Itinerantdaughter's Blog

Inside of the city of Vilnius, in Lithuania, where I visited in early April, there is a small neighborhood that has declared itself a Republic. It is, for sure, the Republic with the vaguest boundaries ever, but its constitution is a poem of Zen-proportions.

The Republic of Uzupis

Everyone has the right to live by the River Vilnele, while the River Vilnele has the right to flow by everyone.

Everyone has the right to hot water, heating in winter and a tiled roof.

Everyone has the right to die, but it is not his obligation.

Everyone has the right to make mistakes.

Everyone has the right to individuality.

Everyone has the right to love.

Everyone has the right to be not loved, but not necessarily.

Everyone has the right not to be distinguished and famous.

Everyone has the right to be idle.

Everyone has the right to love and take care of a cat.

Everyone has the right to look after a dog till one or the other dies.

A dog has the right to be a dog.

A cat is not obliged to love its owner, but must help in time of nee.

Sometimes everyone has the right to be unaware of his duties.

Everyone has the right to be in doubt, but this is not his duty.

Everyone has the right to be happy.

Everyone has the right to be unhappy.

Everyone has the right to be silent.

Everyone has the right to have faith.

No one has the right to violence.

Everyone has the right to appreciate their unimportance.

Everyone has the right to encroach upon eternity.

Everyone has the right to understand.

Everyone has the right to understand nothing.

Everyone has the right to be of various nationalities.

Everyone has the right to celebrate or not to celebrate their birthday.

Everyone shall remember their name.

Everyone may share what they possess.

Everyone cannot share what he does not possess.

Everyone has the right to have brothers, sisters and parents.

Everyone may be independent.

Everyone is responsible for their freedom.

Everyone has the right to cry.

Everyone has the right to be misunderstood.

Everyone has no right to make another person guilty.

Everyone has the right to be individual.

Everyone has the right to have no rights.

Everyone has the right not to be afraid.

Do not defeat.

Do not fight back.

Do not surrender.

G: You’ll have to leave my meals on a tray outside my door because I’ll be working pretty late on the secret of making myself invisible, which may take me until almost eleven o’clock.
Me: When you’ve got that figured out, can you give me a shout?
G: Of course.

No one knows that I am here.  No one knows that I am speaking.  This is a good thing, to have secret space, for someone who is paid to exist for someone else, essentially, to be young and vibrant and healthy and always these things.  (This is an exhausting profession.)  I could jump in right now, but I won’t.  I’ll leave the more fantastic stuff for later.  I want to quote Frank O’Hara, but I can’t find the right poem.  I know where it is in my parents’ large house in the suburbs; in a large closet, an old notebook from college, on a three-hole punched sheet of paper, boxed in by my sharp pencil.  “I haven’t shown you the most beautiful things in my lives yet.”  This is so rough.  When I Google it, I get “Song (Lana Turner Has Collapsed!)” and “Meditations in an Emergency”, both fantastic, but not what I am looking for, as usual.

While searching for the correct thing (I think I have found it in “Memory of my Feelings”, but no), I find a posting on a poetry website written by one M.S.

“Dear Frank O’Hara,
Are you alive?
I’ve read your poems and know that you are.
But are you available in person?
I’d like to ask for more poems…
that’s all.”

This is perhaps the best poem I have read in quite some time.