Another year is over
and things are standing still by
moving quicker than I know to walk.
It’s been the year of
home-coming, re-settling
job-starting, overtime-making
protest-going, speech-writing, signatures-collecting
pizzas in piazze in Verona
thesis-working, myself-presenting, on a copper platter of thistles
piercing-forsaking, beatles-forgetting-and-remembering like I do almost every year
missed chances and missed-all-kinds-of-things, connections, for example
book-reading (zero in May and October, four each in April, August and December, twenty-two-and-a-half in total)
what feels like twenty writing-contest-entries and not one single win
despairing at small things, and gaining hope from the same
story-reading, out loud, in front of those I know, and strangers, and earning money for my words for the first time
goodbye-ing and hello-ing
train-riding and alone-walking
bicycle-riding in the hot stillness of a Heidelberg afternoon, along the river Neckar with laughter peeling from my friends’ mouths
exam-taking and summer days spent inside the library
Ticino-adventuring, bus journeys to remote villages in search for Hesse’s spirit in Montagnola or dinners after dusk under the stone pergola at a table for twelve in Sessa
long to-do-lists and wishing for a quiet evening at home
a December’s worth of trying to get into the Christmas-spirit
and finally quiet and warm Christmas days –
it’s been a year, I realize only now while writing this, full of happiness and sadness and all the things in between, which is that which we call life,
and it was good.