A thousand colorful rooms

It’s a May morning in Sweden, three a.m., and there is enough light to write. That will be my gift to you this time, a piece of my writing, because it is the most real and precious gift I have. And it is about your birthday, but I wasn’t there when you were born. So I write about my birth, about the blackbird you told me about so many times, that sang on this early morning at the end of February. I talk about it with tears in my eyes, I am always touched when you tell me that. And she asks me: what does this picture signify, what does he want to tell you? That he loves me.

You couldn’t know that you would get a daughter just like this, like this blackbird’s song: cheerful and gentle and free. Who has so much to tell. The wind blows through her and she just needs to go, she is living off her dreams, she has to walk barefoot, everywhere; she loves to sit on the floor just like her books. And she is here to feel all this, the hurting and the hopes, she is awake when you sleep and then she needs to rest in the grass.

You gave her things that made her feel alive, you fed her. With travels, movement and music, and music again. And sometimes you took her quickly into your arms. And you did the best you could. There was my need for twice as much, but you could hardly know that. You ran after me when I rode my first bike, you drove me to a theatre audition, you watched over my violin rehearsals, you fought my nightmares and you where there when I was lovesick, in your kind of way.

And you wanted to be an actor once? And your own longing for music? And yes, you couldn’t help it but pass on your darkness to her, even if you didn’t mean to. So you taught her without speaking that feelings are not supposed to be, those who hurt and call onto you. And you tell us again and again: life is like that, and love is like that, and this is like that and that is like this. And: you have to. You should. It will be like that, you’ll see. Why can’t you see, that it’s all about your own experi- ences? It is just your single path, surrounded by millions of other possible ones.What did we do to the thousand colourful rooms that are meant to be?

Nothing is. And so much can be. All we dreamt about. And no, dreams are not to be put aside, to be locked in. They are just like children, they need much love, attention, encouragement, yes, en- couragement. To get on the bike again even if we fall off. Our longings need our respect, because they are honest, they are true and I have learnt now: feelings don’t lie, they are there, so we can trust them. Our mind could write other thoughts. But feelings are, they just are what they are. And don’t say No, when I say I feel. (And don’t say No when you feel.)I should have got used to your way of talking? No, I never will. I am searching for new words day and night, other words. If you want to keep on talking to me, find them too. And I know, maybe you don’t understand me, maybe you don’t really listen to me. Even you, with your musical ear! And it scares me when you keep following your own strict rules. Do you want to know how I handle my rules? Some of them I trust for weeks or months or maybe even years. However, I re-write them all the time, with every experience, with every new day.

You asked me: are you balanced, are you feeling good? Why don’t you just ask me: how are you? And leave the freedom of living all shades of life to me? Where is the part of you that longs for freedom? You can’t have left it in southern Italy. I know that you long for foreign mountain tops even now. Balanced, yes, don’t we all want to be that? But when do we get there? A little at 31, sometimes, and maybe more when we are 70 years old?

Children aren’t like this, steadily good and balanced. They swing forwards and back, high up and might fall down at times and would need to be consoled. That was how my life looked, how I want- ed to be. To feel. Because without it I vanished more and more and didn’t know myself. And look: it hurt me much more, so much more, to live without my feelings than all the sadness and the hurting from getting close to the world and to people.

And no: I don’t fit into the conformist clothes, I can’t exist just exactly between nine a.m. and five p.m. I work in the water. I sleep under the apple tree. I speak many languages. I write in the morning light.