Your amazing body above me, juice dripping from your sweet pussy, drinking your juices… You were incredible and so giving. I miss being around you and it was just two evenings, just one night. Making you come was one of the best things. Made me happy. When you were giving me pleasure and just came in the middle of doing that because it was making you happy to make me happy, that was when I realised that I’ve been with the wrong people. Realising that there is someone out there who is like me, enjoying giving the other pleasure so intensely that they come from it… It was very powerful. Thank you. I’m so happy I spent that time with you.

I loved your art projects, you know. The way you looked at what’s around you. The way you loved your cat. Funny, kind. It’s weird because you called me generous, and I thought it was you who was generous. Letting me peek into your strange little world. I watched a film afterwards, I felt like I can take something more difficult, and I saw I, Daniel Blake. I didn’t know but it was the one you described, about the heart attack and the guy being denied benefits. It was by Ken Loach, who you recommended me, something I found out only after I saw the film. It reminded me of the coincidence of The Blowup, our walk in the park. I thought about writing you then, that this is weird, but maybe it wasn’t weird. Maybe you gave me the space to take on a film that’s more difficult to watch. It’s been a while I saw something that difficult. Thank you. I miss you.

Hrabal is someone I always felt close to. His characters are clearly crazy but also immensely human and humane. His insanity has its own rhythm, its own strange and beautiful logic, one that connects rather than divides, one that celebrates human failure as a form of an attempt at reaching towards the higher form of ourselves. That humanity, humility at the greatness of what it is to be human, is what draws me near him. His tales are like songs that never end as their soft lullaby stay with us forever.

In the gondola of my dreams,
flying high above my fears,
I look down and I fall
but you are still there,
you catch me and I stay
for a few words of kindness,
for your unexpected beauty,
and I feel connected
before the storm comes
before the lightning hits
and I’ll be away,
but I was there,
I remember the moments,
I remember the kisses,
and I long for more.

A nyár arról ismerszik meg, hogy Pepin bácsi dupla nadrágot hord. Télen viszont három nadrág van rajta. Amikor nyár végén az emberek konstatálják, hogy a bácsin háromszoros a nadrág, rögtön mondják: – Kutya hideg telünk lesz az idén! – Apu gyakran legorombítja őt a nadrágok miatt, hogy nem lesz edzett, de Pepin bácsi védekezik: – Úgyse ér az semmit, a Hanka úr milyen edzett volt, oszt mégis megrúgta a ló. – Azon az estén a szüleim nógatására áthurcolkodtam hozzá, hogy rendre tanítsam. Mondtam: – Hé, bácsi, nem szép dolog ruhástul ágyba bújni! – De ő azt felelte: – És mi van, ha tűz üt ki? – Nem hagytam magam: – És nem is higiénikus! De a bácsi azt mondta: – És mi van, ha éccaka el akarok ugrani cigiért? Végül mégiscsak rábeszéltem, hogy próbaképpen legalább az egyik nadrágját vegye le.

Amikor lefeküdtünk, Pepin bácsi fel-alá kezdett mászkálni a pincében (pincében laktunk), és fennhangon morfondírozott: – Az a tökfej, az a dilinyós, az a marha, annyi iskolát járt, oszt mégis híg maradt nekije az agya. – Felpattantam: – És ki az a marha? – De Pepin bácsi felelt: – Hogy ki? Hát az a hólyag a sörgyárból. – És bemászott mellém az ágyba, vakaródzott, csemcsegett, megint felkelt, nyitogatta az almáriumot, fát vágott, és a magas cét gyakorolta

Reggel, kialvatlanul, megkérdeztem: – És mit eszel, bácsi? – És ő frissen a kiskannára mutatott, ahol olyan sokáig főzte a cikóriát, míg össze nem állt. Akkor felöntötte forró vízzel. Aztán újra cikóriát szórt bele és kezdte előlról. Aznap krumplit főztem és fokhagymaszószt, kolbászt sütöttem. Ráöntöttem a szószt a krumplira és a kolbászra, és megkérdeztem: – Na, hogy ízlik? – Pepin bácsi felelt: – Hát, ha neked ízlik ez a krumpli. Erősködtem: – Jó, jó, a krumpli de mit szólsz ehhez a fennséges szószhoz, meg a kolbászhoz? Erre azt mondta: – Hát ha egyszer szereted, mér ne főznél ilyet? Eztet a püspöknél is szokták főzni. A fronton meg hányszor ilyen se vót. – Egy szó, mint száz, december végén már én is ruhástul aludtam, és három nadrágban. Mert mi van, ha tényleg tűz üt ki? Vagy ha éjféltájt el akarok ugrani cigiért?

For me, the best part was waking up next to you. Whenever I could do that more than once in a row, in Berlin, in London, in Africa, the colours of the world shifted. It was a more gentle, kinder world. The everyday is weird. It’s hard to put a finger on some of its best parts, because it changes our lives slowly but surely towards a different plane, with more possibilities.

So, what can I learn from you? How to sacrifice for others the way you sacrifice for your family. How to belong to a group, which always means facing the hard times when inevitably things go wrong but one must pull through. And how to forgive others and oneself the mistakes we all make so we can live together, so one needs not to be on the run forever. In one word: how to *belong* without feeling locked in. How to live a meaningful life, surrounded by people we love without being frustrated that these are the very people who both lock us in and give us wings to fly.

Szabad vagyok már
m i n d e n e k t ő l
barátaimtól
ellenségeimtől
akik ha vesztem
is akarják
a beborult égre
nevem írják
s eljövök onnan
esőnek hónak
vígasztalanokat
vígasztalónak
az ég szürke lapján
ott fönn – tűnődöm
mennyei betűkön

It was there, with her. At my apartment, at hers. It was on the cold streets of Berlin. It was on the bike. Seeing her fall and being very afraid. Going to bars together. Playing catch-me-if-you-can in the museum. Climbing chimneys, walking alongside broken rail tracks. Waking up next to her. Oh god, waking up next to her. Having breakfast. Meeting her after work. Strolling the streets of Berlin. Taking a train ride with her. All those days of beauty. I miss them, every. single. day. It was a different life. A different era. I will never be that happy again.

None of the 40 runners who attempted to finish the 100-mile Barkley Marathons in the mountains of eastern Tennessee completed the race, the first time since 2007 that the endurance test had no finishers.

“The mountains won,” said Gary Cantrell, who created the event in 1986. “I was pleased with the outcome. It’s a competition between the humans and the mountains.”

In 30 years, 14 out of about 1,100 runners have completed the race, made up of five loops around a mountainous 20-mile course.  The 60-hour time limit passed Monday with no one having completed the race. A search began for the final runner on the course — Jamil Coury of Phoenix. He showed up before dark.

“I got a little confused where I was,” Coury said upon returning to camp, explaining that he took an eight-hour nap on a mountaintop after getting lost. “Thanks for waiting.”

Passed Out

Matt Bixley traveled from Dunedin, New Zealand, to compete. He said his goal was to see what he could find out about himself. Instead, he found himself passed out on the ground after completing more than 48 miles in about 28 hours of running and climbing through the mountains of 24,000-acre Frozen Head State Park.

“I passed out or collapsed,” said Bixley, 42, a quantitative geneticist with New Zealand’s AgResearch. “Something happened. It wasn’t sleepiness. I don’t know. I spent some time thinking about what that might mean and where I was going. It was a boundary I wasn’t prepared to cross, and I quit.”

‘It’s Eerie’

No woman has finished the race. This year a record nine attempted it, including Nicki Rehn, a 40-year-old Australian who is an assistant professor of education at Ambrose University in Calgary. Rehn completed 1.5 laps this year before succumbing.

“You don’t come here to be victorious, you come here to be humiliated,” she said. “It’s lonely out there. It’s eerie. You have to be comfortable being inside your own head. Everyone comes back pretty broken. That’s the goal. To break people […]”

I remember this time, on the couch, talking with her. I remember her telling me she had a dietary problem once. I remember waking up next to her and telling her I love her and she telling me she loved me too. I remember us going to exhibitions, theatres, ballets, exploring, painting, making love next to derelict rails. I remember her love and affection, her never-ending quest for the deeper questions. Her playfulness. Her kindness. Her fight with herself to love me. Her soft way of approaching things. I miss her so much.