Georgi Gospodinov

Now, there’s everything you need for a true beginning—bad dreams, war, and a headache.

On another September 1, I’m sitting on the grass in Bryant Park, the dive on Fifty-Second has long since disappeared, I’ve just come from Europe, and, tired (the soul, too, has its jet lag), I look at people’s faces. I’ve taken my little volume of Auden, we owe ourselves the ritual, don’t we? After a day spent in the library, I sit “uncertain and afraid.” I had slept badly, I didn’t dream about infidelity, or perhaps I did but I’ve forgotten . . . The world is at the same level of anxiety, the local sheriff and the sheriff of a far-off country have been trading threats. They’re doing it on Twitter, all within the character limit. There’s none of the old rhetoric, there’s no eloquence. A briefcase, a button, and . . . the end of the world’s workday. A bureaucrat’s apocalypse.

Zurich is a good city for growing old. And for dying as well. If there is some sort of European geography of age, then it must be distributed as follows. Paris, Berlin, and Amsterdam are for youth, with all its informality, its whiff of joints, beer-drinking in Mauerpark and rolling around in the grass, Sunday flea markets, the frivolity of sex . . . Then comes the maturity of Vienna or Brussels. A slowing of tempo, comfort, streetcars, proper health insurance, schools for the kids, a bit of a career, Euro-pencil-pushing. Okay, for those who still do not wish to grow old—Rome, Barcelona, Madrid . . . Good food and warm afternoons will make up for the traffic, noise, and slight chaos. To late youth I would also add New York, yes, I count it as a European city that ended up across the ocean due to a certain chain of events.