thoughts from the inside 28: seasons

I wrote the following words some time ago. I let time pass, as it flows, for everyone, always. Now, immersed in a work break amidst the greenery and the Irish weather, I feel the time has come to share it, as his family authorized me some time ago. I dedicate it to B., to his memory, to his loved ones, and to anyone who wishes to read it.

...

”Traveler, your footprints are the only road, nothing else. Traveler, there is no road; you make your own path as you walk.” (Machado)

...

We continually inhabit what happens in our life.

Time passes, in different forms and durations for each of us.

Events are no more than seasons of life, words, speeches, affirmations, questions.

Then life responds, disrupting the old words, the usual speeches, the usual affirmations and questions, and posing new ones.

I met B. a few years ago, the first time on one of those early Savoy spring days that are already almost summer.

B. was a mature man who has worked all his life. Literally.

He was a gentle, kind, and cultured man. He carefully measured his timing and words. He told me he reached me almost by proxy, following the gentle insistence of his wife and son, who gave B. my contact information, which his son received from an analyst colleague he worked with. "A special proxy," he tells me, "not for ..., but thanks to …".

In first sessions, he spoke about himself, about his decent and essentially happy childhood, a carefree school life, about bike rides in the mountains.

Then a tragedy interrupted his adolescence. He witnessed the death of his father, whose life expired in his arms, leaving a great void, a great responsibility built on the image of "a life slipping through his fingers without being able to do anything to hold it back."

A powerful image, that will return, dramatically, in later moments of our work.

Having lost his father as a boy, he embraced the emptiness and his following responsibilities, which built his position as ‘pater familias’, assuming the role of "being at service of his loved ones."

B. recounted that he began working at a very young age, dedicating himself to supporting his mother and younger brother, who thus could study.

He chose to, he told me: “it was not a sacrifice, but a choice."

The choice to be who he is to the extent of being at service to others.

Life flows, sometimes arduous.

While years were passing by, jobs changed, so did time and society.

B. lived his time fully. He absorbed it, inhabited the changes, the political fervor. The liberation struggle in South America, in Europe, at home. A witness immersed in the flow of time, in the flow of change, which is internal from external, and vice versa.

Political and personal, not gathered together in conjunction, but predicated facts.

Being at the service of life, of others, of neighbors, whether known or anonymous, gave a political meaning to B.'s personal existence.

It's colored by relationships, internationalism, complicity. Deep bonds. A natural consequence was to bear witness of them, to write about them. Continuing to live by working. A whole life. To ensure everyone had theirs. First the mother. Then the brother. Then his wife and son. "I lived reassured by having guaranteed opportunities and support to my loved ones."

Being a pillar, absorbing the burden without being asked to.

In the first months of our work, B. brought me his life stories, accompanied by an image.

A mirror in which B. looks at himself, in which he saw himself for who he was, for who he has become.

"For the first time..." he said, “... the image of a seventy-four years old man. Time to truly retire, to think about myself a little without the mediation of what to do for others. I've never done it, I don't know how I can do that."

This became our main theme; we worked around this image and how he can feel.

B. listened to himself, scrutinizing the mirror, what the source was and what were the reflected images. Passing through the mirror, questioning it, and listening to what emerges opened up new perspectives.

A phrase from Lewis Carroll's ‘Alice Through the Looking Glass’ often resonates:

"If it were so, it might be; and if it were not so, it would be; and since it is not, it cannot be."

The body began to speak, stomach pains appeared and became increasingly acute. The initial, simplistic and self-centered thought about the symbolic effect of care work in moving the depths stopped at the threshold of the increasingly excruciating pangs.

It was no longer just a body that moves and speaks; it was a body that screamed, and it reminded me of one of the basic lessons of care work.

It’s not us that make things happen. It's not the work we did together that released quantum of energy.

The only owners of life and change are those who inhabit it, the people who inhabit a body and who speak to themselves by talking to me from the couch.

The pervasive, profoundly light sensation of being nothing more than an occasional and symbolic other returned.

Not as active spectators, but at most as catalysts of existence, we enter into the discourse we encounter without ever making it our own, because it isn't ours. It never was.

We can witness its unveiling, which leads to liberations that are sometimes joyful, other times painful revelations

At the beginning of the summer, we agreed on the importance of listening to these pains, not just metaphorically. They must be heard on a concrete level.

We are matter, and when the body, our embodied matter, speaks or screams, it must be listened to. Visits and exams followed one another, yielding a dire outcome: an inoperable tumor.

The diagnosis was a storm, unleashing itself, and crashing all over.

Then we returned to the world of the words. "I came here to question the meaning of my life and how I might face old age. Now I question the doctors to actually question time—not just the quantity, but the quality of what the rest of my life will be. I had given myself a 15-year horizon, now months and days count."

How to inhabit the rest of his life became our common field of care work, our baseline to question life.

A question as piercing as pain. A question that screamed inside an unheard rage that silenced words that were unutterable, never spoken. But in their silence, they made themselves heard.

I felt the responsibility, and to be within the responsibility, of pronouncing those words, slowly and delicately, so that they could gradually resonate, opening the transformative space that makes them becoming thinkable, so that they could be heard, felt, accepted.

These were painful, delicate encounters that allowed us to face the reality of what appeared real, that guided B. to authorize himself to be present and live the rest of his life.

The worries of a lifetime, of life, surfaced. Worry for his wife, his son, his brother, the people closest to him.

To confront the pain and anger that simmered beneath, we worked within the field between hard-reality and how it was perceived as real, exploring the abyss in between both despair and hope, without indulging in illusions, denials, or depression.

These were encounters in which, through dreams at night and during the day, B. allowed himself to reclaim the gift of his existence.

Part silent presence, part ‘Talking Cricket’, part punching bag, part tear and handkerchief, part warm embrace, I consciously inhabited those different positions, in which punctuation took forms that favor the encounter between the conscious container and the unconscious content, between the meaning of life and the meaning of death.

While B. faced the burdensome treatments with courage and discipline, moments of precious hope alternated with dark despair.

Precisely in the space between them, we allowed ourselves the most difficult, most thorny questions.

Does life give meaning to what remains?

Or does the approach of death give meaning to life in reverse?

Can the rest of life have meaning?

How can we reconcile ourselves with the meaning of life when it pronounces itself as remainder?

How can we inhabit the rest of life?

In reality, we unveiled how these questions lead to a single answer, one of the few answers that are perhaps universal. As B. faced the illness and the burdensome treatments, we repeated: "Everyone can only inhabit the rest of life." Each one with their own expiration date, which is usually ignored.

Everyone with the possibility of meeting their own destiny, not by controlling or directing it, but by inhabiting what life sets before us.

B. asked me to reformulate our work. He asked for reassurance. The assurance that I would be there, that he could count on me. However it would be ending. And, in any case, till the end, if necessary.

He, who had lived his whole life as a pillar for the possibilities of others, was ready to inhabit an unknown position.

B. was ready to center himself, listen to himself, feel his own feelings, facing the questions that life offered him in an accelerated time.

B. asked me to be a witness at his side, in a position that would allow him to recover the testimony of his life, to regain possession of “significance-ly", as he used to say, and that in italian sounds “significanza”.

‘Significance-ly’ (“significanza”) is a term he gave me. It was that peculiar way, that profound yet ephemeral quality that life takes on beyond the shareable dimension of meaning, and beyond the sensible dimension of the signifier.

Inhabiting significance-ly was the journey we shared from the moment of the dire prognosis onward, until the last days, until the end.

This was our pact, which became clear: to encounter the reality of life to make it a testimony that would signal and signify life's process, facing the ticking of the clock of life, and of death.

As the months passed by, the weekly rhythm of face-to-face sessions changed, with the agreement to inhabit time as best we could.

During his hospital stays, even during the most difficult moments of the pandemic, we saw each other in the hospital, where we were guaranteed a room in which we could meet, both of us dressed like sterile divers, both bearers of the existential solitude that comes with facing reality.

When it wasn't possible to meet face-to-face due to B.'s worsening condition during the weeks of chemotherapy, we switched to online sessions.

When his health didn't even allow us to sit in front of a video screen, we agreed to write to each other. Writing was a way of feeling connected through words and images exchanged, lent, and shared.

We questioned time, colors, scents, and odors, and we welcomed and listened to their responses.

We encountered and listened to what the signs whispered in their silent language.

We granted each other the gift of silence.

When treatments were suspended, and the period of palliative care began, we found new, unknown terrains in which to encounter and bear witness to significance.

As soon as a temporary improvement in his health was possible, we met on the shores of a lake outside the city, walking around it, along reed beds, woods, and clearings.

B. cared deeply about it; it was "his" lake.

Not far away was his brother's atelier, which he took me to visit, reviving memories and images in a process of reconciliation with the past that allowed for a tactile perception of life as an art that flows through time to give itself to those who can see it, hear it, and encounter it.

In the woods surrounding the lake, there was "his" tree. When the onset of his illness still allowed him to take long walks, B. had encountered an ancient tree, mighty yet fragile, which he loved to see. And to embrace. Long and silent, allowing himself the warmth of tears filled with life experience.

He had accompanied his wife, his son, and his brother to see the tree; he wanted to show it to me too. "I want to take you to see my tree, because that tree is actually me," he told me.

In our walk, punctuated by tiredness and numerous pauses, we never reached that tree. It simply didn't happen.

Sometimes, there are things that are not meant to happen, despite our reaching out toward the elusive other that defines us.

Inhabiting what was between desire and reality was tiring, but it represented the space B. needed to find himself. Doing without presence while continuing to be there, despite it.

Although in our walks we never reached his tree, we encountered words, silences, other trees with their roots.

Flowers and leaves. The green ones of spring, as well as those fallen to the ground, rotten after the winter snow, witnesses of summers and springs gone by.

We shared in the freest imaginable way what was possible to see and feel, giving words and silences to the feeling of our feelings.

We walked in the mud, observing the unexpected beauty in the reflections of the surfaces of the crystalline water, and the lightness in the openings of the sky, in the clouds. Everything was real, and yet symbolic.

Knowing that the worsening severity of the disease might prevent us from seeing each other either in person or online, we agreed to share text messages, sometimes short, sometimes more complex, sometimes single word, sometimes accompanied by photographs that we felt were particularly meaningful.

Exchanging messages with the people I work with, outside of emergencies and appointment logistics, is something I don't usually do.

But every single person is a universe unto themselves, with dynamics, conversations, times, and spaces that are unique and unrepeatable.

As I learned from my mentors, every person is a different process of care, one that must be continually reinvented.

Every time, every meeting, every person, is a first time, a first encounter, with an awareness of the history that led to where we are.

We shared how important it was to show B. that he could feel even in the most difficult moments, since the body, like the unconscious, always speaks to us. And everyone, ultimately, is always spoken to.

Even though B. was inexorably alone with his illness, I was always available to be there, an invisible witness to the rest of his life.

The messages we wrote to each other, a free, unsaturated, and inherently virtual space, immediately represented a logical space, blank pages in which to leave and capture the traces of existence.

In agreement with him, I collected the words we exchanged, which I delivered to him at two different times.

The first time was during his last hospital stay, where we managed to see each other in person, despite the second wave of pandemic restrictions. Bundled up like an astronaut due to COVID-19 prevention measures, we met in his hospital room.

Shortly before saying goodbye at the end of our meeting, B. confessed to me that he was supposed to be transferred to the hospice that same morning, but that he had asked to postpone the transfer by a day so that we could meet to physically receive the words we'd exchanged and heard, which represented a poetic recollection of our encounters up to that point.

On that occasion, we parted with a small, human act of rebellion. We removed our gloves and indulged in a silent, intense, moving, prolonged handshake.

There was all the warmth of life in that handshake.

I reassured him with the promise to see each other again, in the hospice next time, the next few times, as long as necessary, until the end, as i promised I would.

That was our pact of care, and a pact of care is sacred.

Once he was admitted to the hospice, we saw each other over and over again as often as possible, demonstrating our presence even when the moments of absence lengthened and slowly took over.

The last time we met, I read to him and handed him a new version of our words, enriched by those exchanged, lent, and encountered during our last previous meetings in the hospice, and with the initial addition of the refrain from a "children's" book that I have always found full of wonder, both as a child and as an adult: "It seems like this, it looks like that" is the title, by Maria Enrica Agostinelli.

I read those words to him, slowly.

Even listening was tiring now.

Slowly and delicately, I read the words and the nursery rhyme. “It seems like this, it looks like that…"

B. liked the reading a lot.

With great tenderness, he asked me if he could share with his family and loved ones the words I had just returned to him, and he asked me to share them in turn, enriching them with the words we had exchanged in that last meeting, to bear witness to them.

They had helped him, he said, "if they can help others too, why not put them at the service of those who could benefit from them?"

We smiled together at the thought that even in that moment, B. had inhabited the possibility of keeping close to the life-style that accompanied him throughout his life. After that, he dozed off for a while.

I remained to watch him rest, gazing at the late spring taking root behind the hospice window. That reliving of life was now beyond the glass of that room, but it was there, too, however and despite it.

B. woke up while I was lost in these thoughts and mumbled something I didn't understand. I told him I didn’t get what he just said. He replied that he hadn't fully understood himself either, but that ultimately, it's the same for everyone.

We laughed together one last time, shaking our hands for a long time. Little by little, the handshake turned into me holding his hand. He went back to rest, and so I left him.

I said goodbye in silence, placing an envelope on his bedside table containing the words we had shared, encountered, and lived in.

Those words, the words of a life condensed into a few pages and a few months, have the meaning of pure poetry.

Poetry of the meaning of life, of human existence, of the significance of the existence of a person whom I thank, "wherever he is... wherever I will be... wherever we will be..." as he said, for authorizing me to bear witness to him, so that through words the ever-possible encounter with the significance of life could take place, allowing him to complete his cycle in the world, giving them to himself, to his loved ones, and to anyone who might find them as useful as they had been to him.

To bear witness to the what is real in life, as well as in death.

"It looks like this, it looks like that

It looks ugly, but it's actually at its best

It looks like a basket, but it's a hat

It looks like a mountain, but it's a camel

The important thing is to understand

that you can always be wrong

and that often it doesn't mean

what it seems is what it is”

What was significant

once

can be insignificant

now

letting go and unraveling

fear

sensations

that stand on the shore of the temporary

escaped dreams

thirsty for all

the world and time

suddenly squeezed

the water is suspended

masters of destiny

of significance

that leaves a trace

in the nothingness that happens twice

rediscovering memories that make noise

tomorrow

is an important point

a question mark

positive dispossession of everything

of so many lives and banalities,

vanity

to be thrown away

warning not to forget

not to forget.

Pain

felt like a cut

belong to life

as to death,

a generative trace of the passage

beyond the future

the mystery

the rest of what remains

heavy, thoughtful minutes full of thoughts

breathing your own breath

walks

tree hugs

little old glimmer

about the miracle

dream catalepsy

everything as it was then

what could have been seen

than ever seen

food chewed up by sharp teeth

with no disfigurements to boast about

lightness

when all we've done

it is

here

fair

equinox

days and nights in succession

snapshots

for the time you have.

fixative images.

enough is a lot

that's all

unmentionable

let go

to take care of it

without worrying about it

taken

to chase a passing time

on a siding

it only makes sense not to look for meaning

burden of existence

of the time that passes

remainder

questions the soul

questions the shadow

gift received

wood

found and transformed

shamanic stick

sea port

there is always someone

coming in, coming out

who speaks

laughs, cries

varied humanity

which varies

keep the center

in the face of pain

like a nail hammered into the wall

hookup

go up or down

accepting the possibilities of life

to welcome the possibility of death.

alone

so many questions

stolen

rays of sunshine

behind closed windows

imagine warmth and scent

watered with happy tears

vastness and lightness

condensed

in the collection of what we have inside

what we are

between light breezes to the heart

to the soul

anonymous corridors of dispersion and absence

pauses

returns

being dispersed and absent

in thoughts orphaned by the sun

moving noises

in a gallery of silences

absorbed and silent

green mile

in a museum of suffering,

searching for unlikely rainbows

that illuminate the soul

that speak of a time still friendly.

then a call to the engine room

like a birth without labor pains and a happy event

white coats, colorful,

hierarchies of humanity

the ritual begins

to each his own instrument,

among heavy silences, complicit glances, sought and rejected

waiting for a liberating lip-reading:

"We must be able to exclude what was suspected in the first instance"

a smile

a big hug

for today is already a beautiful gift.

Chains that reassure

Freedom that frightens

Desire

Antithesis and antechamber of sacrifice

Giving in

without ever giving in

Swing in childish form,

Density of the circle

of its empty center,

Fear of entering

unprotected zones

Unsaturated

like nights that are friendly

Cradled by the light wave

of the being of the living.

Seeing each other

as if we had never known each other

The power of the now

Of every now

The root that unfolds the present

In what will have been

In the changing of immobile time

Normality

Step by step

On an unknown journey

To be admired with new eyes

Enter with the mind

In the circle of thoughts

Condensing

The knots of journeys undertaken

Freedoms

Long-awaited and happy

What can remain

What to let go

With the benevolence of forest elves

Clinging to the present

Seeking with the eyes and senses

Cracks

That evoke sensations of life

In restless sleep

Light, brief, and deep

Encountering

Subjects, events, episodes

That evoke anger, death, fury

Being sought, chased, called

Responding with a real voice

To deep fears

Of everyday time

Preparatory for a rest

Perceived as peaceful

A temporal gap

A raging storm

In a time so real

Slits of life

Even

Where life is difficult

Storm

Disturbance

Disturbing

Waiting to be able to enter

Fruits of primordial and creative nature.

In the near-perfection of the elements

Search for balance

Among the forms,

Ascending movements

Following the flow

Of conscious desire

Disorders of moving light

Mild and silent warmth

Caresses of friendly distances

Before the silent stripping

Before rebirth

In rendezvous with dawns and sunsets

Like caresses of marching clouds.

Silences of light

waiting

found colors

rediscovered

encounters scratched on the street

almost dinosaurs in endless waiting

under brightly lit windows

in the night of rest

granting oneself

good weather

good-natured

bearing painful and liberating tears

like cesarean sections

inside oneself

crying

crying tears

to breathe a little

after apnea pain

labor

being there without haste

seconds that are invisible lymph

in an attempt to live

letting oneself be carried by the days

to feel better.

frightened by the pain

doing what I can

between uphill hairpin bends

steep and challenging

to reach each other

at the dacha on the small lake

presents of today

glow of the end of the day

hugging my tree.

Say no to giving up

without having to apologize,

feel the feeling

revealed in the transparencies

of an ever-open space

cells of life

walk

searching for meaning

look at a present

to find it occupied

sad thoughts

concentration of pain

tests of anchoring

evanescent hope,

refuge for thoughts

waiting to be recycled

taking care of them

simply by

being there.

an encounter to meet,

welcoming,

an open soul

prisoner of a body that rejects

the pleasure and fear

of feeling

opposites that attract

prisoners of the passage of time

without questions

curves, narrow passages, hairpin bends

ever steeper

for a destiny

that one wishes not to see

foreseeing it.

Soft words

Velvet phrases

Exchanged, borrowed, and lent

On the track of a profound transformation

Light and heavy at the same time

Everything suddenly blocked

Nothing serves anymore

Knowing how to die

Preparing

in the time that remains.

Searching for warmth

To live in winter

Words like small balms

Ease the pain

Reconcile

Doing without hope

To make the most of life possible

Today, everyday

Daily and nightly

To avoid being overwhelmed.

Deep, fundamental questions

Deeply

Lurking

Dreaming without memory

Feeling split

One self, one body, and cancer

Connected to serial geometries

Evening

granaries of time and the soul

Glimmers of a path

Among woodland elves and trees

With powerful roots

That provide contact and nourishment

With Mother Earth.

Updates from the trenches

The news from the front isn't good

But we still live,

We breathe,

A stranger to any outcome

Trenches of defense

Clinging together for protection

Prosthesis of anxious expectations

Plots of life

In a handful of words

Crystals of light

Tireless search

Not for memories, but for remnants of memory.

Openings,

Colors that smell of yesterday

Today

Tomorrow

Colors orphaned by time

To the harsh test of the present

Feel the pain

Written in capital letters

Feel Munch's scream in your body

Above-below the sky

We can see it,

Almost touch it,

Never grasp it.

Blades of light pierce the darkness

isolation

from oneself, with oneself

glimpsing

the imprints of time

path of encounter

with one's own images

relationships and smiles received

vanguard

of obligatory passages

tests of landings

landed

hard earth that nails the mind

before taking flight again

searching for an elsewhere

in which to leave one's footprints

generating periods of time and conversations

under a sky

of increasingly dim light.

all good in a panorama of breath.

invasion.

a river of sadness that overflows,

channels of dialogue

with the indomitable part of oneself

reaching for life

in the time that remains

that will be given to live

questions like stones

under the surface of the water

prisoners of a body

that suffers greatly.

The idea of ​​freedom,

of flying between the silence of the sky

and the screams of the sea

of evil

time gives no discounts

to love

to hate

words that become gifts

to soothe the suffering soul

Like every day, like everywhere

the sun dies behind the hill

snapshots of an impossible exploration

bruised but present

ball of fire, power of light

stolen from the fatigue of pain

thinking of oneself in a difficult and painful time

fast time

targeted interventions

acute, unbearable pain

events march against the wind

giving dignity

to the last stretches of the road

dignity of a life despite

despite the pain and suffering

with which to make peace.

peace with fear,

with death

is peace with life

with what has been

with what is

with what will be

in the time and way that will be

to be

to have

a shore

a mirror

in which to see oneself and see everything

never alone in solitude

between heaven and earth

butterflies, flowers, silences, nostalgia

for all the best

despite everything

power and bearing

importance

Clusters, clouds

storms that mark

carving deep furrows

on the skin, on the earth, in the flesh

sudden clearings

images of existence

between fears and bewilderment overwhelmed

by unbearable pain.

morphine

tames unpleasant

scenarios

holding time and space

as it comes

minute after minute

drop after drop

is life that remains?

is life that goes away?

from afar, from afar

feeling comfort in closeness

destabilized

making sense of what happens day by day

accompaniment towards the end of life

full of what has meaning

significance

not always easy to recognize

living the remaining time

the rest of the time

in the best way possible

free from physical pain

at peace with the deepest feelings

it's not easy,

it's hard work.

struggling to inhabit

what is difficult to face,

a destiny

that cannot be extended,

only seized moment by moment

rediscovering the possible quality

of every single moment

of every single instant.

family caresses

veiled and serene fears of a child

between changes of rooms and emptying beds

evocative

powerful

handshakes

promises

like prospective lies

letting oneself be conquered without being conquered

bound, enveloped, seen

priceless pleasure

of moments empty of pain

filled with pacification

letting

the cycle be

Immersion in manual creativity

Restoration of ancient familiarity

Aeneas and Zeno

Words and speeches

of a self sunk

in the depths of the unconscious

Rising tide

That welds the ocean

The content that inhabits us

And speaks through us

Amnesia of suffering

That saves a little

Unprepared for the important

For an unknown ending

Knowing it

Do another

Do something else

Do something else

With the little we have

Available

Fragments of denial

As messages of clarification

Living the present

Until it is past

(And it is already the future perfect)

Bewilderment,

Life slipping through your fingers

Impossible to give it substance

Living the mourning of the possibility of those who remain

Images of footsteps in the woods

The lake

Words allowed

Fill with minutes

Time without pain

Glimpses of sky

Stolen from the windows

Before the clouds gather,

Glimmers that have the flavor

of now, of Now

fragments of a resilient life

like a slender flower

blooming on a wall

memory gaps, present enough

clear memories

like clouds in the sky

light and powerful embrace

together

in the silence

fragments of color and beauty

to clear the eyes

in a time

become a faint flute

marking chemical intervals.

meeting in silence,

a silent meet for a greeting.

the world outside is a portion

framed beyond the window

it is now something else.

in the silence

holding hands

smiles that taste of tears

silence that tastes of life

writing in a letter to tomorrow

words of love in an eternal time

looking

to see Sisyphus

happy.

"It looks like this, it looks like that

It looks ugly, but it's actually at its best

It looks like a basket, but it's a hat

It looks like a mountain, but it's a camel

The important thing is to understand

that you can always be wrong

and that often it doesn't mean

what it seems is what it is”

---

to the memory of B., with deep gratitude for the journey we shared through life, with gratitude to his loved ones who authorised me, as B. asked, to share these words with everyone.

...

reference:

1. Maria Enrica Agostinelli, Sembra questo, sembra quello, (it looks like this, it looks like that), 1969, Salani Editore