Just Kids - Patti Smith

Naida came to visit us at home in Crystal Palace. She brought with her a bag full of belongings that I had commanded her to keep while I was away. It was longer than what we thought and I was not expecting to get back any of my books that I gave her, but here she was, excited to see me reuniting with them. I opened the bag and took the items carelessly but still acknowledging the fact that I was seeing them for the first time in a very long time. I did not recognize all of them as if I had forgotten some, and not all of the books that I've given her were in the bag because Naida has been moving houses numerous times in the past 4 years so she has been leaving some items behind. (fair enough).
I was particularly happy to see one book there. It was a first edition of Just Kids by Patti Smith that I found second hand in Paris. I had used it as a diary during my first months in London in 2013. In it, I wrote about my feelings in the midst of an abusive relationship. My plans on how I was going to fix both our lives and my first impressions of London. Some passages I remember by heart. I put the books down and we had a long chat, as we use to do. After she left I let Lucas watch some TV and I properly met with my books again. I sat down and open each one of them. I noticed Camera Solo by Patti Smith might belong to her, I don't remember owning it and it has a postcard inside that reads: "Naida, happy birthday form the 5 of us upstairs".
I went through all the pages of Robert Mapplethorpe's "Polaroids". I got it as a gift on my first birthday in London. Then with a heavy heart, I decided to open Just Kids and read through some of those memories. I remembered the first page, scribbled in black pencil all around the title until the very edges of the 4 sides of the page. The pencil started very sharp at the beginning, leaving a very fine mark under every word, but it kept on going softer and softer until the last words written. I turned the hardcover and opened the book. Around the title: nothing, white, blank.
The book was immaculate.
I looked through the next pages, and I noticed the book looked new.

I think maybe Naida lost the book and wanted to replace it. I am here now and it feels almost natural that those words are gone. That I can not even go back after them. London has shown me in this first month back, that there's a part of me that never left and a very new one. I feel out of place sometimes, and others I feel like home as I had never left, as those perfect days in which all struggles seemed worth it and all my life seemed like an adventure. There is this chapter that is over. A chapter I can no longer revisit. And it's ok. Through letters to Naida I have healed, and she is now the medium to show me, with an object I can hold in my hands, that I can see with my eyes: It's over. There is nothing left of this pain. There is nothing left but the memories that can help me move forward.
So I found also poems that I thought lost. I wrote them during the happiest days of my life.

Oh I love you
Mardou would walk barefoot
through the streets of Tangier
And she would hear the prayers
at night
with tears in her black dark-as-the-night eyes
I love you
As I think of them lovers
He would wait for her
through winter and summer
He would miss her tears
And write letters about time
Mardou barefoot
through the streets of San Francisco
Hot evenings as holy as devotion
No matter where we are
is love
what keeps us writing
and the world turns
and silence might feel threatening
but someone else is
out there
also loving
as much as Jack loved barefoot Mardou

_________

*The Beat Book, writings from the Beat Generation, with hundreds of highlighted paragraphs and notes on the margins. I tore that book down. I took it to pubs after work and wrote in the middle of a page:

"half angry - half drunk
half poem - half page
half Allen - half myself"

I confessed: "I will cover your empty spaces with the bluest ink my silver pen can deliver. I love you till the edge of the page and back".

I could cry but I'm so blessed.

Devotion - Patti Smith

Letter to Naida

Hey N.

I just finished reading Devotion. I found it disturbing for a bit, until the end of the fictional story, as I thought Patti was genuinely romanticising a relationship between a 16 year old girl and a 30 year old man. "Not everything is beautiful you know?" I kept saying in my head while I read those sexual encounters described in such a poetic manner. But yet her writing is otherworldly, honestly. She is such a great writer and she gets better and better... which is incredible.

She got me on the last pages, as she always does, she has this way of ending paragraphs, chapters, lines, that is enchanting. At the end of everything she does, it leaves you with the sense that she was creating something beautiful all along. Like "this is where she was going, and damn it is beautiful".

While I was reading the last pages I was breastfeeding Lucas and started crying. Lucas noticed and touched my tears with his hands. I feel so related to how she describes the urge of writing. How after every inspiring experience you are so drawn to sit in your working desk and create something your own. It seems to me that every work of art that crossed my way was there to make me create something.

She says literally "that is the decisive power of a singular work: a call to action."

I saw my self every time I read a book, I tried to do it with a notebook right next to me, so that I could close the book at any point and write down the thoughts that that reading brought to my mind. You might see it on the books I left at your house, scribblings on the sides, from rimes when I didn't have my notebook with me.

I think it's incredible how she turn that anecdote about being able to see Camus's manuscript into a perfect illustration, demonstration, explanation? of how it feels to be a writer. 

I'm going to watch a horror movie with Frank.

Love S.

Devotion - Patti Smith

Letter from Naida

Hi S.

Wanted to tell you that I just finished reading the book Devotion. I stopped for awhile but then I saw the new edition with P. Smith on the front page by a till in Waterston's bookshop so I picked it up and read it until there were no more pages to read. I like the photos of the winter :) and I am not sure why I would like to meet P. again. Thought I was finished not only the book but with that as well however obviously not. It's like I am waiting to see her in London again.
The cold is certainly approaching, first day of October. I had such painful period pain that in the middle of the night I had to spend two hours in the toilet vomiting and who knows what, I was drained in cold sweat that my t-shirt was all wet. Somehow I was thinking of you, those long hours you had to endure in the hospital while in so much physical and emotional pain. You are so far away yet so near.

Let me know how was your time in France, let me know, let me know :) Give a little kiss to Lukas from me. X

Just Kids + Devotion - Patti Smith

Letter to Naida

Hi N.

Yes I totally agree with what you said... This is the exact huge realization I had when I read Just Kids. Especially regarding writing. I thought, I also pay so much attention to small things and everything to me is worth of a paragraph of beautiful words. I never thought someone else would find it interesting or of any value, until I read Just Kids and felt, that as much as I found her words beautiful, someone else could find MY words beautiful too. I never felt she could do something I couldn't. It was the other way round. And I know deep down that I have inspired people, even if I can count them with one hand, that's worth my existence.

I recognize this process she describes in Devotion, kind of finding signs on everything. Feeling that the Universe is guiding you into creating something special, and every time you find something like this, like a word on a tombstone, you can hear the Universe talking to you. Patti would call it God I guess.

I wanted to share a song with you as you share so many with me. I couldn't think of anything special until I thought of her. Sharon van Etten. With her sad voice. I used to listen to her late at night in the car with my friends Arturs, parked somewhere in Stoke Newington. I have a story in my head for a script, and for some reason, her music is the perfect soundtrack for it, I can't detach it now. Everytime I listen to her I think of my characters, young and broken Salli and Emma.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKJTL9wgHbY

And below, a photo I took of her in a concert, it was stuck to the wall in my room in Turnpike Lane.

Devotion - Patti Smith

Letter to Naida:

I am really looking forward to going to the South of France this September. Still not sure if we are going because of how I'm feeling, but I'm pretty sure I'll feel fine by then. Since I moved to Europe I saw a lot of similarities between this intellectual side we have in Buenos Aires, to the French. Every little town in southern France has an Art studio of a world-famous painter, and their parks are adorned with statues celebrating artists, writers, and philosophers. I can tell that art and culture is a natural thing that French have in their life without even looking for it, and I like that. I just started reading Devotion and Patti Smith mentions going to a small town in the South of France, I thought what a nice coincidence. It's where she found the word "Devotion", in French, on a tombstone. Maybe I would like to go see the word devotion on that tombstone in real life. <3 I'm really enjoying Devotion, it's connecting me with that side of me that wants to write. I needed that and was thinking about it for a while. Maybe that's why now my emails are longer and I send them more often haha

M Train - Patti Smith

I arrived early to Schiphol Airport so after going through passport control I sat on a cafe, had coffee, ate a sandwich and texted my boyfriend I love him a thousand times.

I miss Tesco's sandwiches. Cheap and good. This one was a "Dutch Special" with hard bacon and dry "artisan bread". It did the job anyway... I was starving and anxious.

I made a quick stop at the ladies toilet to freshen up and I walked to the gate while taking snaps of the airport with my phone. God I love airports. The landscapes I love the most from the modern world are festival crowd views and airports.

I was randomly assigned a window seat on the plane. I felt lucky.

After leaving my bag I opened "M Train". Patti was taking a plane to Mexico. She described a stressful situation during check-in when a member of staff insisted in her using the kiosk to get her boarding pass. Patti was growling about the 21st Century while searching for her reading glasses and hoping the machine would be more reliable than what she assumed. It wasn't.


I felt it is right to read M Train at the speed I am reading it. Here seating on a plane, I accompany Patti on her first visit to Casa Azul, former home and resting place of Frida Kahlo. I thought it was a sign. My Mom always tells me that I see signs everywhere and I interpret them as I wish. But aren't signs exactly that, and Life nothing more than what we make of it?

So I read and looked out the window and I cried a little:

"I sat before nearly two hundred guests in the garden. I scarcely could say what I talked about, but in the end I sang to them, as I had sung to the birds on my windowsill. It was a song that came to me while I lay in Diego's bed. It was about the butterflies that Noguchi had given to Frida. I saw tears streaming down the faces of the director and the women who had administered to me with such tender care. Faces I no longer remember.

Late that night there was a party in the park across from my hotel. My headache was completely gone. I packed, then looked out the window. The trees were strung with tiny Christmas lights though it was only the seventh of May. I went down to the bar and had a shot of a very young tequila. The bar was empty, as nearly everyone was in the park. I sat for a long time. The bartender refilled my glass. The tequila was light, like flower jouice. I closed my eyes and saw a green train with an M in a circle; a faded green like the back of a praying mantis." 

M Train - Patti Smith

This cafe reminds me of mornings in Paris. I can't believe that's a thing in my life already. I do remember the smell of the sunrise and the traffic mixed together in the air while I drank coffee on a table on the side walk facing the street.
There are many cafes that look like the Parisian ones but very few feel indeed like them. This one does. The truth is I rather be almost anywhere than here in Amsterdam, a city that just doesn't talk to me, but instead, provides the perfect silence in which deep thoughts are born. So I observe myself better than anywhere else I have ever been. I see your changes as well as a window that opens itself roughly and undeniably, killing you softly with the view it reveals. The heavy thoughts of pointless efforts through the years. This is the future you foresaw, but did you want to be here?
I hope you write again. At least about those sad evenings when you discovered that you lost yourself.
I hope you write again. Because as many things as you may lose, you could never lose me.

This is my favorite bar in Amsterdam. The only favorite spot I learned to love during this 3 months of living here. The only place I covered in scribbles and hours of reading M Trains, and lingering observations of pedestrians and bold cyclists. The trees are finally turning greener and in the mornings we hear nothings but birds and screaming cats.

So the bar... I think the candle holders are as old as the building. And the heating is so strong sometimes I can't stand seating inside. The curtains are made of red velvet and burned by cigarettes. It's dark and it smells of old wood and unnecessary heat. God I need the dive feeling... A place with a hidden soul. Small windows that release the darkness and balance the spirit of the rusty and worn dining room.
The ornaments on the wooden chairs seem worthy of a Patti Smith polaroid. The Beatles come out the speakers while the regular customers talk lively with the always-white-shirt owner in Dutch.
"Falling, yes I am falling. And she keeps calling. Me back again"
The once black and white pictures on the walls are now light brown with black stains from the candle flames.
This place has life, it has past, and it's the best runaway spot from the always impecable city of Amsterdam. I wish they never change this torn velvet curtains. 

And just like that I'm back to Blue. The spring is blooming and I don't need to rush anymore, or ask myself questions like why am I here, what have I done?

The perfection of the Universe is again evident and nourishing. 

Our love was not dragged by crisis and now we know it never will.

So wait, and learn, and move on. Life unfolds and we are here and it's alright. 

M Train - Patti Smith

I walk down Amsterdam roads
The soft rain tickles my face and I struggle to keep my hood on as my fingers slowly freeze.
I got obsessed with this city's windows
Anonymous works of art exhibited for no reason
For no audience
So I collect them as my Dad used to do with everything that amused him.
I give up very early
My destination seems way too far and unknown to my unease mind
No patience these days
Instead I enter the only empty place with available and solitary tables.
A small cinema that features a Kaufman dedicated program and promise nothing more than average coffee.
So I sit down after small talk with the guy behind the counter
And I give a second chance to "M train"
A book that hasn't captured my attention yet.
Patti talks about her daily life, her cats and her very own spots to write.
She mentions writing about "nothing" when clearly she has nothing to write about.
It makes me feel lonely
It makes me feel she is lonely.
I recognize the urge for words
When writing seems to be the only thing that will never leave us
But sometimes we can not seem to find it either.
So she speaks of sadness
Although never mentioning the word.
I don't enjoy this book, but I would never doubt it's powers of companionship
What do I need to fill this emptiness?
Should I light a candle to a saint?
Should I say my prayers?
Invocate?


But today
There was this glimpse of beauty:
When some of your empty spaces are filled with just a page of a book
It mustn't be hard to fill at all...

"-You have misplaced joy- he said without hesitation -without joy we are as dead-
-How do I find it again?
-Find those who have it and bathe in their perfection."

Woolgathering - Patti Smith

Childhood memories into a song

"Sometime later I was holding Kimberly in my arms. She'd had an asthma attack while my parents were out. I tender to her as I was taught then was able to rock her to sleep. I heard some shouting from across the road. The sun was going down and I stepped outside. The old black barn was in flames. I heard a terrible screeching. Someone said it was bats burning alive. I stood there cradling the baby. The sky was purple with golden streaks. I could see the planets and the evening star.
Hovering above the field were swarms of gnats and fireflies. Pale lunar moths circled the night lights, with a life of their own. My brother raced across the road; nothing is more exciting for a young boy than fire. Yet I knew the flames wouldn't spread. The barn would burn and leave its mark. But the field was safe, or the woolgatherers would protect it. Just as Harry Riehl had protected his wife, and I was protecting Kimberly. The baby awoke and smiled at me. It occured to me than nothing was more beautiful than a new born smile."

The wall is high, the black barn,
The babe in my arms in her swaddling clothes
And I know soon that the sky will split
And the planets will shift,
Balls of jade will drop and existence will stop.
Little sister, the sky is falling, I don't mind, I don't mind.
Little sister, the fates are calling on you. 
Ah, here I stand again in this old 'lectric whirlwind,
The sea rushes up my knees like flame
And I feel like just some misplaced Joan Of Arc
And the cause is you lookin' up at me.
Oh baby, I remember when you were born,
It was dawn and the storm settled in my belly
And I rolled in the grass and I spit out the gas
And I lit a match and the void went flash
And the sky split and the planets hit,
Balls of jade dropped and existence stopped, stopped, stop, stop.
Little sister, the sky is falling, I don't mind, I don't mind.
Little sister, the fates are calling on you. 

I was goin' crazy, so crazy I knew I could break through with you,
So with one hand I rocked you and with one heart I reached for you.
Ah, I knew your youth was for the takin', fire on a mental plane,
So I ran through the fields as the bats with their baby vein faces
Burst from the barn and flames in a violent violet sky,
And I fell on my knees and pressed you against me.
Your soul was like a network of spittle,
Like glass balls movin' in like cold streams of logic,
And I prayed as the lightning attacked
That something will make it go crack, something will make it go crack,
Something will make it go crack, something will make it go crack. 

The palm trees fall into the sea,
It doesn't matter much to me
As long as you're safe, Kimberly.
And I can gaze deep
Into your starry eyes, baby, looking deep in your eyes, baby,
Looking deep in your eyes, baby, looking deep in your eyes, baby,
Into your starry eyes, oh. 

Oh, in your starry eyes, baby,
Looking deep in your eyes, baby, looking deep in your eyes, baby, oh. 

Oh, looking deep in your eyes, baby,
Into your starry eyes, baby, looking deep in your eyes, baby

Just Kids - Patti Smith

Volvíamos juntas a sus 20 años, en una casa con ventanas amplias, con maderitas blancas, y un día hermoso afuera. Ahora, en mi lucidez, asumo que era la casa de sus padres, pero pudo haber sido cualquier otro lugar, en cualquier otro tiempo.
Tenía pestañas de caballo y el pelo pajoso y despeinado.
Y una sonrisa que no se le borraba de la cara con nada.
No quería dar detalles del guión que está escribiendo para la película de su vida.
Pero charlábamos. No recuerdo nada, pero charlábamos de todo.
Y nos reíamos.
Y yo trataba de contener las lágrimas, pero no podía.
Lloraba. Y lloraba cuando me desperté.
Y traté de volver a dormirme, de volver a esa casa.
Traté de memorizar sus pestañas, tan extrañas, tan largas, tan negras.
Sabía que no iba a volver a dormirme aunque lo intentara.
Son esas cosas que uno quiere demasiado, y por eso nunca pasan...
Me di cuenta que los años no habían pasado en su mirada, pero sí en su pelo y en sus palabras.
No habían pasado en sus manos, ni en su camisa blanca.
Era todavía una niña para mí.
Pero ya había logrado todo lo que la convirtió en mi heroína.
Una niña que charlaba conmigo en mi sueño.

Babel - Patti Smith

Las lágrimas en mis ojos refractan las palabras cada vez que intento leer su luz, su magia.
Arco iris húmedo y espeso que me aplasta.
Estática en este presente del que no me quiero salvar.
Me dejo aplastar.
Prefiero recordar en prosa y vivir en libertad.
Gracias heroína azul.
Por tu rayo que tiembla del frío de este invierno que es más cálido que enero en el sur del mundo.
Gracias por los viajes en silencio, del ruido que mece mis paseos astrales por el París que fotografiaste en blanco y negro instantáneo.
Nunca hubiera aprendido a volar si no hubiera sido de tu mano.

Just Kids - Patti Smith

Me compré un chocolate en el kiosco cerca de la estación y empecé a leer mientras esperaba el tren.
Abrí el capítulo del Hotel Chelsea. (Creo que nunca leí tan rápido como esta vez.)
Leí sobre cómo Patti amaba ese hotel. Los distintos pisos, y sus extraños personajes. Leí sobre el 2do aniversario de Robert y Patti en Coney Island y anoté en un papelito la canción "Coney Island Baby" de The Excellents, que Patti le ponía a Robert cada vez que iban para allá. Leí sobre el encuentro de Patti con Jimi Hendrix, y su sueño de grabar el idioma universal en su estudio. Leí sobre las ganas de Robert de pertenecer al círculo de Andy Warhol y las primeras veces que Patti consideró musicalizar sus poemas. Leí las anécdotas de París; cómo conoció a Allen Ginsberg y sobre la canción que le escribió a Janis Joplin. Leí sobre lo difícil que les fue dejar el hotel, y los momentos duros que atravesaron juntos evidenciados en largos silencios y en incomunicación. Leí sobre las primeras fotos que Robert tomó con una polaroid, y cómo juntos cumplieron 23 "el número primo perfecto". Leí sobre la noche de los 100 singles, y fantaseé con tener una yo misma. Leí sobre la primer guitarra que se compró, junto con un cancionero de Bob Dylan; y me acordé que en ese momento me miraste y sonreíste.
Podíamos ver la guitarra, y podíamos escuchar la canción.

["Life is an adventure of our own design, intersected by fate and a series of lucky and unlucky accidents"]
Ahora sé que no me desprendí de nada ese día, y aunque haya regalado una fuente de energía a algún desconocido, yo la llevo internamente para siempre.
Hoy solo hay luz, y rosas.
Y espacio para poder respirar, en blanco, y llenarlo de poesía.

["Nadie ve como nosotros, Patti" repitió.
Siempre que decía cosas como aquella, por un mágico instante, era como si fuéramos las dos únicas personas en el mundo]