hands to my mouth to make a megaphone, and shouted toward the top stories of the block: “Teresa!”
My shadow took fright at the moon and huddled at my feet.

How can you not fall in love with a story that begins like that? The Man Who Shouted Teresa by Italo Calvino is one of my favourite pieces of writing, by one of my favourite authors. It is very short, and very pretty, and he wrote it when he was 20 years old.

The simple premise - a man shouts Teresa repeatedly under a window, people join in, and eventually he confesses that he doesn’t know who lives there but they keep shouting anyway - lends itself to the making of a short film. So I was not entirely unsurprised, but charmed nevertheless, that a number of people had actually made such short films. I wasn’t looking. Serendipity. Here is what I found: four video shorts and one pretty creative interactive flash animation. The names are mine - naturally, they’re all called “Teresa” or something similar.

1. boston by gohfish, is set in Boston, in black&white, and most artistically captures the spirit of the story - although the American rather than Italian pronunciation of Teresa is somewhat jarring.
2. italian dub by keepyourdayjob, produced “over a six hour stretch, while drinking beers out of the trunk of [a] car” was shot on Super 16. Nice, but the attempt to make “a total Fellini rip-off” falls a little flat with the Italian dubbed voices and rather dramatic “acting”.
3. kids can read by brian smith is heartening, featuring a bunch of what look like high-school kids outside a suburban low-rise, acting like, well, enthusiastic high-school kids. Who read Calvino, apparently. This is quite true to the story, I think - Calvino was 20, and 20-year-old Italians do behave like schoolboys…
4. Just when I thought I couldn’t find anything more, I came across this: korean, by korusinc. It’s not actually in Korean, though it has a Korean title and appears to feature at least a couple of rather young Korean (or Korean-American?) children. They look barely old enough to read Dr Seuss, let alone Calvino.
5. Finally, the interactive animation by Timothy Moraitis is probably the best way to read the story, if you haven’t gone and bought the book yet. Click somewhere on the screen, and along with some stick figures moving about, the next few sentences appear. Very nice, and couldn’t be done with a much longer story.

All in all, this left me feeling happier about the future of civilisation. One puzzle remains, though: all these videos were American. Perhaps Italian kids read, or make video shorts, but not both?

you whine, you always
need attention
you cry and throw up
exceptions
you never say what’s wrong

you wake me, howling
every two hours,
all night
just to burp. sigpipe.
network error.

frustrating.
and exhilerating.

codebabies.
look, so cute
just like daddy.