MAJA ZDULSKA

The case study of the song of the sea:

On a calm February night, you asked me if I wanted to go out with you and I said no. Nevertheless, you still offered to walk me home and somehow, we ended up down by the sea, talking for what seemed like hours. Within the next months, it would happen so many times again. I suppose it was simply convenient for both of us – I had someone to feel safe next to, you had someone to dream of. You always followed me if I felt like going down to the sea, not realizing that, if I’m being honest, you were really destroying my moments. On some of those nights, I would sit down on a rock, listen to the waves and the strange sounds created by barnacle shells brushing against each other. Once, when we were there, I sang, my own reply to the eternal psalm of the ocean. Ever since then, you’d ask me to do it again and I would sing my soul out to the sea. Did you really think I ever sang for you? 

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The importance of language:

Oh, so you’re his… friend? – the woman said, extending her hand.

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I suppose I am – I answered, smiling in the way you only master if you work in customer services.

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We both let the air between us disperse the unspoken prefix ‘girl-‘.

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The correlation between tears and growing up:

It must have been a joy for you, I suppose, to watch me set my roots in the new soil. I don’t think either of us realized how widely and deeply they would spread. But in those early days I didn’t have them yet and I needed someone to lean on – and you were there for me. God knows, I tried to be there for you. When did it happen, I wonder, that I’d stopped talking and started to only listen and hum my ‘I understands’ and ‘I sees’, even though I didn’t. 

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Three times this year I saw a man cry. 

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Once, when my father told me his father passed away, after four years of wishing he would do so. He is now finally resting, his body in the sands of our distant homeland, his soul in the great unknown. Nothing makes you feel like an adult more than seeing your father cry. 

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The second time came when I saw you crying over my rejection. How pathetic it was! It only brought me guilt and discomfort. That’s what I can’t yet forgive – how you made me feel guilty of things that were your fault. Or no one’s at all. But you really wanted to blame me for the circumstances, didn’t you? I wish I could have felt sorry for you. I’m not saying tears are disgraceful for a man – au contraire, monsieur – but the reasons might well be. 

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The third time I saw a man cry is not relevant to this story.

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The advice to all those, who trust:

Beware a man who cannot stand the touch of the sea on his bare feet.

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The unexpected change of conditions:

I will now do what you’d always wanted me to do, so I hope you’ll treasure this moment. What happened last summer was, indeed, my fault. But can you really blame me? I kept my head in the ground for so long, covered it carefully with the clay of our little drama. And when I finally found the courage to unbury myself, I got lost in the wonder of oxygen. I guess I could not have told you that I’m seeing somebody. Spare your poor broken heart yet another blow. But you see, if your little secrets don’t let you breathe, you have to let them see the light. Even if it leads to an uncontrolled fall and the collapse of the horizon.

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The biggest lie I’ve ever told:

I’m fine.

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The bridge between Earth Sciences and Theology:

‘Put that bloody thing down’ – you said when I lit a cigarette during that dreadful, terrible night. And I turned my back to you and inhaled so deeply. I find it very ironic indeed – that spark from the lighter, that fire and smoke, was the only thing that could save me, create a barrier between solid earth and hell, inhibited by all the demons I saw in your eyes. I have never been that scared in my life. Never before have I really thought a human being might want to hurt me. Naïve, I know. But still, I held my head high, watching from the distance as you were being handcuffed and arrested. They say fire only brings damage. They say smoke makes your lungs sick. But trust me, no other breath in my life has been better than this one. Lot’s wife wouldn’t have turned into a pillar of salt if she had a cigarette.

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The question we’re left with:

How to heal a broken soul?

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The end?