To look at the moon more often

His friends told him to look at the moon more often.
They are like that, his friends.

He glanced at the black veil covering the moon, 
it reminded him of how dark things can become, even the brightest of things. 
If the moon can turn dark, if it can be covered by the sun
– two gigantic, co-dependent balls merging and becoming one big ball of darkness,
then he too is allowed to let his own darkness prevail. 

His friends told him to write more often. 
They are like that, his friends.  

He saw the blank piece of paper.
Why write? he thought. 
There’s enough ink on paper, already.
Why waste one’s time in a painful process of putting fantasies and organising nonsense
into a structure, into the rigid structure of language? How can experience fit into such a weak thing – like the system of language? Why do we need this forced order on intangible things? 

(Sometimes, instead of writing down whatever nonsense comes to his mind, he prefers to treat fantasies like clouds. He acknowledges that they will appear and disappear as they please. There are sunny days and there are cloudy days. Every day brings its own clouds, and that doesn’t mean that it’s going to rain. It could mean dust, it could mean that it will rain elsewhere and not here
– it could mean that there aren’t any words left.)

His friends told him to spend less time at the supermarket.
They are like that, his friends. They care too much. 

Between the vegetable aisle and the bakery, he thinks of the time he did not really use to think. He used to see an onion as an onion and not as something else. He used to see the exit as just a green sign which signified one, single thing. As simple as a mono-cellular organism. Now all things have layers and everything has a past, and pasta come in 1+1 free for you and there are also scars available to collect on your way out.

by Alexandra Krstic