Dear Friends,
thank you for sympathizing with my loss of poems (especially those written
in Italian, which are more valuable).
Went to bed at three, woke up at six, my head feeling like a balloon,
thinking thinking which may the poems be - some of course are saved on
floppy disks, others are stored as you say in the crashed memory somewhere
and I imagine I could find a specialist to retrieve the data from my PC's
brain. I dreamt of roaming around Oxford looking in all the bins in search
for my lost folders and files, so I feel very tires, also because I
physically have done it in the last couple of days - actually, not looking
into bins but asking all possible place, even the police station, where
they showed with my surprise, a big sympathy, confirming Oxford to be an
enlightened city of writers and appreciators of the Arts). Most people -
especially men - would make sure I gave them my address and telephone
number to contact in me in case they found the poems: how dear of them. I
am here waiting for possible findings.
I am also feeling exhausted by the effort I am making with my own memory
to trace back the titles of the poems written, not that I will ever be
able to recompose the texts that went lost but because I need at least to
know what to mourn about.
I will put my name on all search engines on the Internet to recuperate
those poems that likely were published and are on line. Luckily, my
friends, I have the risky habit to write and send the poems I have just
conceived, as crude and unfinished as they are, in the stratosphere of the
world-web, and I do it for this very purpose - as I said in another
occasion - just in case they would get lost given to my frail alertness
with properties, say any possessions (in the last week, lost not only my
folders, but a pair of leather gloves and my favorite "hundreds and
thousands" scarf wearing which used to put in a good post-modern pluri-
coloured mood. Sorry to be so talkative in this letter, I have all this
accumulated in my forehead pushing to come out so I am speaking out my
heart. Indeed, there are moments when the appearance of a give lost poem
on the page of my memory becomes the sole determining factor that keeps me
concentrating, otherwise, as I said, I feel this dizziness, as though I
had lost some essential part of my constitution. The act of trimming my
memory of all excesses to single out the very moment in which I lost
concentration and did not keep an eye on my lost or stolen black bag
brings me again and again to the arrival in the pub where I was having a
drink with my fellow poets after the Open Mike of my dear daughter who
said "You see Mamma, now it is me coming to pick you up, and take you
home, as you used to do with me when I was little". I was so happy to hear
that that took my personal bag only, which was hunching from the chair,
and possibly disregarded to pick up the other bag containing the folders,
left at my feet, on the floor, by the many chairs put in a circle. My
daughter was so charming that all the people presents turned to say hello
to us when we left, and we left almost feeling pushed out by all those
smiles and waving (she said she does not remember me leaving carrying any
bag). The Greeks cherished the idea that sight results from shining
penetrating rays issuing from the pupils: I wished I had these piercing
rays and be able to locate where my files are and if they still exist.
Paper is such a frail insubstantial staff and in the last few days it has
been raining...
Thank you again for the understanding and help,
Erminia
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