So many places where I’m not. I’m not in Naples, in Tangier, Coimbra, Lisbon, New York, Yambol, and Istanbul. Not only am I not there, I am painfully absent. I am not there on a rainy afternoon in London, I am not there in the clamor of Madrid in the evening, I am not in Brooklyn in autumn, I am not there on the empty Sunday streets of Sofia or Turin, in the silence of a Bulgarian town in 1978 … I am so very absent. The world is overcrowded with my absence. Life is where I am not. No matter where I am …
