I never really told you about it, only that once, when I was 16, or 18, or maybe already 20, I tried to swim to a bell buoy, and it was further than I thought, and I almost went under. I lost my breath and became dizzy from looking into the dark deep, I felt something like horror… or like horror and joy… no, I could never explain it, so that’s all I told you. But it was you, you that I had met, always you, already when I fought then, deep at sea, thinking I would drown. You were the black terror under my eyes, you were the vast green plains that glowed deep below, and the bushy dark forests that reached up towards me; you were the golden net flickering over the sandy bottom, and the round earth I finally came to rest on.

You were such a beautiful failure, then, when happiness was wearing me for its buttonhole flower.

November, 2009