Marching On

I have been waiting for this trip for such a long time. Finally, I’m here, near my mountain, near water, caves, forest, near myself. I love nature and all its loneliness, because in it, I feel me, God, or simply deep inside I feel a Meaning to all this meaningless of Life. I’m happy in nature. Do you know this kind of Happiness? Not the happiness brought by a success, or by a meeting, not the happiness of a hug, a kiss, a word or a gesture, but the happiness inside me, that energy that screams inside myself and to all the dear persons: NEVER give up. Happiness is overrated, true, but Unhappiness shouldn’t steal us from our own Life. Smile in Unhappiness and wait for the rain to come in a long and dry season. Or wait for the snowflakes to fall one by one in your palm, offering you a piece of this kind of happiness.

I needed to be here, to see this, to feel this, to walk, to let thoughts fall one by one, and to join all the broken parts from me. In all these months, I have been more appropriated of that destructive “I” and I was at two steps to fall really bad.

Air, mountain, freedom, peace. Breathe in, breathe out, jump, fall, move on. Cry, be hurt, smile. Life is too short to let bad moments, ignorant people, people that we dislike, hate, or people who are hurting us kill our days, weeks, months. And these months, I wasn’t alive. I got tired to be strong, I was screaming for people to see me, I wanted to stop. Soul and body tired. And here, now, my soul, my energy is wide awake. Although I’m here with four more people, although I have to speak and take care, as I always had to, I’m alone. People are so different from me, people don’t see or hear what I see, hear, feel here; they don’t understand my silence, my need of walking, they interpret me as they want and can, and I don’t want to correct them. Now I stopped inside myself, now I touch the kid – vulnerable, whimsical, needing people, hurt, always hiding behind masks, memories and years, unable to die, unable to move on, the I that is a fighter, the I that is a coward, the I that wants tranquility, peace, happiness, the I that has goals, wants freedom, Life, a difference, the I that destroys me and the I that saves me, the Human with all its warmth and the Inhumanity with all its walls and coldness, the I that protects everyone, the selfish I, and so on. Too many “I”s and ghost, I know.

I feel, I think. Me, God, nature, silence, loneliness. The silence and the loneliness that I love, the silence which is cold and warmth at the same time, which protects me, the mountain with its forest, its everlasting STABILITY, never changing, always being here, massive, strong, and still protective, silent, offering you rays of sun if you manage to get there, on the top of it. So here, but especially there, on top of that hugest mountain, I feel safe, so safe, so protected …

The first thing that I felt there was Tiredness. The first thing that I did was sleeping. Heavy, without dreams. Sounds, memories, couldn’t touch me then. I felt like I was sinking into a purifying water, washing myself from all my sins, all that I saw, felt, washing all my wounds, washing sadness, BREATHING. Do you know Dante’s book? In the last one, when he arrives in Paradise, he washes himself from all his sins and trips and walks into Heaven to see all those circles. In this sleep, in those walks, I felt more or less like him. Everything has a Meaning, or we can find a meaning … I fall There in March, by feeling so close to my heart Death, I couldn’t enjoy any victory because day after day, I was in pain, and I was so afraid that this pain would change me. So I screamed. Now, in August, I saw Death and I moved on, not touching, not speaking, just driving near it, looking into its eyes, feeling no fear, feeling it at the same time as a friend and as an enemy, and going back into Life. And here, I feel Freedom and Peace, Safety, I feel Loneliness from which I don’t run, I don’t cry, but I hug her, because you see, all this Inhumanity has more Humanity than the warmest thing from this world.

So, where do you want to go from here? ... Every breathing, every beat, every sound that comes from the outside, every step, every small memory of happiness from the present or from the past, every drop of rain that you catch in your palms, every snowflake that touches us, should remind us:

Who are we? Really, deep, without masks, feelings to others, in selfishness and love.

Life is short. If we give up to us, to our dreams, goals, or our independency, if we sink into unhappiness and forgot to smile, there shall came a day when we shall search for ourselves and we shall be unable to say “I lived my life, I existed for myself and for the others, I have done all the things that I wanted to do, I’m not a common existence, born only to be born, I’ve said all the things that I wanted to say and I saw all the things that I wanted to see, I met all the people that I wanted to meet, I LIVED. 20,30, 40, 50 or 100 years old, but I LIVED these years.”

So all that we can do - in happiness, in sadness, in joy, loneliness, silence or noise - is to remember us and to march on.

 

Portrait of Memories (2007)

(I wrote this several years ago, on a night, in the 12th grade, when I was feeling the other face of myself. Memories, writing, fears, masks. Isn't writing the greatest mask that writers have for their inner world, and, in the same time, the greatest mirror to their souls? If we simply keep our eyes open to details, to connections, to words. I remember it from time to time, when another part of my Ego takes control and let the other one take a nap. :) )

         Why is it that the most important changes in our lives happen when we least expect them? My life had settled into a comfortable, satisfying routine when suddenly I met her. Again.

         I scarcely remember how things happened. I was driving to my best-friend when she suddenly jumped in front of my car. I only knew that I stopped on time, having in front of me the being who fascinated my entire world in my past. Her dark eyes, in that cloudy and rainy day, unlocked all my memories that were locked somewhere, deep, into my soul. They all escaped in reality, with the park in which we walked so many times, with her sweet voice and the smell of her skin …

         She looked scared at me and before I awoke myself from my own memories, she ran away, disappearing among cars. I jumped from my car, running and calling her. “Lizzy, stay! Lizzy! It’s just me, Robert …” Only now, when I write all these, I remember that rush hour, and how close I were to be hit by one of those cars. But in those moments, I was again on my street, running after her, unable to reach her.”Hurry up, old man! This is all that you can do?!” Her sweet, innocent laugh … and now, she was again running in front of me. Fortunately, she tripped by a rock and fall. “Lizzy, it’s all right… It’s just me, Rob!” She had her eyes full of tears and her hands were trembling. “No, I don’t…oh, yes! Rob… what… you have to help me, please! Help me!” She got up, letting me stare at her, unable, again, to understand her. “Where are you staying?”

         It’s useless to describe what happened after I told her my address, how she refused to return to the car, how we walked for an hour, how she answered at my questions with “yes”, “no”, “don’ now”. Happiness. This is what I was feeling then. Happiness that I met my past, that my muse was again with me. But it all gone away in the moment when we entered my flat.

        She took a cigarette from her pocket and she started to look at my things. She was so nervous and her hands were trembling. She neglected my paintbrushes, all my pictures and drawings, and moving to here and there, said: “Don’t you have something to drink?” “Well… I have coffee; Tom always drinks coffee when he comes here…”

 For the first time she started to laugh as she was doing long time ago and replied: “You kidding, aren’t you? Or you’re too different from the world I came ...”

        She put her cigarette in one of my palette and without letting me say anything, she said: “Look, I need money, a lot of money, and you have to help me.”  “Liz’, I would love to help you, but, you see all these paintings? I invested all my money in the exposition from next week. I’m sorry.” I paused for a moment, looking at her; she wasn’t listening, but she was becoming more and more agitated. Once, I knew her; now … who she was? The girl from my past, the woman from now, me, daring to ask her: “Do you still like my pictures Lizzy?”

         She didn’t answer; after she looked around the chamber and from time to time to the window, taking another cigarette, then letting it fall on the floor, she started to take my books, my pictures, dropping them, one by one. Sounds … I would never forget those sounds, her steps on my pictures, paintings, books, her steps on my soul. “Do you really have in this lodge only books and awkward drawings?! Have you done them?”

         Clouds of smoke. I didn’t answer. Couldn’t. Was it all a mere nightmare? And when did I start to say to her all my thoughts…?

         “It’s funny, you know … 15 years ago I was on the verge of hitting a little girl with my bicycled. She started crying and from that moment, we were inseparable. I remember how we fight sometimes, the perfume of your long, dark hair, the little chamber where we shared our dreams, were I was making your portrait and you were talking, and talking, and talking… And I just listened … you wanted to be a famous journalist and I wanted to be a painter. And that last night, that last day, in which the heavy rain seemed to share my feelings. ‘Go, Liz! Run, and be you! Go!” Your last look, your last kiss, the plane that was flying with you, taking with it the only person that I felt close, my confident, supporter, the person who encouraged me, the being who I loved most in my life …Do you REMEMBER?”

         She stopped for a moment, raising her eyes upon me. Big, marvelous, now cold eyes. She started to walk to me, saying in the same time with a sure voice, that I would never forget: “And now? What do you see? Let me answer for you. That little girl is not so little any more, that wonderful hair is cut down and all those dreams, that you sustained we have, had passed away. “Lizzy…” “Hush…” interrupted me, putting one of her fingers upon my mouth. “Of course, she hated all these smoke and everything I demand you today. If I remember them? Oh, how I remember! And do you know what I still remember?”

Silence, as if time has stopped. Her smell, her skin, her lips so close of mine, her voice, her coldness, her words. I closed my eyes, waiting for her voice.

“That you were the one who helped me with that fly, which had seemed to change my entire life. I obtain from you everything I desired and then … went I was. But you were like me and I really can’t understand… how could you have had the strength to believe in you till the end, how could you managed to make your dream come true? Had I told you in that airport not to give up, not to forget me? Maybe I was wrong...”

       I felt her cheek next to mine, I felt her lips on my lips, and then that whisper so close to my soul, which destroyed my whole world: “All your memories are false…”

      The door had been slammed, the telephone had rung so many times; the voice of my friend who was wondering what’s wrong with me. It has been months since I refused to go out into the world. For what to live? But I was working on a last portrait. The portrait of my own memories. Under a heavy sky, some clouds are flying up and down, the pieces of memories are under some dark eyes, a glance that seems to look somewhere on the ground, but whose looking at little dove… me without myself… if our own memories are false, then what is true in life?

          The exposition was a success, but I don’t care anymore. After all, for what all these, when the power I thought I had to achieve success wasn’t there not only a single time in my life. In who can I trust when she disappointed me, when she was never there ?…

        And still … what is real, what is false? This morning, I discovered that she took not only the jewel of Tom’s wife, but also her own portrait made some time ago by myself, in that little chamber of memories … 

(February, 2007) 

        

 

Sometimes We All Need Saving

 

"Get off the bus!"
Why? Because here I stay, in my pain, in my fear, here Time has stopped. And if Future is just another mirror of this present, why should I get off?
How much have I staid here? How to get up from my battle field?

Someone showed me this video these days; yes, it's true, it's another part of LIFE. All of us get on a sort of bus in our lives. Think. Have you ever tried to escape Life, to hide from your own pain, physical or spiritual, have you tried to alienate in something, have you ever fall on your knees or have pain, real pain, put you on your knees? We got on our buses. Some of us feel this own bus, feel the protection, the calm, the peace and freedom of Death, some of us got so tired to be their own parents, friends, doctors, confidents, feed-backers, teachers that they got enough, they got the cowardice, and not the stupidity, to get in this bus. Others take drugs day by day, while others try to find their salvation in human arms. Some of us hide in the past, some drink, some write, some hide in empty beds, trying to reach their own souls, some just wait. For freedom, talking with their own voices, closed inside themselves, so hurt and tired that are unable to go outside the bus, outside themselves. Because there is pain, fear, hate, remorse, and loneliness outside this bus.

Once upon a time there was a cold March and an earthquake of silence destroyed all the masks and force to dream of a future. From that day, you kept on seeing dices rolling in front of your eyes, you felt your soul cut in two pieces and you cried so much – for the pain that you hide, for the Silence, Ignorance and ironically, Happiness around you – you hide so much scaredness – in bones, blood, and soul; every word and gesture that you made, that now you fall into an abyss of FEAR. Get me out of here! Please, get me out of here, get me out of my own miserable memories! Get off the bus.  I dream of a mountain ... for my spirit, not for my body, to start over again in hoping. In Future.
Once upon a space there was a Pandora box. Once there was an Alice in Wonderland, stepping on a rabbit hole. Like her, I step on a broken land which lead me directly into the waves, and then a wave pushed me back on ground, putting on my lap this open box. Past hitting, running into the present, colouring it, killing the future. Mind is a maze, especially if you remember too many things from your life.

What do you want? Who do you need when you come undone? Who is really listening? Who is here? Who is not? Give me trust, show me trust. Have you…?
I have been measuring this bus until I know it as my palm. I watched outside the window and I kept in my arms this Pandora box. One memory here, one there, one flying, one hitting. How did I put it? "flying memories, one here, one there, one being a bird, the other one an ash, lightings setting fire, wanting to get up". Face it! Feel it! Deep, under your skin. Self-loathing. Self-destruction. Wounds that cannot be healed. Tiredness of the soul, melting in the one of the body. Until you feel safe in this bus, or in your battle-field, or in your waves.

Why to get off the bus? Because you cannot change anything of what is called past and you cannot heal yourself. But you can heal, protect, offer all your energy and love to those who bring you tiny moment of happiness. And for those tiny moments of happiness, you have survived, you have given huge amount of what you really are. Why do you keep forgetting this, why don’t you look behind that Pandora box, implanted in the centre of your soul and see the real you, who have saved Life, who have build her own Temple of Memories. Why don’t you go back to happy, warmth moments?
Happiness is not an everlasting state for me. Happiness is not a day, a week, a month, a year, a life. It does not appear in special days, in successes, or it is not brought by a romantic event. It is simply a moment, a smile, a joy that burns your sad soul and gives you energy to move on and hide all of your wounds. Happiness is not a person, but it is brought by one and a Memory – it is the speed underneath your feet, after you had fallen and you got hurt, it is the dance on an ice surface and the stolen smile of a friend. It lays on a hug, or in a childish game with a person that you love, it is a respected promise, a memory brought into the present, it is an orange bench or a green one, it is a tree, a rose, a word, a gesture, a feedback, or it is simply a look. It is a smile brought by magic. And top of all, it is the happiness that you bring to the people that you love. This is happiness, not inside yourself, but outside, not in what your soul feels, but in what your soul can offer.

YES, I am so damn scared! You know of what? Of Future. I’m scared top of all that the fewest people that I love will disappear tomorrow, that I have nothing special to keep them here and one day, sooner or later, they shall be bored. I’m scared that I will be too scared to say it loud and clear my ideas to the world, I am scared of what I feel, that I cannot control all those feelings, thoughts inside myself and if I show them to the world, they would laugh. Because again, I feel Nothing, a Nothing sank into sadness. I am scared of Bad Memories that hit me as they hit me this month, I am scared that nobody will be here to listen and take my hand, I am scared that I shall fall as I did in March and again, I will not have anyone to whom I can whisper how scared I have been…

But again, happiness for me is the rain from the dessert. You simply undress yourself of all the heat from your walk and you start dancing in the rain, in the middle of the dessert. After it is gone, you carefully take some water with you, take a picture with your mind of that moment and you go on. Because you’re no good to anyone in this bus. And you must go on, daring to hope that maybe, somewhere, hidden, Future will have something for you too. And you start hoping that someone will remember you with a call, a hammer, a hand on your shoulder, a word, or a kiss on your forehead. Yes, I know, how paradoxically is that? How childish a person who has never known to be a kid, can be? So please get off your bus, 'cause … No matter how hard it may be, how much pain you would feel in your soul, how much tiredness you feel, and fear and abandonment, no matter how much you feel and touch your dark parts of yourself, in Silence, learn again how to smile.