i would like to live differently in faraway lands. i would like to be someone else in unknown flags. [...] i would like, i should like… but there is always the sun when the sun shines and the night when the night arrives. there is always sorrow when sorrow pains us, and sleep when sleep lulls us. there is always what there is, and never what there should be, not because it’s better or worse, but because it’s different.
— pessoa
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at the sight of a coccinellid, one could make a wish, but one could also not: the sight of a coccinellid could be a sign that a wish, a prior wish, will soon be granted.
***
we will be gone for a few days. we will not be here. we will be elsewhere, in other streets, among other homes, over seven other hills, where other people speak other languages, hold other hands, breathe other air. we will be elsewhere, somewhere we have never been, somewhere we hardly know, somewhere we will come to know, but not quite. we will be there and not here, for a while; not for long, though not for short either. we will walk in parts unknown, singing under our breaths in the languages that we know this interference of one world with another.