#daniella shreir

“Yes, there were times when we were happy together. Yes, happy. Quite simply happy. Sometimes after awful arguments.
We were both exhausted so we felt much better and let the argument come to its end.
Sometimes she would sleep on top of me and these strange sobs would suddenly overwhelm her. Rasping, childlike sobs. She’s crying, she’s coming. She’s crying or she’s coming. Maybe both at the same time. I’d never heard anything like it.
One day someone mistook her for my daughter at the supermarket. And C. had smiled. She’d said, age doesn’t matter. Does it matter to you? I was lying when I’d said no. And when I’d met her at the train station in London for the first time I’d got a shock, she looked about 17. She’d said nothing. I said to myself, I’m mad and then, but who cares.
Her walk had something of a 17-year-old girl, even though she was thirty. She laughed. Whenever she suddenly broke her silence with a laugh, like a 17-year-old girl, I thought to myself again, who cares.
That was how she walked and laughed, but the way she watched me was heavy and dark.
In London we ate, we drank, I talked without stopping, we kissed, we loved each other. Yes, we loved each other, we’d already loved each other for so long, we’d loved each other before we’d even met, we’d loved each other as soon as we’d started writing to each other and maybe we should have continued to love each other like that. Yes, at that time we were madly in love.
We loved each other over email, over texts, over Facebook. She sent me songs, sometimes in Greek sometimes not, poems in Greek sometimes not, sometimes even in English or French, or any other language. I listened to the songs. I read the poems. My heart was beating. Life was beginning again.
But not anymore. Now it feels like the end of life.
We could no longer breathe.
Luckily there was the dog.”
-Chantal Akerman, from My Mother Laughs[tr. Daniella Shreir]

“Actually, I have no idea. What was I doing there. I’d been against this all my life. Even so, I had been to a great number of weddings especially when I was young and every time I’d tried to put on a brave face and seem carefree and young for my father. I don’t know whether he knew it at that time, that I was an odd one, but I could tell that he hoped that one day it’d be my turn.

If I was anti-marriage why had I been at so many weddings which were always such a palaver to attend because you had to get dressed up in order to be there and when I dressed up I was less visible and so people didn’t whisper to each other, that one over there isn’t married yet. To belong, probably, but I still didn’t belong. No, not at all. And I was anti-marriage. But probably not enough not to go. This time it was my niece’s wedding and thanks to my sister I had a niece and I belonged a bit. I belonged but I felt even more alone. More alone than ever.”
-Chantal Akerman, from My Mother Laughs[tr. Daniella Shreir]