Today celebrates my poet friend and this post is a letter to him that I never write.

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Hi, Aleš. Let me write you an open letter on your birthday. I don’t think I have written you one since you were studying in Romania twenty years ago (!!).

As we agreed today on the phone, this world has turned into badly written science fiction. Not enough hope for a good story.

Tell me, do you write poems much? I don’t. The last I wrote was the rant “2020” on June 7th and it was a found poem with verses taken from online memes. This is about as much as I can muster. Here is one:

In the gallery that follows are some photo memories from the summer protest reading by poets, including you and your wife Lidija. Boris A. Novak wrote the spectacular poem Freedom Is a Verb (originally Svoboda je glagol, here in English translation by the poet himself).

That evening and the small open-air concert where we met ten days later were my the last cultural events. Friday anti-government protests are still happening in Ljubljana, for 26 consecutive Fridays. Imagine that.

Since yesterday our country Slovenia is in a new kind of lockdown with the 9pm to 6am curfew that is supposed to last a month. Imagine what all you could be doing during this time. These are the most productive hours for a poet. Maybe you could sue the state for disturbing your right to inspiration.

I get mine from nature and from outings with my first and only Italian friend Flavia, who you should definitely meet, by the way. She is hilarious and full of energy.

I get inspired but something happens before I could act upon it, and nothing gets written down. I know, you told me to carry a notebook and write it down immediately. I should listen.

I still walk bestia twice a day, now with a new 5-meter orange leash. I can pretend that I have a horse, like Tomaž Šalamun. Last week we found a new path to the beach, leading straight across the fields. Today I wrapped the leash around my waist, as if we were climbers. It really felt as if he were taking me on a walk, not vice versa. And in fact he does.

I miss Ljubljana, our city, as it used to be, maskless and free. We were lucky to still catch it at the right time. How is the city now for your teenage daughter? What a time to be a teenager. And your lifestyle as two travelling poets, always attending a festival or award ceremony or writer’s residence, is suffering too.

It’s such a hard time for many things, productivity, plans, wishes. If we take it one day at a time, one day we will think back at this time and maybe not laugh but certainly cringe. It CAN only get better. Who knows what is coming next but at least we will be ready.

And now some together moments from this summer in Ljubljana caught on camera.

Happy birthday, skål, noroc, cin cin, cheerio and all that, Aleš! To more poems, happy moments and together times.