New Year SMS for 2022

Trapped in the present,
the future never arrives,
the troubles remain.

We dream…
a future in the present
—technoscience saving us,
everything collapsing—
but
a future
we won’t live,
a future
we can’t live.

Trapped in the present,
the past never returns,
the troubles remain.

We dream…
a past in the present
—an idyllic utopia,
a narrated memory—
but
a past
we didn’t live,
a past
we can’t live.

Trapped in the present,
we continue living
with all the troubles.

Trapped in the present,
we must imagine,
not a present future
—our stories aren’t ending—,
not a future past
—our stories aren’t written—,
but an ongoing life
with all its troubles.

Because only with the troubles,
with all their tiny details,
it’s this forward-time-trip a life.

A life with many stories:
stories that cannot be skipped,
stories that we tell each other,
stories that we will write.

A life with many stories
that we have still to imagine,
that we have still to live,
but not in the abstract,
but in the day-to-day,
but in the place-to-place,
but with all the troubles.

Happy 2*3*337 !

Each year, I send an SMS congratulating the new year to my friends and acquaintances exactly when the new year arrives. Each SMS contains a poem or a poetic/lyric text whose thematic varies from year to year. This tradition of my own goes back to several years ago—although I can't remember when I started. As from this moment, I will be sharing these SMSs also in this blog.

This poem is inspired by the works of the philosopher Donna Haraway and the writer Ursula K. Le Guin.