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Teki. #1 Novembre // m.m.x.i. Il s’agit de partager tout ce que je veux dire mais n’arrive pas a le faire. San Jose, Costa Rica. Photos: Inti.Pacheco. Écrits: Inti.Pacheco. Conception: Teki.
Teki is a short book made to compile the pictures I’ve taken and all of the writings I’ve done over different periods of time.
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...Ă Holden Caulfield Pour avoir la chance de ne pas exister.
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INDEX
Avant // Prelude Tragedy Ensues Apres // Postlude Wild Is The Wind The Looks Part IX Part VII Part IV
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Avant // Prelude
I could pretend I don’t feel like this anymore, but I do. I sit here, writing this confession of sorts. Describing finally how it is I really feel, even if I don’t feel I’m being honest with myself. I can’t help but think about her. Is it just me? Is she feeling the same way? I think it’s just me. I doubt I’d feel this way if it was mutual. Let me just tell you exactly how I feel. It seems every single thing I had, has been taken away from me, everything I owned, everything I cherished, everything I believed in. I lost it all. But I have to confess; I never thought my life was over. I’ve been feeling this way for a long time now. I can’t help but think about the same thing every single second of my passing life. How should I be feeling or what should I really be doing if everything is already lost and gone forever? I look at pictures with false hope. I search for memories that now only have meaning
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vol.1//vol.i// to me. I try to hide myself in these memories, but I fail miserably every single time and find myself back in the dullness of my reality. Now sometimes I do think my life could be over. I think about it every single day. But what can I do if I just have a recurring thought of just losing everything because I’m just terrified of never loving again? I have this recurring dream, at least three times every single week. I see her, I hold her, we are together again, feeling the exact same way we felt before, and in the blink of an eye, she’s gone. I’m all alone and everything’s lost once again. She’s now all I see in my dreams. She’s now all I ever think about. But she always was. And she always will be. I can try to hide it, I can try to run. I can try to erase her from all of my memories. I could teach my heart not to feel anymore, but somehow her face, her soft skin, her lips, her taste, her smell, her touch will never leave me. I wish they all would. Believe me, nothing would make me feel better, but there are just some things that won’t ever change. It seems every time I try, moving on gets harder. I’ve heard before that fools never move on, but who ever truly felt that way? So now I feel oh so powerless, and then she comes along to destroy me. Those dreams I had. They were not dreams. There are no fashionable words to say that there is nothing left to lose. When there isn’t, everything stops making sense, but how can anyone say that the meaning of their own very lives relies
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/teki// on the thought of someone else. Once we lose hope, we are dead. We become nothing, just another fraction of life. We lose everything that makes sense to us, so we have to make a choice… To go after this or to surrender, but how can you ever surrender? Isn’t this supposed to mean everything to you? Again, she shows up. You try to make everything right but every single time you make the same mistakes and it seems like you just can’t stop. You fuck up, you let her down, you fail her, you disappoint her, you love her, you adore here, you cherish her, she has been all you could ever hope for and now she’s gone.
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Tragedy Ensues
James enters the room. He leaves his coat on top of the table and takes a seat. For a moment, he thinks about putting it down right next to him, on the same seat, or right next to his lap; however, he decides to leave it there on top of the table and put it down only once she comes in through that door. It seems obvious that James isn’t entirely convinced this will happen. James hasn’t seen her for a year or so; they didn’t keep in touch at all and didn’t speak to each other until two weeks ago. Today, he’s not sure if this will be the beginning or the end of a new time in his life story. Two weeks ago, the girl of his dreams came back to his life. For some reason, after a year of no communication, he called her. This time, she did pick up and he wasn’t sure why she did it. She knew that it could only be him calling so late at night. He was the only one she knew would call so late. And James knew this too. For a second, when she picked up, he kept quiet trying to come
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/teki// up with a reasonable explanation for calling at 3 am on a Tuesday night. James was relieved when she was the one who started the conversation. Apparently, she had been thinking about him too at the exact same moment he was dialing her number on the phone. She explained that it was the reason for picking up. James wasn’t sure what was really going on, or what was going through his head; he didn’t even understand what they were really talking about and he was only able to mumble a couple of words that created a useless sentence: “What a coincidence”. He had never believed in things such as fate, but he knew she did. That night they were on the phone for more than a couple of hours. They were reminiscing, talking about silly stuff; they talked about their past and about what they were doing in the present. Just the sort of catching up that needed to be done. James acted like he didn’t know about what she was telling him, but really he was constantly listening in about what was going on with her life through other people’s stories. So whatever she was telling him now was olds news for James. He could only hope she also knew about what he was telling her about his life. He wanted for it all to be old news. While still on the phone, James couldn’t help but think about where this conversation would actually lead to. Would it have any meaning for her at all? A week had gone by and James would only dream about her, with her, of her coming back, of her leaving once again, about her being right there next to him, talking, like they used to do just a year ago. James was only able to
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vol.1//vol.i// wonder about what was going on the other side of the line. He kept repeating to himself that it was probably nothing serious, or at least nothing that he would like for her to be thinking about, but really deep inside he could only wish for it to be something, just anything at all. When he was telling himself not to get high hopes about this one phone conversation, she deliberately asked him if he would like to see her. See her soon. Really soon. Next week. She suggests they should go out for dinner at that old Chinese joint he loved so much that she couldn’t remember the name of. “Choi’s”, he said quietly. She said, “ That’s the one!”. They should meet there. It should be fun. Next Thursday, 8pm at Choi’s. As cliché as it seemed to him, that week, had been the longest week of his entire life. James had so much time on his hands that he was able to plan out every single possible scenario. He thought about the best and the worst, the not so bad and the meaningless. He thought about ways he could fuck up once again. He thought about the ways he knew to make things better. But, the main thing that he was concerned with, was his own reaction to any possible situation that he could find himself in on that evening. It was just one week away. James felt confident that he had gone over everything and he was prepared for anything. Hoping for the best, expecting the worst. But that was just a lie, he thought. You can’t really prepare for anything that could seriously be bad for you if you’re in the sky with the highest of hopes. Feeling, knowing, thinking, hoping, for everything to go the way you planned it. There’s
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/teki// just no balance there. While having the highest hopes for good or great things to happen, you just don’t think that anything could go wrong, your mind just feeds itself with the same repetitive thoughts about how everything is going to go exactly how you expect it will. Still, James believed he was ready for anything. James knew. He knew about every single problem he had caused her. He remembered every single time he had done her wrong. He thought about every single damn thing that he ever did wrong. He came to the final conclusion, that all he ever really did wrong was to react. He reacted to anything like an animal. He acted with rage when confused. Acted annoyed when interrupted. Lied automatically when questioned. James, wasn’t actually ready for what was going to happen next in his own life story. He was not ready for anything at all and he knew this already. Even when he was going out of his way to pretend that he was. It was finally Thursday and James was sitting at a table, all by himself. He knew he got there early and that he would have to wait. He wanted to be there first so he could be prepared before she arrived. This actually never worked for him. James always felt like he was about to throw up whenever something important was about to happen. The more he tried not to throw up and pretend he wasn’t worried at all, the worse he felt. This happened to him every time; ever since he could remember. His first test, his first kiss, his first interview, first everything. A waitress comes up to him and asks if he wants anything. He firsts says no, but immediately regrets this and tells her he just wants a soda.
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vol.1//vol.i// He thought maybe that would help him with the mess he was feeling deep in his stomach. “She had said 8 o’clock right?” James wondered. It was still a quarter till 8 but he couldn’t help thinking about her. He worried a lot. People said that it was nervousness, and that was why he would get sick or dizzy. They would tell him there was nothing to really worry about whenever they would see him like that, but he had always thought differently. James always had the same argument with people who first met him and told him not to be nervous about things. He would explain, or at least try to, every single time. He wasn’t nervous, not at all. James just worried too much about everything in life, no matter how insignificant it seemed. He was worried and anxious, and he never found out what to do about it, he wasn’t nervous, he was worried and scared about what the consequence of his actions; so he just worried some more. While waiting for his soda, James worried some more. He remembered how his grandfather used to tell his mom that he would look like an old man by the time he was 25. The thought of this made him smile. He didn’t really care if he ended up looking like an old man at his age. He worried because he always wanted everything to go the way he wanted it to, and most of the times that was the hardest thing to do. So he worried some more. He looked at the clock on the restaurant wall. It was 10 minutes till 8. The waitress came back with his soda and James thanked her. He took a sip of his drink and then it suddenly struck him. The one thing he hadn’t really considered as a possibility.
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/teki// James thought about everything, every single thing. During that past week, he had carefully designed a plan for every possible situation; he was ready, or at least that’s what he had been telling himself all that time. What James hadn’t thought about was the enormous possibility of her just not showing up. Now, he was really worried. He knew this already. He knew he had forgotten something, and immediately he remembered telling himself how the one thing he wouldn’t consider as a possible scenario, that one thing, would be the one to happen. There were still 5 minutes left until 8. James thought about calling her, but then he thought that if she was coming to see him, he would sound more than desperate. He knew she was never on time, even when she knew that he was always early wherever he needed to be. He finished his soda and moved his coat. He put it right next to his lap. There was still hope for her coming in through that glass door. He then wished he had brought something to read while he waited. He felt he had already been there for more than an hour and hated the fact that he could not keep her out of his head. He was wondering how to greet her when she showed up. Should he get up and kiss her, or just say hi while sitting down? He wondered about what she would wear or if she would be overdressed for a simple dinner with a friend. But, was he a friend? He knew they hadn’t spoken to each other in over a year, but they were together for over 3 years. They knew each other to the bone even though now things were different. He glanced at the clock and saw that it was already five past 8. He checked his
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vol.1//vol.i// watch and it showed ten past 8. He always kept his watch with a difference of 5 minutes, hence the early arrivals. When it was really ten past 8, James ordered a cup of coffee. He wouldn’t normally have coffee, but since she was already late, his hope of her at showing at all had started to fade. He poured some sugar on his coffee, and took a sip, but it was still too hot. He leaned against the back of the chair, it was now 8:20pm and he felt helpless. The one thing he had been anxiously waiting for the past week didn’t go as he expected. He decided he could wait a couple of minutes more since he didn’t really have anywhere else to go. It was 8:35. It was now just too late for her to show. James felt desperate but looked calm and composed. On the inside, James couldn’t help but feel sick; he despised her although all he could wish was for her to come through that door even if it had been 35 minutes late. James couldn’t have felt more lost. He didn’t know what to do, much less how to feel. He was definitely mad at her for planning a night out and then not showing up, but he couldn’t stop blaming himself. That’s all James ever did. He blamed himself for everything that went wrong in their relationship. He even blamed himself for the way it ended, even when she was the one who left without an explanation. He hated this about himself, but somehow, he felt he owed her that. He sincerely felt it was all because of him. It had always been his own fault. He fucked everything up, every single time. James was completely aware of this. He couldn’t help but ask himself why would she have done such an awful
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/teki// thing to him. She knew he hated when people did things like this. Standing people up. She knew he hated people who did things like this and she deliberately stood him up after she had been the one to plan out the entire thing. He simply agreed to it. She was never like that, and he could not believe the way she was letting him down right then. He decided that would be it. He knew he couldn’t do much else. James knew this was the last time he would know anything about her. He finished his cup of coffee and got up to leave. He put his coat on, went out the door and on his way out glanced at the table he was sitting at and thought about how stupid he must have looked all by himself waiting for someone so anxiously. Someone that didn’t even care to show up. He looked at the clock on the wall one last time and noticed it was now ten past 9. He couldn’t understand why the hell he had waited for over an hour when he knew already, minutes before the agreed upon time, that she wasn’t going to show up. He was not prepared for this at all; his reaction didn’t even matter anymore, because no one would be there to care. He thought about how she had just done that worst thing she could do that day. He knew she just wasn’t herself anymore. Or maybe just the self of her that he longed for. At the thought of this, James felt that maybe, just maybe, that would be the perfect time and the best thing to do. He had to, finally, move on with his life; his life without her. He decided to remember her for the years they were together, for the good and not for the bad.
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vol.1//vol.i// He remembered the very first time they kissed, and he smiled. Once their lips parted after touching for the first time she had said “This wasn’t supposed to turn out this way.” And then she kissed him again. He never gave it much thought. Even if it had been the strangest thing she could have said at a moment like that, but it was just as if she’d already known the end to this story five or four years ago. As if she knew before James knew; as if she knew before you knew; as if she knew before I knew.
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Apres // Postlude
So what if I am having the same recurring dream every single day? 4 years usually mean nothing to a lot of people. I am certain this dream thing is only happening on my side. To be forgotten, oh what an undesirable feeling, but how can one avoid such a thing. It is definitely not one’s choice, certainly not when the one who has forgotten about you is the one that comes up to you on every single one of these dreams you are having. People say they will never forget you. I wonder what amount of the times you hear that, it is true. I’m not saying the person who says that has to mean it with all their heart, but at least, that they will at some point remember the things you went through together. This one moment you both cherished. People say a lot of things they don’t mean. I say things I don’t really mean. I could start wondering how many people I’ve said that to and I can’t think of anyone specifically but there has to be someone, meaning I do not remember them as I said I would, meaning I lied.
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vol.1//vol.i// I suppose some will call it karma, but what should I call it? Disappointment? Disgrace? Shit? I just cannot understand why I sometimes get this in my head and cannot seem to get it out. You see, it is not something I think about daily, I don’t even dare speak about it, but it haunts me. I close my eyes every night and before I go to sleep I think about a million things that I have in my head and she never comes up. I wake up in the middle of the night and remember everything about the dream I just had and then go back to sleep. I wake up again a couple of hours later when I do wake up to get ready to do whatever it is I have to do and I don’t remember having that dream. It is not until there is nothing else on my mind. Maybe while I’m taking a shower, maybe while I’m brushing my teeth. I remember. It was her. She was there again, in my dream. What’s worse…I can’t say I don’t like what goes on my dreams. What I don’t like I what goes on when I wake up. Sometimes I look back at everything that happened, all we went through, to see if there is one reason why it keeps coming up. After it was all over, about two years ago, this happened too but I didn’t think it was so terrible, I thought it was completely normal, mostly I was just bothered by it. I thought it was just the course things should take. I avoided thinking or talking about her. I did that for a couple of years and it hasn’t worked. It hasn’t worked at all. When I think about it, about the past, everything was just really messed up and anyways there should be lots of reasons why I would only loathe having these dreams. That’s what I told
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/teki// myself at the very beginning and why I survived. Now it just seems strange. I’m alone, dreaming every single day about a person who seldom even remembers me. But what is it really that keeps me there after three long years? I had heard songs before talking about relationships mentioning waiting for years but I never thought that could really happen, I just thought these were hypothetical situations. But now here I am, the one thing I thought would never happen, I’m doing it. I’m not dying for things to happen. I’m here living day to day, I’m doing what I like, I get basically what I want, but it’s just something I know wouldn’t bother me at all. Being together again. I just keep thinking there has to be something to these dreams. It isn’t normal. The dream seems to be the same only with changes on several details. The plot is the same, and the ending is the same. We see each other. She is with someone else, as she is now, and they’re together somewhere. For some reason I bump into them but I only see her, the guy she’s with is doing something else. We get to talk a bit, we flirt, we look straight at each other’s longing eyes, deeply. Suddenly this feeling of no need to explain anything comes over us, I know I’ve been an asshole, she knows she hasn’t really cared about anyone else. We decide to get back together and that is when I usually wake up. I go back to sleep and then probably something related to the first usual dream happens but I don’t really remember by the time I wake up for the second time. I just keep having this sentence or something similar in my head “I never forgot about
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vol.1//vol.i// you”, “I missed this”. It’s as if I was really for the first time saying what I mean, but it is being said to me. I have no idea how dreams work or the whole psychological deal goes but this seems pretty important to me. I’m always trying to convince myself these are just random things, and that they have no meaning whatsoever, but I can’t help but think sometimes if there’s something to them. Everything was lost in the end. That’s what I remember. I remember having it all and ruining it. Maybe that’s why I’m the one with these dreams and not her, because I was the one to blame. It’s been three straight weeks. I’m not really saying this happens to me every single day. But whenever I remember or can make up what it was I was dreaming of, it’s her.
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Wild Is The Wind
Monday night, I’m sick again, some sort of flu is getting the best of me. It’s 11:51pm just 9 minutes away from a brand new day and I can’t help but think…what if I just built my own city? I’m not saying I despise the time and place that I find myself in at this very moment; I just can’t seem to find my real place or my own right now. It is not a problem of fitting in to be honest, or about belonging, it’s about looking at everything around you, around your life and watching how everything fades as the days go by. Nothing ever really sticks. Nothing is really that important. There is nothing that you are really passionate about. Nothing to take a fall for. You seem to be learning lessons every single day, a rough one, a useless one, a nice one, an important one, and you can’t help but notice that none of them stick. You just keep on making the same mistakes. What if it was all because of the place you’re in at that precise moment? If you could
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/teki// just feel like you can bear with all this by being somewhere else at that same moment, wouldn’t it be easier? Or maybe just by changing where you stand none of this would exist and not a single thing would seem like a burden? So what if you were meant to be somewhere else, every single moment of your life you were just supposed to be somewhere else; and that is the reason that seems to keep troubling the way you see your life. Small town people want to live in the biggest city, big city folk just want their lives to stop being so hectic. We always think we were supposed to be someone else, to live somewhere else, to think otherwise. We hope for these things, we long for them. We’re always looking for greener grass. We are always looking forward to feel as if we were home. The feeling of being home is just something that can’t really be described but you can describe the situations that make you feel that. You go away somewhere new, meet new people, see new things, try new stuff, it is all great for a couple of days and then there is just this feeling that you miss and you wonder what it is, hoping it’s not that you’re homesick because it would be ridiculous to complain about the situation you’re in and miss it once you finally get to step away from it. But once you come back to your day to day life, your boring, never-changing routine, there is a feeling for about 2 minutes where you are as happy as can be. You are close to what you know and there isn’t anything better than that. This feeling of being home, it happens to me, but it is never at home, or with my situation, whenever I get away…that is home.
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vol.1//vol.i// Even though I’m basically home, because this is where I live, where I was raised, where I know people and places, I am homesick half of the time. My mind just wanders hoping to get away, leave, quit this place, and just go home. It is even hard to concentrate at times when you cannot stop these thoughts of leaving, of getting away, and all I want is to get that feeling again. The only real problem is, what if I feel exactly the same once I get to this new home, to my long awaited space?…I’ll just go away, I’ll be home once I leave. As long as I’m leaving I will always be home. Hopefully you now understand what I mean. I just think home is a very strong word and only a few can state they feel at home. I can’t. Now, about this new place; I’m building it. I’m finally going home.
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The Looks
Jimmy’s story is a bit troubling. He surely doesn’t understand why but it is just something that has been stuck with him ever since he can remember. It wasn’t too big of a problem to be honest, but it was there. He was certainly aware of it. He had tons of stories because of it that was for sure. Things just happened once in a while. His friends knew and his family did too but other than that basically no one really understood what the problem was. These “things” just happened ever since he was a kid and could make out what people thought and sometimes even said. Jimmy said he had a problem of just wondering too much. It definitely wasn’t a medical thing but after trying so long, it was like something that certainly couldn’t be fixed out of the blue. There was one time when the whole chaos and stories thing disappeared but only for a ten-day run. He remembered these days quite clearly. It was
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vol.1//vol.i// during the summer. About five or six years ago. It didn’t really matter how long ago it was. He just thought of what would happen if this type of strange lucidity came back one day. He often wondered what would he do this time now that he actually knows how things would be. Whenever someone asked about this run, Jimmy would tell them “those were, by all means, the best ten days of my life.” The thing about Jimmy’s…thing, was that he didn’t really notice it. He remembered everything that had happened because of it, but to him, there was nothing to really notice. The fact that it was only him who went through these situations and only him who remembered them bothered him. He knew of course that “there was nothing wrong with him”. What made him so uncomfortable, in fact, was that everyone said this all the time just to be polite and try not to point out what the real issue was, just to try and avoid it. He thanked the ones who were close to him for putting up with it and also staying there even if he had it. At times he just couldn’t bare the overwhelming feeling of being lied to when these things were said. Or even not really lied to but bothered by the idea everyone had that they understood, or knew how it felt like, but no one ever tried to fix it. Jimmy said at times he thought about being fixed. Even if Jimmy knew not how to deal with this, he had to. He tended to just let stories go but some of them just stuck with him for a while if not forever. More than once babies cried and dogs
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/teki// barked. People his age stared for a minute and then turned away as fast as they could. Jimmy said it had something to do with him admiring the simplest things. There was this one time, one time that Jimmy remembered and thought about at times when he was alone. It had been awful. He hadn’t done anything but something did happen. He was walking down the street with a friend of his. When crossing a street, Jimmy glanced and saw an old woman crossing the other way. He could tell she probably belonged to some affluent family who lost their fortune at some point; or at least someone who once belonged to a family of easy access to things. She was all dressed up for a normal Tuesday afternoon. She might as well have been royalty, but there was no royalty in Jimmy’s town. When he saw her, he remembered the huge house that was three blocks away from his. It was the biggest house on the whole neighborhood and it probably was hers. He remembered right away the family plaque on one side of the house “The Swallows”, no other house had a family plaque anymore, at least not one as fancy and big as the one he remembered. This lady was about seventy years old, but she was still good looking in a way. Even if one could see from miles away that she had a distinguished but stubborn look; almost anguished. It was clear she had been more than beautiful when she was younger and that she still cared a lot about the way she looked after all those years. As usual, Jimmy started thinking; really sort of fantasizing about this lady’s story. He want-
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vol.1//vol.i// ed to know if she married the right guy, if her parents got divorced when her father lost all their wealth and left her the house and nothing else after they both died. If she still talked to her children who swore at one time not to ever speak to her again right before her husband died. He thought about what a burden her name could have been for throughout her life. He wondered if that was the reason for the look she had on her face, if the fact that she had to carry on living a life that wasn’t really meant for her. Not really what she had always wished for but what her name made her out to be. These were not made up things, or at least not to Jimmy, he could’ve sworn those were all the things that happened to this lady. He could’ve sworn these were the reasons for all her wrinkles and scars; and he could have sworn that all she had left now was to be beautiful. Upon getting closer, step by step, the lady noticed Jimmy and immediately felt uncomfortable. She was feeling his stare. She felt his look upon her. She started screaming in the middle of the street, yelling at Jimmy and calling him a miserable bastard. His friend took him by the arm and they started running away. Jimmy couldn’t understand what had happened, but it did. They had to run, it often happened that people called the police and would accuse Jimmy of things he never even thought of doing. Jimmy wondered if it had anything to do with what he and his friend were talking about the party they were heading to. Once, he was called a creep. Some girl said this. She told him to “stay the fuck away and stop the fucking staring” or she would call her
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/teki// boyfriend to beat him up. Right that instant he thought he’d found the solution for his problem. He had never heard that before as being the problem. The staring. He thought it was obvious, he was always looking at things in detail and he was always making up stories for people and things he saw in front of him but he hadn’t noticed that he was “staring like a creep”. He made an effort for a whole week not to look for more than two seconds at people or things. It was Friday and nothing had happened, he was really happy with the results and made the decision to simply stop staring. The next day, on Saturday he was threatened by some other guy to “go away or get the shit kicked out of”. After having his one chance to solve this ruined by the fact that there was no real solution and him staring was not the real problem he thought it was time to stare at the sun for a while. Maybe the sun would get scared and run away, maybe he would just end up blind from looking straight at the sun and wouldn’t have anymore of these hateful situations. The sun didn’t get scared and Jimmy wasn’t able to stare long enough to be literally blinded by the light. It was after this that the perfect ten-day run happened. This was five or six 6 years ago, during summer. Jimmy had to go to the city to run some errands. He hated going to the subway for all the confrontations he had at once had there but there was no way to make it to the place he needed to be without riding the subway. All traffic was jammed and it was too long to walk or run. He knew he had to get on the A train. At 4pm in the afternoon, the A train was hell, let
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vol.1//vol.i// alone a Friday. Jimmy had to be on the other side of town before 4.30pm that day. He was bound to get yelled at or into a big thing where he would end up running away. When he got on the train, Jimmy closed his eyes at first, and then he stared at the pole from which he was holding himself. He knew it would all be fine if he was able to avoid thinking about a anything for the fifteen minute ride and that it would be easier after the fourth stop since half of the people on the A train got off there. He had to get down on the sixth stop. By the end of the first minute of the ride, he was not able to keep his eyes closed anymore. He looked at the maps, at the signs, and he avoided the door since people were reflected there. He closed his eyes again and when he opened them again, he looked straight at the door. Right then and there, what he had been trying to avoid happened. Someone was standing right in front of the door. Sarah Neuhaus was in front of the door. Jimmy tried not to but still looked at her. He didn’t think of anything and just kept looking. She looked at him and grinned, she asked him if he was lost because of how nervous he looked. Sarah ended up walking him to the editorial house he was heading to since she knew her way around that stop better than he did. She was the first person he didn’t know from his childhood or school days that he was able to talk to. He knew something was up. When he was heading back home, he decided to take the A train again just to figure out was going on. He looked at people but just looked.
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/teki// Nothing happened. For the rest of his way home, nothing happened. It was all right after meeting Sarah Neuhaus. He had only talked to her for a couple of minutes on the subway and everything changed. For ten whole days, nothing happened. Jimmy went out every day and every night and no situations took place. To someone like him, just the fact of going out and not having a single problem during a week and a half period could easily turn into the best days of his life. Sarah Neuhaus was lost and never to be found and that was the only thing Jimmy regretted during these ten days. On the ninth day, Jimmy decided to take the A train to see if he could find her or at least something about her. If she knew her way around that last stop, she would probably hang around there often. He never saw Sarah Neuhaus again. When he woke up the next day, on the tenth day he felt it close and refused to think about it. On the eleventh day, Jimmy went out again to ride the A train. When he got on, he locked his eyes on this old man with the only available seat on the wagon right next to him. Jimmy took this seat since he was kind of tired and didn’t want to stand up anymore. The old man looked broken. He was wearing a suit. You could tell it was old, bought at least a decade ago. He didn’t have a heavy beard but you could see he hadn’t shaved that week. Jimmy looked at his eyes directly, assuming nothing would happen since nothing had happened for almost two weeks now.
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vol.1//vol.i// He started thinking about this old man and how easily he could make up a story for him. Something he could’ve sworn was the old man’s life story. This old man, he probably was a foreigner. Jimmy thought that he wanted to leave his country since he was a little kid and he managed to. What this man didn’t expect was for life to turn around the way it did. While he was happy to have left home and start a new life he began noticing how he was drifting apart from the woman he loved. The bickering never stopped and since he had no one else where he lived now, all he could do was talk to himself about the things that were going on with his life. He had once dreamed of being a journalist for a big newspaper, and he made his dream come true. The man at one point accomplished everything he ever wished for. Jimmy could see in this man’s face how he lost everything once the end of the bickering came with the news of a child her wife was carrying. The man was broken and Jimmy could see that in his story. It had been because the woman lost their child during labor and committed suicide only three days after since she wasn’t able to deal with the suffering and left the old man alone for the rest of his life. Once Jimmy sat right next to him, the man got up to leave in disgust. He looked at Jimmy and started yelling at him in a foreign language; cussing angrily. While he was screaming, the man started sobbing and got out of the train, he stood outside facing Jimmy and stayed there until the train left. Those were the longest fifteen seconds of Jimmy’s life. At this point he wasn’t able to stop looking at the man. The old
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/teki// man just stared right at him, full of pain and hatred. He managed to make a man weep within a minute. His “thing” had returned. That is how Jimmy always remembered his ten-day run, Sarah Neuhaus and the old man on the A train. Jimmy often thought it had something to do with the way that he looked. When Jimmy thought about these happenings, he knew for a fact that he always got this reaction. But he also knew that whenever he imagined what people lives were like, it wasn’t always so terrible, but there was always a secret. Every time he imagined what someone’s life was like, he made up a secret. Most of the time Jimmy made up burdens or regrets for everyone. He always thought those were usually the kind of secrets everyone keeps to themselves. He could never think of a normal life where no one ever experiences any kind of suffering that wasn’t to be kept within the deepest hole in one’s mind. It just wasn’t something he did sometimes out of curiosity. This happened almost every time he locked his eyes on someone else’s. It wasn’t that Jimmy was able to stare into their souls through the back of their eyes and make out what the cause was for all of their pain and suffering. He would just make up his own stories of why people had that look on their face. He always did it and as a rule he would also make up a big secret that would be known only by the person, but Jimmy would know too. When he fantasized about these stories and tried to make them the cause for his troubled story he would talk about two different scenarios.
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vol.1//vol.i// Jimmy thought once in a while that the problem were the stories. He would say to people that once he thought about what someone’s life could be like, they would have to start living that exact life from that point on. As unreal as it may have sounded, Jimmy found at times no other explanation for the reaction he had from people. He said people hated him for that exact moment when he looked at them because they would have to carry on living something that he made up. They would now have an unbearable secret to live with and there was nothing they could to get out of that. If this was the case, he said he would then understand why things happened. He thought it would only be normal to have those reactions if your life all of a sudden would change and you would be aware of it for a second while looking at Jimmy. When he thought about some of the stories he made up for people he was convinced that this had to be the one reason. People would look at him and change. People would look at him and have a new life they never chose or even thought of. People would look at him and have a new secret to keep to themselves forever. Jimmy said sometimes that it had to be something about how maybe people were able to read his thoughts. They would be able to read his thoughts and they would be frightened by the fact that he was able to tell the story of their life without even knowing they existed before. That for a single second that other person, was able see everything they hated of themselves, every-
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/teki// thing they loved and cherished, everything they regretted or hoped for, every single thing that had once gone through their head and then everything that had happened. Every single event in their lives, it was reflected in front of them as some sort of punishment for giving up or simply giving in. Looking at Jimmy staring was their judgement day. Looking at Jimmy was facing the truth they avoided for such a long time. Looking at Jimmy was your life flashing before your eyes. But not because you were dying. You weren’t about to die and that was the most painful part of it. It is commonly said or thought, that you can see your life pass right before your eyes in a couple of seconds right before you die. But that would be it. You see it, you may like some of the things you see and regret some others, but after that you would simply die. “What I think is that looking at me,” Jimmy said “is like dying. As painful as dying but people would have to keep on living. The thought of this has to be unbearable. People who look at me have to live the rest of their life knowing exactly where they went wrong. Even if they somehow blocked it out, they were reminded why their life turned out the way it did. “If you just think about it, most people end up living a life that they never even thought of or would have never expected. I’m not talking about making your dreams come true but about the day to
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vol.1//vol.i// day basic things that happen in life. You would expect to grow up, go to school, get married, have children, and then just get old and that is where the secrets come in.” - When telling this, Jimmy would usually stop every single time and talk about how this was his secret, the one thing he had to live with every day and just wanted to forget about somehow. Of course, he would only tell this to himself. - “They have to watch and they have keep on living without the possibility of going back, or the chance of going away. “They would stay and keep living. They would remember everything they struggled with for years to take out of their hearts and minds to forget. The things they could hardly think of since those were things they carefully put deep down in their thoughts so it wouldn’t come out back to haunt them; was there and right in their face because of me. What he could never make up in the end was the reason for his beloved ten day run after meeting Sarah. Sarah Neuhaus. “I always think about this and what I know is that the only eyes that I’m not able to stare into and make up a story are mine. It’s as if I’m not living my own made up story.”
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vol.1//vol.i//
Part IX Building hopes as if there was some sort of architecture to them is what I seem to do best, and you seem to be the one demolition company in town. I could easily say you’re the one that builds the whole structure just to watch it fall apart. I’m just the heart of this building you’ve created. You’re just the foundation of the building you just tore to pieces.
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/teki//
Part VII There is a lack of honesty and just a bunch of mixed signals and misconceptions piled up in a corner I won’t even dare to look at. I let this happen. I let this all pile up and let it be there. Let it exist. The contribution you make could name you responsible, but I won’t.
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vol.1//vol.i//
Part IV I am trying to figure out how all the pieces that form the puzzle of your mind fit together; Whilst always hoping I see my face in there once they’re all in the right place. If I could put my mind around something else, trust me, I would.
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/teki//
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vol.1//vol.i//
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