requiem for my coffee cup

i´m back from cluj, where i was ´overseeing´ a basic cleaning/renovation of my old apartment, and this weekend i´m ready to move in. among my kitchen stuff i found a lot of broken cup handles and burnt pans and cracked ...objects, the way i assume it usually happens. i threw broken things away without any second thought, including my favourite coffee cup which i´d bought 10 years ago. then, among my old papers i found something i´d written...probably 10 years ago too:

`` every morning when i have my coffee my cup sizzles its usual way. it´s an extra-big, white-brown spotted cup - familiar, reassuring the feel of its curved warmth in my palms. you see, when they made it, at first they moulded and burnt the shape, then they had to add the polished white glaze. there is this spot on the upper part of the handle, next to the outer wall of the cup, which they didn´t cover. they missed it just like that, the achilles´heel. it´s concrete gray, barely noticeable. but when i pour the steaming liquid some drops fall in there inevitably, and it sizzles, it hurts. my cup is a series model, maybe their slip is a series mistake. my dropping steaming water every time i pour might be a series fault, of the clumsy kind. what i like to think, every morning as it sizzles anew, is that every common hurt affecting common things is a new one, and it hurts differently every time. ´´

cca. november 2002