Aurélia Steiner (Melbourne) (1979) - full transcript
I write to you all the time
always, you see.
Nothing else but this.
Nothing.
I'm writing maybe a thousand letters
you, to give to you
letters of my present life.
And you, you'll do with them
what I'd like...
you to do with them
which is, whatever you want.
That's what I desire.
That this be delivered to you.
Where are you?
How to reach you?
How can we come close
in this love,
cancel this apparent fragmentation
of time
which separates us,
one from the other?
Listen.
I'll never separate you from your body.
Never.
It's three in the afternoon
The sun is out behind the trees
the air is cool.
I'm in the big room
where I spend the Summer,
Facing the garden.
On the other side of the glass
there is a forest of roses
and for three days
there's been this cat
skinny,
white,
who has started looking at me
through the glass,
eye to eye,
he scares me
he cries
he is lost
he wants to belong
and I don't want to any more.
Where are you?
What are you doing?
Where are you lost?
Where were you lost
while I cried that I was scared?
They say that you live on
one of the islands next to France
and other places too
They say you're in an equatorial land
where you died
a long time ago,
in the heat,
buried in the charnel of a plague
or even in that of a war
or even that of a camp
in occupied Poland.
To me,
it's all the same.
I see your eyes.
I see the sky in a river
is a blue
of the same colour, liquid
and blue as your eyes.
I see that it's not true
that while I write to you
nobody has died,
And that you are there, you too
in this empty continent.
It's Summer here.
Did you love the Summer?
I don't know anymore.
For myself I don't know any more.
I don't know any more if I loved it
outside of you.
Do you remember?
This word.
This country.
This dark land.
You used to say: nothing remains
but this path.
This river.
How to get back to our love.
How?
The light has sunk
it seems
behind the trees
there's a wind
It's turning cooler.
The garden is full of birds
and the cat
becoming crazy
with hunger.
And to me,
it's all the same.
The roses are going to die very soon now
It's fading out
on the other side of the glass.
The sky, above the river
will become dark.
Night is falling
on the cat, leprous
starving
frightening
On the garden so still around him
the night also falls.
I see it.
It spreads over you,
over me,
over the river.
Can you still see?
You can no longer see, perhaps?
They speak
They say that everything
had been built on the land.
That it's all been lived in,
occupied,
by peoples,
by governments,
That there were palaces
on the banks of rivers
and between the palaces,
thickets of nettles,
brambles,
and swarms of running children.
And women,
starved thin.
That there were islands.
And temples.
That there was a forest.
I know nothing
of generalities,
of peoples
and of the world.
None of them
can stand in for you
for this preference
that I have for you.
None.
Listen,
under the arches of the river,
now, the sound of the sea
those of the dark cave
and the cries of that leprous cat
you know,
the one blind with hunger
and who calls out across time.
Do you hear it?
No?
Perhaps you hear nothing more?
No?
Keep listening. Try.
How to come to the end of our love?
Listen.
under the arches of the river,
this surge.
Keep listening.
This apparent fragmentation
that I just told you of
has gone.
Together we need to come closer
to the end.
To that of our love.
Don't be afraid.
It's strange,
this look that the river gets
sometimes
in the clarity of night
of going towards the sea
racing
to completely
lose itself...
But who are you?
But who?
How did this come about?
How will this come about?
Don't you still hear?
In London,
in the course of this plague?
You understand?
Or of this war?
In this camp of the German "East"?
In this Siberian one?
Or in these islands, here?
Here, you understand?
No?
Me, I don't know anymore.
I know only of this love
that I have for you.
Complete.
Terrible.
And that you're not here
to free me from it.
Never.
Never,
do I separate you from our love,
from our story.
Many have been killed here.
It's said.
Killed,
yes.
Did you know that?
Nearly every day. For a thousand years.
Thousands and thousands of years.
Yes.
One time.
A thousand times.
A hundred thousand.
The river
all bloody.
They shed blood,
they imprisoned
they wounded.
A thousand years.
It's then,
yes, after,
that all this was produced -
for a very long time nothing.
And then, of a sudden, your eyes.
Your eyes on me.
First, the liquid
and empty blue of your eyes.
And then, you saw me.
On this cat, skinny
and crazed,
night has now fallen.
On me,
your form.
You know, they say
it was crematoria, near Cracow,
that your body
was separated from mine...
as if that was possible...
They say anything... they don't know...
[they know nothing...]
Listen...
The cat, he's crying.
Hunger and wind
are eating him up
through the tears, the cat
in wind and hunger,
the dark garden
He cries in the dark cave...
Listen...
We say he complains...
As if he was speaking...
What?
What was he saying?
What word?
What designation,
senseless?
inept?
I do not separate you
from your body
I do not separate you from me.
You used to say: nothing remains
this city
our dark land
So temperate,
have you forgotten?
Have you forgotten everything?
You used to say:
the histories draw out
the length of the river.
You used to speak
of their riverine monotony
so sweet
it calls you to lie down next it
and to leave with it.
Yes.
You've forgotten everything.
Everything
What to do
so that we shall have lived this love?
What...
to do so that this love has been lived?
A fog is gathering in the garden.
It spreads over the river.
I see.
The cat
no longer crying.
He is dead.
Cold
and hunger.
It's strange...
It's by way of that cat,
skinny and crazed
now dead
by way of the garden
so still
around him
that I reach you.
By this white whiteness,
this infinite fog
that I reach your body.
My name is Aurelia Steiner.
I live in Melbourne
where my parents are teachers.
I'm 18 years old.
I write.
always, you see.
Nothing else but this.
Nothing.
I'm writing maybe a thousand letters
you, to give to you
letters of my present life.
And you, you'll do with them
what I'd like...
you to do with them
which is, whatever you want.
That's what I desire.
That this be delivered to you.
Where are you?
How to reach you?
How can we come close
in this love,
cancel this apparent fragmentation
of time
which separates us,
one from the other?
Listen.
I'll never separate you from your body.
Never.
It's three in the afternoon
The sun is out behind the trees
the air is cool.
I'm in the big room
where I spend the Summer,
Facing the garden.
On the other side of the glass
there is a forest of roses
and for three days
there's been this cat
skinny,
white,
who has started looking at me
through the glass,
eye to eye,
he scares me
he cries
he is lost
he wants to belong
and I don't want to any more.
Where are you?
What are you doing?
Where are you lost?
Where were you lost
while I cried that I was scared?
They say that you live on
one of the islands next to France
and other places too
They say you're in an equatorial land
where you died
a long time ago,
in the heat,
buried in the charnel of a plague
or even in that of a war
or even that of a camp
in occupied Poland.
To me,
it's all the same.
I see your eyes.
I see the sky in a river
is a blue
of the same colour, liquid
and blue as your eyes.
I see that it's not true
that while I write to you
nobody has died,
And that you are there, you too
in this empty continent.
It's Summer here.
Did you love the Summer?
I don't know anymore.
For myself I don't know any more.
I don't know any more if I loved it
outside of you.
Do you remember?
This word.
This country.
This dark land.
You used to say: nothing remains
but this path.
This river.
How to get back to our love.
How?
The light has sunk
it seems
behind the trees
there's a wind
It's turning cooler.
The garden is full of birds
and the cat
becoming crazy
with hunger.
And to me,
it's all the same.
The roses are going to die very soon now
It's fading out
on the other side of the glass.
The sky, above the river
will become dark.
Night is falling
on the cat, leprous
starving
frightening
On the garden so still around him
the night also falls.
I see it.
It spreads over you,
over me,
over the river.
Can you still see?
You can no longer see, perhaps?
They speak
They say that everything
had been built on the land.
That it's all been lived in,
occupied,
by peoples,
by governments,
That there were palaces
on the banks of rivers
and between the palaces,
thickets of nettles,
brambles,
and swarms of running children.
And women,
starved thin.
That there were islands.
And temples.
That there was a forest.
I know nothing
of generalities,
of peoples
and of the world.
None of them
can stand in for you
for this preference
that I have for you.
None.
Listen,
under the arches of the river,
now, the sound of the sea
those of the dark cave
and the cries of that leprous cat
you know,
the one blind with hunger
and who calls out across time.
Do you hear it?
No?
Perhaps you hear nothing more?
No?
Keep listening. Try.
How to come to the end of our love?
Listen.
under the arches of the river,
this surge.
Keep listening.
This apparent fragmentation
that I just told you of
has gone.
Together we need to come closer
to the end.
To that of our love.
Don't be afraid.
It's strange,
this look that the river gets
sometimes
in the clarity of night
of going towards the sea
racing
to completely
lose itself...
But who are you?
But who?
How did this come about?
How will this come about?
Don't you still hear?
In London,
in the course of this plague?
You understand?
Or of this war?
In this camp of the German "East"?
In this Siberian one?
Or in these islands, here?
Here, you understand?
No?
Me, I don't know anymore.
I know only of this love
that I have for you.
Complete.
Terrible.
And that you're not here
to free me from it.
Never.
Never,
do I separate you from our love,
from our story.
Many have been killed here.
It's said.
Killed,
yes.
Did you know that?
Nearly every day. For a thousand years.
Thousands and thousands of years.
Yes.
One time.
A thousand times.
A hundred thousand.
The river
all bloody.
They shed blood,
they imprisoned
they wounded.
A thousand years.
It's then,
yes, after,
that all this was produced -
for a very long time nothing.
And then, of a sudden, your eyes.
Your eyes on me.
First, the liquid
and empty blue of your eyes.
And then, you saw me.
On this cat, skinny
and crazed,
night has now fallen.
On me,
your form.
You know, they say
it was crematoria, near Cracow,
that your body
was separated from mine...
as if that was possible...
They say anything... they don't know...
[they know nothing...]
Listen...
The cat, he's crying.
Hunger and wind
are eating him up
through the tears, the cat
in wind and hunger,
the dark garden
He cries in the dark cave...
Listen...
We say he complains...
As if he was speaking...
What?
What was he saying?
What word?
What designation,
senseless?
inept?
I do not separate you
from your body
I do not separate you from me.
You used to say: nothing remains
this city
our dark land
So temperate,
have you forgotten?
Have you forgotten everything?
You used to say:
the histories draw out
the length of the river.
You used to speak
of their riverine monotony
so sweet
it calls you to lie down next it
and to leave with it.
Yes.
You've forgotten everything.
Everything
What to do
so that we shall have lived this love?
What...
to do so that this love has been lived?
A fog is gathering in the garden.
It spreads over the river.
I see.
The cat
no longer crying.
He is dead.
Cold
and hunger.
It's strange...
It's by way of that cat,
skinny and crazed
now dead
by way of the garden
so still
around him
that I reach you.
By this white whiteness,
this infinite fog
that I reach your body.
My name is Aurelia Steiner.
I live in Melbourne
where my parents are teachers.
I'm 18 years old.
I write.