11. as I step into the night.

I somehow managed to fall asleep as usual that night.
He was leaving the country a few hours later.
At 2:33 I awoke by a twitch in my left hand. At exactly 2:33 his plane took off into the skies.

I was not surprised.I waited. I swore I would never point out my supposed allergy to e-mails ever again in my life.
I may despise e-mails but at least they´d let you know in a day what the other person had responded.
Five million thoughts crowded in my mind.
It was 2:33 in the afternoon and your upperlip had made an eternal scar in my brain.
Was I too honest? Would he understand?
Would his response be good, bad or just... dissapointing?

He had gone from being a staring stranger to my..
Well yes. What was he? He was him. The one he'd always be.

Just because you get a title in life dosen't mean you ARE your title.
I hated having titles. I hated even having a name.
It never felt right.
My name had always itched on me. Like one of those wonderful sweaters I´d never buy.

I was in the park. I could'nt sit on the bridge.
There's so many things I have'nt even said.
There is so many things I never can describe in words.
They just where there. Like a shadow or a wind or an explosion in disguise.
I could never write them.
They where details reserved my mind exclusivly. I'm sorry. I can't tell them.
I have told the big picture. That, you get.
One day the waiting stopped.
As I reached out my hand to the brown, half torn but perfectly packaged postcard from my saint,
my left hand started to twitch again. It was then I knew even more.

As my eyes started to feast on the letters that formed words that made this message my heart skipped faster and faster.
There was nothing I could do about it.
Mom started to make stew. Even the smell couldn't stop me.
I stood there, reading, for seconds. Minutes. Hours. Days.
I can't recall, I can't remember.
I loved every word and I would read it over and over again.
Even if he was thousand miles away from me I could see his perfected appearence, his upperlip, his smile and his voice as he said ”Braff” with that accent of his.
It was so silly. So perfectly silly.

10. Since I don't have the time nor mind to figure out.

The next day we met at that resturant where we had danced, drinked and philosofied.
Where we had lived.
They would always play my cd at the last open hour of the day.
Of course they did not know that it was mine.
I went there every day, at the same time.
I wanted to hear our songs, my songs again.
I did not want to let them go.

I sat there with my third double espresso, hyperventilating for some reason.
He stepped into the room.
His shadow was mighty, but his apperance weak.
I felt his steps on the wooden floor. Every single hit made my heart beat faster. Anxoius.
My masterplan was set to order.
He once told me that he aswell collected postcards.

I remembred that.
I loved him for that.
I loved him for being a better version of me.
He loved me just for being me.

I had brought some postcards with me to illustrate my obvious point.
He nodded and nothing had to be said.
Of course we should stay in touch that way.
I was allergic to e-mails.
He was willing to try.

My postcards had a meaning in life.
They were happy.
Conor kept singing thru out the speakers and the grey people that filled the resturant started to shake their heads to this singers wonderful scream.
I was still happy.
Still a little bit ridiculosy happy.

Then he went away.
We said goodbye that day.
It started to rain.
We went under the bridge and kissed in the green-tasting water surrounded by the sympathetic ducks.
We kissed for seconds.
Minutes.
Hours.
Days.
I can't recall.

I can't remember.

My watch stopped to work after that.
The ducks started to pull our hair after a while, as a reflex we bumped both our heads at the bottom of the bridge. Auch. Love hurts.
We were such a cliché.

9. But mercy's eyes are blue; when he places them in front of you.

It was not fair.
-life's not fair.
-But I adore you.
-I'm not going anywhere.
-But the fact is you really are.
-I will always be here.
-I adore you, but that's a bunch of crap.
-Yes, yes it is. But I want to belive it.
Do you?
-I guess. I guess I don't have a choice.

I hated not having a choice.
I hated that he made me love him.
I hated that he made me hate him.
I loved being numb.
I liked not having him in my life.

But I loved being his.
And how was I going to go back to like
when I had have love?
It was to put grayscale to my life.
All the colors would fade away as I pressed the ”approve” button.
Well, I did'nt approve.
I rushed back home.
I left him talking to the ducks.
They gave him the sypathetic look I had taught them all afternoon.
I was looking for something to make it stop.
As I did not know exactly what I was looking for, I searched everywhere.
I looked under my pillows.
Only hairs and dried tears.
Under my bed.
Only dust-mice and the scent of him.
In my underwear-drawer.
Only irregular socks.
I pushed, crawled, pulled and lifted everything in that room.
As I opened the closet a box fell on my head.
Auch. That hurt. And it would leave a mark.
A big mark.
I did not think of that at the moment.
The box had opened and my room was full of postcards.
I was going to send them to him.

I picked them all up, gently, like they were very old, very dear friends.
I adored them.
It would not be a secret anymore.

8. There's no measuring love. Nothing else is love.

The song had gone on repeat seven and a half time when my legs started to hurt from standing up for so long.
We had both fallen asleep dancing, standing up and moving.
I did not think that that would be possible.
But with him I was not in my world anymore, I was in our world.
We made the rules.
And of course you could sleep standing up. Well yeah, you could even sleep while slowdancing.
I adored his mind and his upper-lip.
They where both perfect in every way.
He noticed that I had stared at his upper-lip for about two times that the song had played and said:

”Errhm. Well. I guess we should be going.”
I closed my eyes.
I was not tired anymore.
I had never been more awake.
His words did not agree with his hands, as they were still tightly braided around my waist.
I liked them being there. They pulled me together.
I did not want the night to end.
For me it had'nt even started quite.
So we brewed four double-espressos, left some money on the cashregister to cover up our nightly expenses and headed out into the dawn.
The morning light shined right at us.
It burned in our eyes.
We tried to close them, but that just caused our alcoholised legs to tremble and fall onto the sidewalk.
We laughed and giggled and ran as fast as any human being can at that time of day.
We went to the park.
The rain had stopped several hours ago and the raising sun was slowly drycleaning the city.
We encountred a bigger bridge. It was made out of concrete and there was more place to sit.
The morning wind was blowing the first real cold winds of the fall.
I crawled in into his thin leather-jacket.
He took out his mp3-player and gave me one of the headphones.
Kissing the lipless was playing. I had learned to love that song.
We had learned to adore each other.
I would forever love this new day and the smell of his leather-jacket against my skin.
And so we faced a new day, drinking espressos,
listening to The Shins and breathing in the cold air of october.

”You said something the other day.”
”I said many things the other day dear, care to be a bit more specific?”

I had always hated that word. ”Dear”. Like I was some sort of forest animal.
Of course it was not spelled the same. It made no difference to me. I was not dear, I was me.
I breathed. I talked. I wanted to at least. But when he said it I neglected it's sillyness.
I accepted his words. Cause they were his. And I adored him.

”you said that you had everything and nothing in your pocket.”

”oh, that. Yes. Yes of course I do.”

”what did you mean by that?
Is it supposed to be some profund, psycological analysis I'm too stupid to figure out?”

”of course not.”
his eyes twinkled at me. He was trying to be mystical.
This time it worked.

”So?, then tell.”

”I will.”

”When?”

”You'll know.”

A couple of days later he showed me.
He followed me home and passed the streets that lead home to my neighborhood.
In his pocket he held a small heart.
It was made out of some hard material that had about a million details in it.
He said his father gave it to him.
He wanted to give him all the love he had before he walked away.

”All you need is love” he said.
”that's a cheesy beatles-song and an used-up catch-frase” I thought.
But I bit my tounge.
He could still see the irony shine thru my eyes.
So he lauged a bit.

7. The nursery rhymes that helped us out in making sense of our lives.

He took my shaking but very well-cleaned hands and braided them into his.
And there we stood, in the middle of the night, slowdancing to one of the most beautiful and depressing songs in the world.
Then I knew that I was happy.
I had always thought I was.
Not every day, but there was just moments in life when I knew.
Like when I went on a roller-coaster for the first time.
Or my first kiss.
Or when I realized that the ducks understood my sympathy.
I coul'nt be apathetic.
I could not be bitter about life.
I told him not to be either.
Life gives us so much, and we try for as long as we live to just give a little bit back.
But we can't. Every day is a gift, and we get to wake up with the worlds greatest gift every day.
Some get less and some get more of them. That's how it is. That's just how it is.
He agreed. I could see some sceptisism in his eyes still.

6. the solemn warmth you feel inside.

It was so silly.
I was so ridiculisly happy.
It started to rain after about five minutes later from when he had started to hum that song.
Of course none of us had any jackets on, it had been such a warm day and we were both too optimistic to realize that it was october and that the weather changed with the winds.
There were two options.

The first was to go under the bridge, which was going to make our feet and legs wet, but our heads would be dry. And the ducks would give us shelter. Green, smelly shelter.

No.

The second was to run, fast. Now.
Where? I did not know.
The stew was still waiting for me at home.
I did not want to go home.
I still had some heart to pour out to this boy.
So we walked.
We ran.
We jumped a little to high.We slipped on the wet grass and fell without mercy on the ground.
As we were falling our hands touched. It was some kind of concious decision.
We both wanted to save the other from the fall.
But we couldn't.
So we fell together. Hard. Fast.
Autch.
We ran towards the city.
There was lightning.
It was beautiful.
We walked into a resturant.
It was empty, which was weird, as it was almost six-thirty pm.
It was a mellow place, painted green and black and from the corner of the bar you could hear some cool and calm jazz-music.
It looked complety abandoned for the day. Still it was open.
I felt a feeling of nausea of that music, I've never been able to stand jazz.
At the look of Simon's face, neither did he. It was turning pale and grey.
I remembred that I had a burned cd in my bag.
I took it out to put it in the cd-player.
The tunes of Bright Eyes started to fill the empty room.
”Now you have to listen to bright eyes” I said with a grin. We were even.
We spent all night there.
We took out a bottle of wine and sang along with Lover I don't Have To Love.
We layed on the floor and I taught him all the lyrics to At the bottom of everything.
Including the story Conor tells before he starts singing.
It gave us both goosebumps.
We opened another bottle of expensive, french wine, discussed music and listened to the whole, eigth and a half-minute long interview with Conor after the song ”An attempt to tip the scales”.
I told him about my life, about my big, junior-high eraser that had held all the angst and all the teenage fears in it's pencil-pierced, rubbery insides.
I told him how I had tried to toss it into the trashcan, and had failed miserably.
He wasn't surprised.
”Sometimes, it's just not that easy to let go of the past.” he said.
I nodded, but I had no idea at the time how those words would haunt me later on.
The last song of the cd started. It was Lua. My favorite.
He looked at me as I mouthed the lyrics.
Somewhere at ”we might die from meducation but we sure killed all the pain”
he got up from the floor and reached out his wright hand at me.
”May I have this dance?”

Maybe it was the expensive french wine tumbling in my insides, or maybe I was just dizzy from laying on the floor as the world spinned around me. But as I was saying yes, something else wanted to pop out of my mouth. And it was'nt words. I got up, and ran with my shaking legs and my tumbling insides towards the restrooms.
I did'nt see that he ran beside me.
As I stood there, infront of the toilet, bent fowards, I felt his hands holding up my hair from my face. He did not say a word. He just stood there. Holding my hair back and pulling me together again.
After a while we got back to the resturant floor, with an aspirin in one hand and a big glas of water in the other. He brewed us espressos.
I was starting to loose my dizzyness.
We sat on the bar-counter. Our clothes had dryed, but now they where stiff from the green rain that had fallen on the city.
I put the song that i'd intterupted on repeat.
He asked me to dance once again.
Only words came out of my mouth.
Yes.

5. batten down to fare the wind.

One day we sat on the bridge and started to think what to say to each other.

”What did you mean?” I said.
”Huh?” He responded, like I had just woken him up from a daydream.
”What did you mean when you said that.”
”When I said what?”
”When you said that you don't own anything, that you don't have anything here.”
”Oh, that.”
”Yes that. Now tell, Saint Simon.”
His face turned pale and he was quiet. He looked around and I could see that he was thinking of what to respond. He bit his lower lip, just as I do, and started to speak.

His face turned warmer and warmer as he told me his life story.
That he used to live on the other side of the seas, in a city just like this one.
He told me about his family, his loving mother, his absent father and his brothers disease.
He was the only one who had left. Even his absent father had stayed in the country.
But his brother was dying in a disease I could'nt understand.
His mother told him to leave and find his own life, because here he would just fade away into a daze, lonely and with anger in his heart.
His brother loved The Shins. He had given Saint Simon his CD´s and told him to listen to them when he wanted to remember him.

He told me he would spend all his days listening to The Shins.
I looked at his eyes and I could see that he had accepted his situation.
”So, what. Where do you stay?” I said, silently gasping for air after his story.
”At the beginning, which was a long time ago, I lived with my grandparents. But they got too old to take care of the house so they moved to an retirement home in another city.
I visit them sometimes. I think they're happy. I always play ”A Call To Apathy” to them and they cry and laugh and think of my brother and of me.”

The mood had turned a bit depressing where we sat on the wooden bridge.
The ducks had left for the day and dark clouds were floating in front of the autum sun.
We stared at our feet as they were dangling over the green water.
He started humming ”Caring is Creepy”.
It was kind of ironic, cause that was the first time we both realized that we cared.
And it was a bit creepy.

4. allow myself no mock defense.

I can't really recall what we talked about for the rest of the time we sat there.
I remember something about that we had a proper introduction. We said all the info on ourselves. How old we were, where we lived, what music we liked. But not our names. We got stuck with codenames. I'm careful and I guess he was just trying to be mystical.
I called him Saint Simon. I want to think that that was his real name, because the more I think about it, he looked like a Simon, he talked like a Simon. For me, he would always be Simon.
As we were so alike, I just took for granted that he was, as me, almost saint-like in behaviour.
For a boy in my age, that´s a lot. So he got stuck with being Saint Simon.

He on the other hand, wanted to call me Braff, just for the comic releif.
Then I threatend once again to introduce him to the ducks a little closer than he wanted to.
Our passion for music made him invent another name, La.
For one, it was secretly the first two letters of my actual name.
also, he would always think of me as he sang: "la-la-la-la".

It was all so silly. But we loved it.

Every time my mother made stew I would run to the park, pass the bench with all of the judging people, and run up to the woodenbridge and say hi to the ducks.
And after a little while he would come and we would sit there.
Talking about The Shins and life.
Which for him, was almost the same thing.
I would make my mom cook stew every time I could. And I ate it, all of it.

3. and though the saints dub us divine in ancient fading lines their sentiment is just as hard to pluck from the vine.

One time I found a boy who was just like me.
It scared me a bit to have found such a person.
I remember his face.
I had just turned eighteen and I was over-anxius for my life to begin.
I was sitting on a bridge in the middle of the park.
I never do that. But for some reason the apartment air smelled like stew.
And since I never cared much for stew, I stepped outside and ran away from the smell that somehow had filled my entire neighborhood.

I followed my shoes to the park.
I sat on a bench at first. But I imagened that somehow every one that passed me by could look right thru me, seeing everything I thought of, so I left. My hair smelled almost like stew. But I had just ran out of the apartment before the smell would have taken over me. I did'nt want strangers to know what I was thinking of. My brain had always had a mind of it's own. (ha!)
So there I was, sitting at the bridge, dangling my big fat legs out at the green-flavoured water.
The ducks where looking right at me, and their eyes made me understand that they were hungry. But I had'nt brought food. I had runned out of the apartament so fast that I had'nt even brought my wallet. All I had on me was two pearls in the pocket of my jacket.
I tried to give them a sympathetic look.
And they looked back at me as like they understood.
I don't think they did though. This scene repeted itself serveral times. Either ducks are incredibly stupid animals, or I just get deja-vu experiences a lot.
I guess it was a little bit of both.

As I sat there looking complety insane, talking sign-language to the ducks,
I noticed that someone was watching me.
A long time ago I made a pact with myself not to look at those who are looking at me.
I ignored my observer, and kept on waving to the ducks.
Just a little more discreet and self-concious.
Or a lot more.
He noticed it, of course, he was just like me, he did the same things.
I just did'nt knew it at the time.
I remember exactly how he looked the first time our eyes met.
He had walked up the bridge, while I had felt his every step bouncing agaist the wooden bridge,
and for each one I would get a little more goosebumps than the one before.
It took almost 30 seconds for him to come close to me.
And even so he did'nt come that close. I never get that close either with people I don't know.
I prefer to keep my distance. I guess society had made us that way.

I looked down at the water and I saw his shoes.
They where the same model as mine. Black, with white details and they were kind of well-used I might add. My eyes started to wander up and there was no way I could stop them, they kept on wandering , without my permission, and looked at his black, tight-fitted jeans, his black and white-striped shirt that said ”The shins” on it. And so on and so fourth.
Finally my eyes stopped to wander.
They had gotten stuck watching into his. It was the greenest eyes I had ever seen. Somehow we gasped at exactly the same time, and we both tried to hide it, not in a very smooth way I might add.

”Hi.” he said.
”Hello” I responded.

We were quiet.
”This is my place, just so you know...” he said.
”Excuse me, what?”

”I said, this is my place. I come here. This is what I do. I sit. Here. A lot. Mine.”
”did you pay for it?”
”What?”
”did you pay for it?”
”did I pay for what?”
”did you pay for this bridge? This water, these ducks, the grass that surrounds the bridge.
Is it yours? Did you pay for it? I don't see your name anywhere.”

”it's not mine in that way, silly.
I don't own it. I don't own anything here. I have nothing and everything in this pocket.”

”Erhm, yeah, okay. Whatever you say. ”
I stared at him and shook my head, trying as always to act so tough
and annoyed when I'm really just nervous.
This time, not so much though. I was sincerly annoyed. And amused.
He looked at me and smiled. He was amused aswell.
"Do you really like The Shins?" I asked.


"No, I just couldn't find another shirt. It's my moms."
I looked at him, not sure if he was joking or not.
He understood my hesitation and responded.
”haha, no, I'm kidding, obvoiusly. To answer your question, yes, yes I do like The Shins.
Don't you?”

”I guess. I've seen Garden State and all, Natalie Portman may have convinced Braff, but it wasn't like I was jumping off my chair listening to ”Oh, inverted world”.

”that's your problem, you haven't heard ”Chutes too narrow”. You have to have all the facts before you make such radical statements about The Shins.”

”So, what, now you're Natalie all of a sudden? Okay, I see the resembelance in the eyes and all, but I think you're a little too masculine to pull it off.”

”You on the other hand make a wonderful Zach Braff, just as you are, my dear.”

At that moment I was so close to just take a swing at him with my left palm and throw him into the lake with the ducks. But his green, glowing eyes and sudden charm stopped me.
It saved his clothes from smelling green.

1. After all these implements and texts designed by intellects.

I have collected postcards my whole life.
I always took them, wherever I could find them.
Those who where for free, that is.
Every time I went to a bar, a resturang,a coffeshop or a boutique,
I would just go and pick one of every kind.
The nice ones of course.
Sometimes I took two, three of the same kind.
I would put them in a box in my room waiting for something to make out of them.
I always thought it would come to me.
Maybe I´d make them into a wall when I would go off and find my own place.

Somehow that day took longer to get to than that I had imagined as a confused,
bitter but lively 12-year old.
It was'nt something I would go on and on thinking about all day long, I mean, it was a simple collection of free, advertising postcards I just did'nt threw away, like normal pepole with sense do.

I kept them.
And I secretly loved them.

Sometimes I would take them all out and place them systematicly on the livingroomfloor.
It was the only room in the house that had a big enough floor for them all to fit.
It took hours to take them all out.
When I finally finished they had completely covered the whole floor of the room, and even some of the hallway and bedroom-floor.
They were an army of postcards.

2. So vexed to find evidently there's still so much that hides.
The army of postcards quickly surrendered when my mother came home and went ballistic about having started a letterwar without her permission.
Since that day they had been waiting silently in my drawer.
Waiting for their next battle to be won.
And I continued to collect them.
By the time I turned seventeen and a half, I hade fivehundred and eighty-nine postcards.
I would save everything though.
I would keep movietickets, traintickets, written little notes from friends,
I had even saved my first bus-ticket.
And so came the day I cleaned my room. And all of those things went sailing towards the trashcan.
In the darkest part of the desk I found my eraser from junior-high.
It was the biggest eraser I'd ever seen. And from what I'd remember, at that time it was at least twice as big. It filled my entire hand.

As I held that ridiculsy big eraser in my hand,
it started to weight more and more.
It weight ridiculsy much.
Soon it had becomed so heavy that my arm started to hurt. It had'nt grown in any way, and it was still torn and kind of sawed in half. But I started to remember what I´d felt all those years, that eternity of akwardness, lonlyness and growth-pain.
I looked at it for a long while. I stared right in to it's rubbery soul. It's pencil-pierced insides.
And I could´nt feel anything but pure hate.
Even though I´d remebered that that boy had touched it.
He was fascinated with my big eraser.
It was the only thing I was famous for when I was thirteen.


The big eraser was my history. My junior-high history. Those three years, those most miserable three years of my life. All my anxious feelings and all of my hate was compressed into one, very big, very heavy and very torn eraser.
And my hand could'nt hold on to it much longer.
My fingers had grown stiff from trying to break it.
So I looked at it one last time. Stared.
I bit my lip and smiled.
And then I threw it at the trashcan.
In my mind I was in a movie, my character had just had a major breakthru in her development and would throw that big, weird-smelling eraser perfectly into the trashcan.
It missed. Of course.
A bit unconfortable with the re-take of my life, I stepped foward and picked it up.
I smiled again. And threw it perfectly into the trashcan.
First time never counts anyway.

By this time the postcards where getting angry about being ignored.
So I picked them up from the floor in my messy bedroom and started organizing them.
Counting them. Fivehundred eighty-nine postcards in my hands. Dusty and white from erasers.
But there was something odd about them still.
They where uwritten.

Prelude.

Love is the weirdest thing. When you don´t have it you want nothing else. When you have it you are so afraid of losing it. And when you lost it you wish you´d never had it in the first place.
Well I will not regret my love for anyone.

This is a story about assasinating butterflies, eggshell-hearts and how to teach sign-language to ducks.