Dorthe Nors - So Much for That Winter

Bought scones at the good bakery on Gammel Kongevej

and sat down on the way home to read a book, not far from the grotto in Søndermarken, but was badgered by a duck that begged bread from park visitors, while the sweethearts on the blanket next to me were watching all the birds warily, including mine, because the woman was afraid of birds and because the man enjoyed defending her from them,

and so we managed to pass the afternoon that way.

Felt pain in my mouth,

pain in my lower back and the one hip,

walked slowly home

and opened all the windows, for it’s a mild evening in Copenhagen,

and tomorrow I will maintain my faith in the day after tomorrow,

and that one day it will be me who’s allowed to be there when the instruments are tuning,

for there comes a day,

and a day after that day,

that’s the way days are.

Slept late,

went for a run,

lay down in bed and was awakened by the pigeons,

went for a bike ride after dinner to Western Cemetery and sat down someplace among the dead where no one could find me, and wished the evening the best, for that couldn’t hurt.

Went home, because the mosquitoes began to bite, and made a cup of coffee,

stood there with the coffee in my hand,

stood there and my nose grew cold, it suddenly hit me,

Perhaps I spend too much time in cemeteries, I thought,

and lay down on the floor, vanished corporeally, and if I don’t exist, everything up to this point doesn’t exist either, my history, America, the stone I walk around with in my pocket, and then what he wrote last winter,

and if none of those things exist, sorrow doesn’t exist, and then tomorrow doesn’t exist either,

I thought, unable to breathe, for that which doesn’t exist cannot breathe,

for there aren’t many advantages to being that which doesn’t exist, except for being able to walk through walls and listen at doors,

and I’d heard it all now, so what is that?

Got to my feet,

placed myself over by the window,

listened to one of the neighborhood dogs and stayed with it through thick and thin,

thought, Why doesn’t anyone let it in? and could feel I was no longer a young woman,

just a woman who has lived longer than my neighbor and the dog down there and many of the dead, and a thousand years ago I would have long since been laid in my grave, I thought, but look at me now,

mournful, alive, and kicking,

and I’d like to be able to believe in tomorrow,

and I can’t do anything but;

I’m hopelessly up the creek in the situation.

Sent my regrets,

thought about life’s insistence on equilibrium: we lurch from side to side, and for every time someone’s caressed on the cheek, there’s a place in the world where someone gets boxed on the ear, for every gleam of sunlight a shower of hail, for every door opened one closed, and thus for the heat that arises one place, somewhere else a new magnet is placed on the fridge.

Scribbled down the line: From her heart sprang the periphery of everything.

Scribbled down the line: Grow up!

and tied a ribbon in my hair.

Went for a walk in the cemetery,

placed the petals from the first rugosa in my palm,

and everything’s dicey, but quiet.

Thought that the worst thing about the things that change us for life, is that every day we have to persuade ourselves not to look at them and how they attest to the insignificance with which we’re shuffled around, we’re lost and found and lost again,

these daily administrative actions,

even my pulse isn’t sacred,

my family, my writing, my best intentions,

everything’s dealt with, I thought,

and tomorrow it’s up and stand on your feet, stand and walk and bear the dead weight from place to place,

jump over the sun,

make contact with the universe

and continue on down to the laundromat.

Today I was visited by Kali.

Dropped things on the floor, wanted to split in half but couldn’t,

and I can’t bear that this is a world where those who wreak damage are praised, and then today I’m visited by Kali.

Felt the fury drawing up from the floor through my body like a soundless roar,

volcanic, huge, fragile.

Biked in to a friend’s,

and then we were sitting there when a door slammed, and I, who’d tried all morning to get myself to cry, split before the eyes of another person, but it was no relief for she didn’t know how to respond, and it’s no good splitting and not being discovered, so I screamed the whole way home on the bike with the silence that civilization demands.

Made it home soaked to the skin, five miles in squall and downpour,

went through my keepsakes,

the written proofs,

and what should I believe among all the half-truths?

Wrote on the back of an envelope lying on the counter, I’m angry, and not everything is art, whereupon I picked all the magnets off the fridge and watered the clover on the windowsill,

shoved the dishes around as I washed them, because I hated doing them, just as I hated the deli counters in upscale supermarkets and the dog owners in Søndermarken, and I wanted to move back to Jutland and live in a henhouse and use empty beer cans for target practice, just to be close to something that seemed real, and dare to assume dance position and lead myself around the floor, utterly alive, three-dimensionally present with pulse and all,

for I will exist, So find me then, before I can’t feel myself anymore, I whispered out through my teeth, and then she found me, Kali, the angriest woman in the world,

and it isn’t that I don’t believe in the good in others.

It’s that the others don’t believe in the good in me.

Thought, It’s a long way from the dream of America to this, and remained prone.

Thought about scabs and chamomile tea.

Couldn’t make myself clear on the phone.

Couldn’t stand other people, so I went out among them, and I walked past thousands but saw not one.

Reasoned, Perhaps the part of me that once was in the us can still be found between the lines,

but that isn’t enough in the long run.

Went past the elephants, who were apparently doing well and, unaffected by anything, bathed in the pool and went on with their lives, trunk-flinging and backslapping, and on the way home I fainted in the cemetery behind a box hedge.

Cold sweat and hands asleep, daisies.

Remained prone afterward and relished the feeling of lost consciousness,

remained prone when the drizzle started,

remained prone until I could tell I was cold,

and then I got up and went out and looked for the next cemetery.

Reasoned, International Women’s Day would have torn me to shreds on the spot. But then it got me at last, and how many times do you have to hit out at a woman before she learns to duck?

Bought a hot dog on Toftegård Square

and didn’t want to go home, just to keep walking with the conviction that, if you keep walking, you’ll come to a day where you’re happy once more.

Reasoned, Perhaps the part of me that once was in the US has been placed in a pantry in my mind, from where she can be retrieved again

(but that isn’t enough in the long run).

Walked home

and scribbled this down: I am plagued by the vision of a faraway spring and my ability to read between the lines. I am a witness to my own truth in a flood of false evidence.