The attraction of emptiness

Draw a map of your secret wishes and get lost.

(c) Lilly Becker

What I learned in Sicily, was unexpected. A lesson in impermanence, tender yet stern. There is no eternity.

Everything will end. This was the simple lesson. Everything will end. EVERYTHING.

Even the things, you wanted most and never got.

Even the things, you wanted most and got, only to regret them later.

Even your love. Everything you ever loved will end.

How important is it to remember?

In Sicily I never saw a single star.

But I saw the moon. Full and promising.

Walking the coastline, it was kind of surprising to not encounter a single boat with refugees from Africa. It is not possible, to walk the mediterranean nowadays without thinking about all the people, trying to cross it. Without thinking about all the people, drowning in it.

Evrything will end.

They will end. Their hopes will end. Their hopes will end, one way or another. My hopes too.

In Rome, Jennifer got onto our train. I noticed her, because she was the only black person, and she was beautiful and her hair was blue.

She had a big suitcase. Because Italy is even more depressing for refugees than Germany, I could not help but wonder, if she was allowed to leave Rome. Where was she going?

In Bologna, I saw her again. She entered our train to Munich.

She was sitting in our car, but at the other end. I could not see her. At the Brenner, italian police came and controlled some passports. Not ours. We are white and can go, wherever we please. But Jennifers and the one of the guy sitting next to her. He was also black. I had not seen him before. I did not know, where he came into the train.

The police checked his papers and told him to get out with them.

Jennifer could stay. My daughter went up to her and asked her, if she was okay. She said, she also did not have papers. But she is pregnant and her boyfriend is in Stuttgart. She wants to go to him. Which makes perfect sense. In a world without the importance of papers, there would not be a problem.

The importance will end. But when?

We somehow hoped, the police would be generous and act humaneand let her go. When the train started driving again, and she was still on it, we thought: maybe they are. But then, the door opened and the austrian police came in. A woman, two men, and they approached her and told her to leave the train with them in Innsbruck.

I can not stop thinking about her. Where is she now? Who will help her?

I can not stop thinking about Jews in trains, driving towards Auschwitz. How everybody looked away, because everybody was busy with his life.

What was most frustrating were all the other travellers, who did not even look at her. Apart from my daughter, nobody talked to her. We understood, how it happens, that so many people can drown in the mediterranean: we are so busy with our own vacation, our life, our plans. We can not be bothered to look up, when a young black woman from Nigeria, who made it across the mediterranean, who did not drown, who does not have papers, who just wants a decent life for herself, her baby and her boyfriend, we can not be bothered to look at her, when we are coming home from our wonderful vacation in Italy, while she has to leave the train in Innsbruck, accompanied by police.

Everything will end. The concepts of fair or unfair will end.

In Italy I learn, that everything will end. Glass on the beach, in all colours, even red. I have never found red glass on any other beach. Taormina Giardini. Of course, it is beautiful here. But also decaying. So this place has become another lesson in impermanence.

Everything will end.

Even the things you wanted most, and never got will end.

Even the things, you wanted most, until you got them, will end.

You will end. Everything you ever loved, or hated, will end.

The dead fish on the beach. Its big open eye, black and white, staring at me, in a way, like it knows every secret in the universe. And why should it not? Impermanence. Staring at me.

You will end. Everything you ever wanted, and never got, will end.

Che imparo qui. Tutto finirà.

What do I learn here?

I wander the beach and I do see the beauty, but what I feel, is impermanence The rust. The dirt. The broken glass. The plastic. The bodies. Of those, who drown, and those, who dont. Everything will end. And we really help in speeding the process along, by not honoring the miracle, this earth offers to us. As an ocean, as a Jennifer. We look away all the time.

The kisses, the embraces, the eternity, will end. The Looking away, it will end. Eventually-

The stairs down to the beach are covered in rust.

They seem to be breaking soon.

We are the only tourists. Out of season. I wonder, if the hordes of tourists soon to be arriving will fall down to the beach with these rotten stairs, or if the people from Giardini Naxos will repair them, before the start of the season?

A guy, who has lived many years in the US and has now returned to his hometown of Giardini Naxos laughs: This is Italy. Good luck!

Everything will end.

Impermanence.

Good luck.

Even the lifes I wanted, and regretted, because I got them and found out, how they were beyond my illusions, will end.

There is only this moment – sounds like a cliché and like most clichés, it is true.

Truth be told though, I never succeeded in arriving in the moment. I never felt too good in it. I escaped whenever possible. The moment felt so narrow, so small. Boring. My threshold to boredom drove me out of every moment.

The attraction of emptiness. Draw a map and get lost in the folds of your deepest desires.

Good Luck!

This text was also published on Life in 10 Minutes. Thank you Valley Haggard!

(c) Susanne Becker