An earthquake is a shaking of the Earth's surface

The following is from Anna Moschovakis' book “Earthquake Shakes the Earth's Surface.” Moschovakis is a poet and translator, whose most recent novel is Sharing (2022, Coffee House Press). She has translated “The Jokers” by Albert Cossery, “Possession” by Annie Ernault, and many other books. She is a member of the publishing collective Ugly Duckling Presse, and co-founder of Bushel Collective, an , mixed-use storefront space in Delhi, New York.

They say walking is a controlled fall, they say put one foot in front of the other, they say things will return to normal and you will adapt to change, as if those promises are similar, and possible. They give you special equipment if you consider yourself worthy of it, and if not, they assure you that you have special talents to adapt. They call you flexible. If I repeat what they say instead of what I think about what they say, it is because – due to my inflexibility – I suffer at every step.

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This morning, Tala showed me how she can cross a room without tripping. I am ashamed to say that she did this while carrying hot tea; Her empty arm was extended, undulating like the needle of a sensitive disc in the atmosphere. amazing. “You only need one free arm for balance,” she exclaimed, daring to turn her head and smile at me as she approached the far wall of the room. The smallest piece of amber tea fell from her cup then.

Tala is at least fifteen years younger than me (I can never remember her age: she's wiser than that). In general, young people are more flexible, of course.

*

I'm out again, and I'm alone.

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She comes out more and more now, leaving me to tea and herbs, my stained carpet, and my little view from the glass back door. Through it, from this neglected daybed, I saw the concrete plaza that had been a courtyard, now divided into rough, impassable terrain. Squirrels scurry around. Left edge of a fruitless papaya tree. Our bikes, tangled and dropped, their tires sagging, covered in dust. The chain-link fence covered in pale green ivy, and above it a piece of sky, a piece of a downtown skyscraper covered in mirrors, reflecting more sky.

Have you ever really looked at the sky, really looked at it long enough to let your mind wander away and then wander all the way back again – back to looking, then back to noticing what you're looking at, how the sky isn't something to look at, how the sky isn't Nothing at all?

*

I want what Tala has. I'm not embarrassed to say that. I want her bony ankles and her high heel shoes. I want the smooth skin of her forehead—dewy, there's no other word—and I want to date her and her friends. I want that high-pitched laugh that comes out, even when there's not much to laugh at. I don't care if it seems fake sometimes, I don't care if it's a mask or a manipulation, if she's crying inside. It makes anyone who hears it happy: I want that.

(“Do you want her, or do you want it to be her?” Someone I know once wrote in a book, quoting his therapist. It never occurred to me to ask if I wanted Tala that way. She wouldn’t.) Own me, for example, and I I don't like rejection sometimes I wonder if she really looked at me at all.)

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Wonder means curiosity, and it means delight. But it is also a symbol of doubt, of dangerous and unaddressed doubt, from which his whimsy can protect.

I'm protecting myself, I mean I'm defending myself. And I've known for some time that the only way to get what I want from Tala is to kill her.

*

I consult my list. I try to keep it brief. I always have to rewrite them to make sure the priorities make sense, and that the priorities on the list match the priorities in my head. I don't like the feeling I get when they don't. What is it called? Cognitive dissonance. I never know what that means, really. You learn to imitate the language that walks you through the door. Getting you through the door is another example. Who taught me that stupid metaphor?

Door to what?

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The menu is in the small kitchen, on a strip of the wall I painted with matte black paint so I could write on it with chalk. Faded white numbers, one through seven, line the left edge of the long black rectangle; When I clear the list to rewrite it, I leave the numbers there. From laziness. Of myths. Lucky seven.

Daily reviews of the list, if you record them somehow, make a good diary. Archive open to interpretation.

Login today:

1. Coffee2. Exercises – arms and back3. Notebooks4. Soak Beans – Flageolet (Add Combo)5. Balance6. Calls—Insurance, C.7. Laying the foundation

Of course I can't put “Murder Tala” on the list. She could see it: it was there in the kitchen we shared, every morning and most nights, if she waited for her. We sit around the red Formica table and watch the wax drip from the candles, and I can't help but light them at sunset, a little time-keeping ritual, an alternative to ritual. Thick droplets collect in white amoeba on the red surface; Sometimes we read them together, our future or our past. I know that at some point we will run out of candles. “It's a speech bubble,” Tala decided one night not long ago. “In your future. It means you haven't yet learned to say what you really mean. When she frowned, two little curves appeared above the corners of her mouth. Bracketed, in precise sans-serif font. Tala is strangely familiar with me. That's right, I'm not ready to get rid of her yet.

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What I didn't put on the list is what I actually spend most of my time doing. If thinking could be said to be action, if planning were possible.

What is the opposite of planning to kill Tala? Do you plan to let her live? The more I procrastinate – the more I cross off the list – the more I wonder if I'm still moving correctly in the direction of the future.

I once read a book in which the hero's life project was to dig a hole. Then I had a dog whose life's project was to dig a hole: and chance made me understand the book better. Now the dog is dead and I've given the book away, but it left a lasting impression, as they say. (What kind of impression doesn't last?)

What I mean is that reading and witnessing are not the same thing. Not to mention doing.

What I spend most of my life doing is, in short, regret. I was like Tala once upon a time. I crawled out from where they had put me (“they,” for lack of a better person)—crawled out, hoping that something or someone would let me touch them, or breathe on them.

I crawled out hopefully, which turned out to be a lot like dancing.

You should have seen me.

Tala goes dancing most nights, and I asked her how they do it on the dance floor now, with all the aftershocks or whatever these movements are, these movements that shake the ground beneath us, that almost never stop, not quite, so now it's movement, not stillness, It is the rule. Silence is the exception that proves this.

Is it possible to imagine someone dancing in a way that you cannot dance? When I imagine Tala dancing, I imagine her moving the way I did before, in a slow, precise response to the music, with a subtle smile and lowered eyelids, a sway that begins with an invisible inner impulse and pulsates from there, always in relation to another body or to other bodies – I mean to specific, countable bodies. , whether recognized or not. Sometimes I would move so little, you might not call it moving at all. No, I don't imagine Tala dancing in the myriad of unattractive ways I've seen others her age do, at actors' parties and in movies, or sometimes at a club, or dancing – jumping up and down as part of a crowd, or choreographed parts. To the dances of a reserved friend group, or to show off excessively. I imagine it in a familiar and superficial way: a depiction from the inside. But I have no idea how Tala dances, how can I?

When I ask her how they manage it, she doesn't answer, or even acknowledge the question. She just lets out that laugh, throws that pretty head back.

__________________________________

From the earthquake shaking the earth's surface by Anna Moschovakis. Reprinted with permission from Soft Skull Press. Copyright © 2024 by Anna Moschovakis.

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