Mekas

December, 1951

I have tried.

I have done everything

to be just like everybody else.

I have tried to be down to earth.

Digging my hands deep

into the sand pile

on Sixth Avenue.

Touching the ground

with my bare feet.

But I remain a stranger here.

There is a distance

between me and every building,

every street, every face.

So I fall back on fantasies,

memories, dreams.

Yes, even the sounds I write

have a different meaning to me.

The truck that cleans the street,

or the cars.

The movements, voices, forms.

I perceive them

but I don’t understand them.

They don’t have an echo

in the deep cells of my body, no.

I walk through this city

day and night

without really understanding it.

None of this makes sense,

it just happens,

exists just like me,

but it is

as if we were two strangers.

(I had nowhere to go, Jonas Mekas, journal entry from december 1951; published by Spector Books)