Susan cannot write anymore

Zeus and Pandora are lying down near the porch, looking as the birds fly by, thinking about their next meal and longing for their next purring. Inside the house, Susan is having her 10^th cigarette and probably her 5^th cup of coffee after having spent the whole week trying to write something on her laptop.

She looks at her cats calmly dozing and remembers her first piece of writing… words written in an old notebook of hers. It used to be so simple and rewarding. It used to be the greatest pleasure she could get from life: sitting down somewhere quiet, away from distress or anger, a place she would feel comfortable and calm. A pen was all she needed for her thoughts would pile up and she would have so many tales to tell that the 24 hours of a day were not enough.

That was a past so sweet and promising that she could actually live on writing for all those years. Publishers would call her day and night for something to be published and she’d deliver amazing stories written out of the purest form of love for writing. That was then but what about now?

It’s 1:00 pm and she has spent nearly 12 hours trying to write something. If she still wrote on her notebook, there would be hundreds of sheets of paper on the floor (something her dear cats wouldn’t mind at all). She feels like she doesn’t even know the language anymore. In the past, not so long ago, she used to feel intimate to the language and she wouldn’t have to choose the best words to create one of her fabulous tales. What has happened?

Does that happen to any human being who does something out of love and passion? Does the will to go on doing what you know best simply vanishes and you are left with nothing but sorrow? What do we have to subject ourselves to in order to be able to recover that will we once had? Does is simply go away or is it just a test?

All Susan has now is a lot of questions without a single answer. Therefore, her instincts tell her to go on with whatever is left of her life. Try and follow her routine. Maybe it is time to feed Zeus and Pandora. Maybe they will stare at her and she’ll have all the answers she’s been looking for. Maybe.

I’m sitting here talking to my dead grandfather

His body is cold but his face looks serene and peaceful and it reminds me of the days he’d play with me for hours on end. I didn’t have a real chance to sit and talk to him during the past 9 years for his mind had been taken away, little by little, until the day he couldn’t recognize me or even himself. Even having been deprived from memories of 70 years that had passed by, he could smile with distant eyes, facing uncertainty and the chill that losing memory can bring.

For the first time in my life I heard “He passed away” and I knew who he was. Should I cry, yell, laugh, run away screaming or lay down on my bed? I went upstairs and sat down in front of my laptop as I started working trying not to think about what had happened. Maybe if I just pretended that was just another ordinary day, I would feel ok.

Between shy tears and a little apprehension, I headed to the inevitable destination: the morgue. The funny thing is that I did not hesitate, not even for a split second, and entered that room that smelled like formaldehyde. The place was cold and all the setting looked old and worn-out, weathered and dark. I could hear my steps getting heavier and my breathing deeper as I approached the bed. There he was, all dressed-up and tidy for the last good-bye.

I had never touched or seen a dead body before so I didn’t know what my reaction would be. I promised myself I would go through that experience from beginning to end and I did what I thought I would never do: I kissed him good-bye and felt his freezing cold skin on my lips.

Tears, thousands of them, and I was sobbing like a child: the child he saw in the maternity ward, the child he carried and held against his chest, the grandchild he decided he would raise as his own and love her like a father.

Last night, when I went to bed, I remembered my dead grandfather lying down in the coffin, surrounded by flowers, ready to be carried to his grave. I could feel it in my bones the moment they lowered him to the bottom of his grave and, all of a sudden, the working men did their usual job by setting blocks of concrete on top of him and filling the grave with sand that looked like mud in that rainy and dark day.

Last night I talked to him. I asked him for some fatherly advice on how to deal with life and its shortcomings. I asked him to help me go through some uncertain and scary moments as I shed some tears of fear and love. Every tear shed started to calm me down, as a lullaby I used to be sung to when I was a child and after some minutes I was drowsy, sleepy, calm and ready to rest to wake up on a very beautiful Saturday morning.

Pandora, Zeus and the Box

Susan Hathaway, my dear friend, is back from her inspirational journey to a place she insists on not revealing. She gets back home to Pandora and Zeus, her beloved and wise black cats, which seemed to be the only ones she actually missed while away. Worse than having nobody to talk to is not being able to chat with those little furry creatures, smarter than any human being could ever intend to be.

As she expected, Zeus looked at her and started purring out his feline anxiety and happiness, while Pandora sat still on the table just staring at her to reinforce her dislike for having spent all those days without her, though she made it clear she could handle it perfectly well. Pandora knew it from the bottom of her heart how needy any male cat generally was. Zeus should have given Susan a hard time at first, as Dora had previously suggested. ‘It must be his anatomy!’, she thought criticizing Z with a pinch of sarcasm.

Susan then directed her attention to staring back at Pandora to see if she would be able to somehow tell her what was going on inside her mind. She did that for exact 15 minutes and, after that, Dora turned her back to her and started staring at the ceiling, just for a change. The ceiling seemed much more interesting than Susan at that moment and Pandora really knew how to demand respect from others.

‘Having a bubble bath’… that was the image that suddenly popped into her mind. Sue went towards her bathroom, leaving all her luggage in the middle of the living room. She knew Zeus would wait for some minutes and would then sniff her bags to see if they were a safe spot for a lazy nap. That’s exactly what he did. He could smell thousands of different scents: food, animals, men, dust, smoke, perfume, cheap old cologne… he got so entertained that he couldn’t help it, he had to lie down on top of the largest bag and rest for a while. All that sniffing around made him really tired.

Water, some wine, some slow music and a home-sweet-home feeling took care of her arrival home. Not until she started feeling relaxed, did Dora jump up the bathroom doorknob to enter the room without knocking. Cats don’t knock; they simply come in as they wish. She was not very fond of water, but she loved climbing up the laundry basket (not before sharpening her claws on it, of course).

Susan knew that they were supposed to have a conversation at that moment. She turned down the music and simply looked at Dora, waiting for her to make her move. As she was looking into the cat’s eyes, she felt something quite strange happening: her body was getting numb, she was extremely drowsy, so much that she couldn’t even stand up to grab a towel and leave the tub. She felt helpless: she couldn’t speak, she couldn’t move, nor could she do anything about it. She had to surrender to Pandora’s power, as she was about to open her infamous box.

‘Little Dora, frail little thing, so cute, so tender, so vulnerable’, that’s Pandora’s look as she was gently piercing her claws onto the top of her box to get it open. You must be wondering if the cat was about to set free all evil from inside that box. Probably you got that idea from those history classes you had at school, in which you possibly dozed off and said the teacher was a bore. So you probably remember just parts of his speech and you must have never read anything really deep on that matter. Don’t worry! We are talking about different Pandora’s. Dora, the cat, is not that mythological character you are wondering about. Never mind your lack of attention during your classes. Nevermind!

Pandora opened the top of the box and just stared back at Susan, who was helplessly soaking in the bathtub. She opened her mouth, showed her fangs and made a silent threat. She looked inside the box and back to Susan, silently telling her about the previous mistakes she had made in life: how could such a powerful female, a woman, allow other people to get her down, crawling for attention, begging for being loved, drowning herself in tears because someone, generally the male kind, did something obviously unintelligent.

Susan could feel her heart pound. She could move her toes, but she was still unable of regaining control of her body. Little did she know what was about to come. Dora made a very loud noise and her tail moved as if it were the waves in high tide, incisively ferocious. At that second, she threw the box on the ground, allowing all its content to come out and be revealed. Susan had never been exposed to such a sight before. She had never been able to put together such a chain of events and feelings as Pandora decisively did, as a display of her feline honesty and truth.  Out of the box came Susan’s weaknesses, her flaws, her persistent tendency to run away from her fears and let life slip away. She saw her family and every single event since the day she was born. She saw her birth and how she felt at the moment she was being dragged out of her mother’s womb. Astoundingly shocked she was: everything she had tried so hard to escape from was there, right before her eyes.

Sue was still in the bathtub, perplex, unaware of what to do from that moment on, unaware of Pandora’s intention. Dora approached her, looked at her and moved her head reaching for her hand. She was standing at the edge of the tub, just waiting for Susan to touch her. She realized that she could feel her body again and moved her hand towards the cat, struggling not to weep in desperation after having been exposed to her own worst nightmares.

Susan left the tub, dried her body and tears with the first towel she could find. She took a step towards the door in order to leave the bathroom when Pandora started walking through her kegs, purring, calling her attention so persistently that she had to kneel down and smile at her little furry thing. She was crying, filled with sorrow, confused and scared until the moment she looked at Dora’s eyes. Her eyes were calling for her. They were willing to tell her something.

It was then that she finally saw her reflexion on Pandora’s glowing yellow eyes. She looked deeper and she could feel something she had never felt before: a rush of strength, combined with courage and willingness to face life; pleasure for being alive and lively; eager for experiencing life again. ‘Come what may’, she said. ‘Never will I dare run away from what I am supposed to go through. Never will I give up my life’s history and pretend nothing ever happened. Never will I simply leave and come back to pretend I’m restarting my life. Never will I drag myself down to the point I cannot return to the surface anymore. Never, ever, ever!’

‘Meow, meow, meow’, Susan was heard a familiar relieving sound. Pandora was hungry and she could now get back to her own precious routine. Zeus heard her ask for some treats and there he was, by her side, at the speed of light, also begging for some indulgence, some delicious food to be followed by a long and relaxing cat nap.   

Inversions

Another cloudy day. Having people around me, feeling lonely though. Feeling invaded, no privacy, no place to call my own. Again, I have no place to call home. Disturbing noise around me and some music to try to disguise the discomfort. I look out the window and all I can see is ten thousand shades of grey: the sun has been hiding for quite a long time, the rain has been poured down on a constant intent of washing out whatever comes its way.

Here I am, having another cigarette, some tasteless coffee, feeling its bitterness with a pinch of anger and an uncontrollable desire to shout at the top of my lungs, ‘I don’t want to be here anymore’. So what do you do if the only wise choice you actually have is to put up with this dreadful situation, waiting so that there’s a much more appropriate moment to change? What do you do?

What do you exactly do when you get tired of telling people ‘I told you so’ ? In fact, all I really wanted was to be able to have some minor control over my daily life. Older people are supposed to be wiser than you. There’s that moment, however, when you have to turn to your own parent and tell him that what he’s doing is not right, tell him that whatever he does has been harmful to you and other people around and his attitudes just generate a chain of negative feelings, a sense of pity which makes anyone react the same way: they feel sorry for that kind of person.

I wish I didn’t have to feel sorry for any of my parents. I wish they knew how to take care of themselves. I wish I can do better for myself as I grow older. I want to be able to look at myself in the mirror and feel proud , knowing that I have done my best and that I have been able to give support to those who rely on my for comfort, peace and a shoulder to cry on.

Crying, I wish I could right now. Maybe that would prevent me from feeling so bitter. It would wash away my sorrow and get me ready for another bright sunny day. I know tomorrow will not be as sunny as I wish and things won’t change overnight. Some things will never change and I count on the uncertainties of life to take care of what we can’t do for others. Uncertainties might bring some reason to the most unreasonable person. Anger might help you react to a chain of unwanted events. Wrath may bring you back on your feet, getting you ready to move on.

I’m a hopeful person. Call me silly, call me foolish, call me whatever you want: I’ll always wish for a better day to come. I’ll always crave for that smile that comes out of the blue and lights up the room. I’ll always be willing to find a place I can call home. I’ll always say to myself that, as I wake up, things will be given a new perspective and that is what nobody should give up on: having some perspective in life.

Moving Lights

Observing, observing and observing. How can anybody go through life without looking into what is happening around them? Some coffee, cigarettes, people talking, laughing as others remain silent. The noise around me became a single sound and, as I turned around, all I could see were the car lights flashing as they ran by. That moment was photographed by my mind. All I have now is the still picture of that moving instant, right here in my hands and it has a story to tell.

The lights in movement draw a picture with lines taking you from a spot to another and there’s a point in which those lines blend in and, intertwined, they become something that happens to everyone in life, though many do ignore its existence. Some call it coincidence, while others name it fate or destiny. Some may see it as their own fortune while others simple see it as something that was bound to happen.

I can’t actually define that moment. However, I can very well describe it for I’ve kept it inside my mind and heart and its memory is held dear and cherished every second that goes by. It was then, when I was walking down the street, simply strolling and chatting with a friend, just another ordinary day in life of any ordinary person. Ranting about daily problems, complaining about the weather, having no actual plans for the future and living each day at a time without any expectation of what could possibly happen.

Little did I know that there was no such thing as not having expectations. We all expect something from life and I saw myself as a walking puzzle with a missing piece. There was something missing in my life, I couldn’t tell what it was though. My heart and mind had been shredded with sorrow and disappointment, the only thing I knew was that many things never made sense and I had gotten tired of explaining to myself that life was a sequence of misfortunes followed by some happy instants.

Life was a cheap old brandy poured into a broken tinted glass. Some unknown brand of cigarettes you decide to smoke just because you couldn’t find your favorite. It was having a dog while all you wanted was having a cat. Driving around town when all you needed in fact was walking barefoot in a peaceful place. Putting a thick layer of make-up on to disguise the scars of life when all you really needed was to look at yourself in the mirror and see a clean face. It was trying hard to be someone else out of fear of being your own self.

 If you see a picture of moving cars at night and don’t observe the map drawn by their lights, you can only feel the surface of what it can deliver. It’s the same thing as living life in disbelief, not trusting anybody, not believing that people are different and that there’s always someone, that special person, who will draw your attention to what you seem to forget: yourself.

 I was walking down that street unaware that I was about to meet someone who’d suddenly become that missing piece of my puzzle. Everything I tried so hard to keep avoiding out of fear would become silly unimportant little things for then I would start seeing my life differently. The time spent living one day after another, with no great expectations, was really important to me so that I could feel how precious it was to meet that person and now have him in my life.

The moving lights on my picture have become my favorite painting, my art, which by essence means it’s constantly in progress, evolving, changing, growing and becoming clearer and clearer. I’ve become a happier person since I could finally make sense of what that photograph means to me and I’ve chosen my favorite artist, the one who’s part of my painting and my artistic progress. “Life’s uncertain voyage” in its essence and uncertainties have brought me to that street, that day, at that moment of our lives so that we could paint our picture together. Lights, love, coffee, cigarettes, movement and love, again, love and lights, my art, my life.