Nowhere tales

End of line

2008-12-07T11:43:00.001-08:00

Slowly, time goes by, swallowing every second as the last one, while I hear it drain, dripping, from the rest of my life.
I remember when I thought I had all the time in the world, for planning my life, make mistakes and be right before going wrong again. An invisible, infinite line of miscalculations and wise moves that would magically turn, with time, in memories, remorse, joys.
But, one day, time quickened before my eyes for an instant, the line reaped by the impact of three tons of out of control iron hitting my frail and small body. I saw all the route of my line, my rope with it’s knots and loose threads, when my eyes lost all capacity of seeing anything.
Time flied while unknown hands tried to revive me, while foreign voices tried to bring me back. I took a grip on those hands and voices, the world suddenly changed into a whirl that carried me far, very far away, at vertiginous speed. I used all my will for not allowing myself to be swallowed by that unstoppable force, holding the last knot of my life’s rope.
The whirl eased up and time stopped, expectantly, in those white wastelands in which I found myself, my body turned into an unmoving mannequin while my mind and my soul asked each other what in hell had happened.
It’s been a long time since I’m here, hidden in some unknown place of my being, trying to get back to the world, to remember again how to open my eyes, how to spell a word, the science of moving a single muscle. And, in the while, time goes by, inexorable.
I have the feeling that I’m running out of time. I feel the whirl getting closer, it still looks for me so it can finish it’s job. I hear barely familiar people crying, speaking to me, looking for me. They’ve been doing it for a while. I would want to answer, but they’re always too far, my voice gets lost in the void and theirs in the wind.
I notice a somewhat known hand that covers mine, and in my heart springs the hope that maybe it would be a new knot that could help me to keep on spinning my rope. I feel the warmth, the faith, the courage. I try to get a grip on that hand, but it’s just too late, there’s no time, the whirl gobble me up and I don’t have even enough time as to grief it’s lost. I’ve crossed beyond the end of the line, the rope left behind, enveloped in distant mists.I’m going back to the home that awaits for me there, where time doesn’t exist.

You go

2007-10-19T10:54:00.001-07:00

The chains with which I tried to tie you to me weren’t enough, you broke them with the will of the one who wants to be free, leaving me behind with that heap of broken reasons I thought would stop you from going.
I’m selfish, yes, I am, because even when I crave to believe that you will be happier going towards your dreams, to your personal mission in this weird, incomprehensible life, I can’t help but regret they moving you away from me.
I want your happiness, as long as I can help you reaching it.
You tell me that this it’s not a goodbye, just a see you later. And I give you the twisted smile I can only manage to hint, trying to believe you for my own sake, so many endings in a not so long life left me the impression that that’s the end, after all, an end, an ending story that would never be able to be the same when resuming, if so.
I try to be strong, insensitive, I keep cheering you up in the preparations of your departure while my heart turns into an oh so heavy stone that sank me more and more in that sea of retained tears in which I try not to drown. Every hitch turns into a disappointment to you, into a hope that dares to born in me.
It’s hard to find the middle point, sometimes I reach it and it slips away again between my fingers, maybe my greed the one that make it run to hearts more comprehensive than mine.
You go, I stay. You, the new, me, the old and safe thing, two extremes condemned to constantly move apart for not destroying one another. They speak truly when they say that farewells are always worse for the one who stays, the one who goes does it with a luggage full of dreams, of lazy promises about future, of expectation before the new world to meet, the new life that maybe could be found. The one who stays it’s always too much scared as to pack and leave the house forever, and the fear accompanies some kind of resentment, the syndrome of the abandoned who is not able to abandon, and the luggage always weights too much, so many neatly folded memories, the crave to grasp something tangible weighting plumber-like in the soul, preventing any chance to take a single more step.
We cry when someone leaves, when someone dies, when they get lost of our way. But we don’t cry because we miss that someone, quite the contrary, it’s all about the feeling of being left alone, of the world spinning without us being able to stop it, the time walking it’s endless road and nothing we can do to stop it.That’s it, you’ve gone and I stay, talking with the ghost of your presence, with the emptiness of your absence, recalling all the things we shared, and feeding the hope that one day, maybe so soon, we could share something more. It’s the only thing that makes me smile while I cry staring at the loneliness that awaits to me in the shape of your empty room.

I search...

2007-09-10T00:59:00.000-07:00

I’m searching for a flat with views to the stars, in the neighbourhood where all the skies are blue and the grass looks greener than in other places I saw in this trip I embarked on in the conviction that
I look for a residence at the depths of the abyss, for getting comfort in feeling the sensation that I would never hit bottom again, always just looking above until I find a staircase that could ascend me to the apartment that
I search in the middle of the desert, where the landscape it’s eternal and mutable at the same time, a place in which trying to find the balance between frozen nights of loneliness and burning hope days, all this while
I search a castle in the bottom of the ocean, where everything changes constantly and the tides comes and goes, where water and sky seem to be the same thing to stare at while
searching a shelter in the middle of those storms in which the sky breaks above me, where to dance with lightning bolts without ending deadly hurt, and yelling with the thunder the roaring of my wrath, something I always wanted since I
search for a hut lost in the mountain of nothingness, nobody around to remind me human cruelty, just the cruel Nature around, the only one I can stand since I
search asylum in someone’s heart, for sleeping there rocked by a warm and constant beating, would it be, maybe, that
I search a hiding place where dead would never find me, nor would sickness and fear? Could be, that, or simply
I search the home of the answers to all that things I always wanted to know, the place where old forgotten gods await for being remembered, and where they whisper their secrets. Maybe they would tell them to me if they knew that I
search a room at the end of the world’s hotel, a place for resting while watching how everything ends for starting over again, in never-ending cycle. I have a vision of the new opportunity, of the beginning from zero, a vision in which I search
to lay in a bed of that hospital able to heal my soul’s wounds, I have too many now, and in which an comprehensive doctor won’t take me for a madman if I tell him that
I’m searching for the heart of darkness, a complete night that would allow me to see my own light, the one that enlightens me whenever I fall in despair and
search for the silence and coldness of a crystallised tent in a glacier, the little warm that I still have making me something special in the middle of all that cold, the chance to feel something unique, and thus to remember from the depths of my oblivion that
I search for my place in destiny’s line, in people’s eyes and in the mind of some lost angel who would take compassion on me, he could whisper to my ear if I am right or I am wrong believing that I just
search for a caravan at the edge of a cliff, enjoying the constant sensation of being only mine the decision of jumping off or keeping my feet on earth, something to spend my time when trying to convince myself that no, I don’t
search to live in the Northern Lights, staring at the earth from above and the space from below, thinking in a middle point from which maybe I won’t ever get where I intend to go, that stop I
search fearing that, maybe, I would die in the way, but, whatever, in my defence, I could always rise my head proudly, knowing that, at least, I search.

Where gods went

2007-09-02T12:38:00.001-07:00

Weird flatmates, we came gradually, from every place of the world.
Some came enraged, others in complete sorrow, and the most of us came resigned.
I walk around the house, with it’s countless number of rooms which not even me can count.
In the main room, some people watch one of the many chess games between Zeus and Odin. Suddenly, Zeus stands up enraged, the chair flying backwards, Odin´s crows help him to decide his moves. Odin, with his face hidden behind his wide brim hat, doesn’t argue with the offended Greek, because he likes cheating every now and then, like the rest of us, even if he would never admit it. He waits silently until the lightning ends shaking the board, he could cast lightning to, if he pleases, his eye and his disdainful smile says it.
Beside the fireplace, Bastet purrs half asleep while Morpheus scratch her behind the eras. Her sister Sekhmet, who never goes too far away from her, combs her fiery mane, lazily, unwillingly. These feline goddesses, always loafing around... Sekhmet stares at me with predatory eyes, I better go before she starts playing cat and mouse with me.
In the next room, Shiva dances his cosmic dance, entranced, beyond to the conversation that goes between his son Ghanesa, Toth y Tou-Mou, keen all of them to books, history and writing. Beside them, Lugh listen in silence while carving something in a piece of wood. He enjoys such conversations, but he is incapable of being idle. I won’t find company here either, it’s not that I don’t like stories... I just prefer another kind of them.
There are plenty of people in the garden. Morrigan and Kali play some kind of bloody sport, their swords dripping with blood and their eyes flaming, while Durga, Svantovit and Tiamat give their opinions about some war or another and Kuan-Yin covers her face with her alabaster hands, the compassion essence feeding piercingly with violence’s cruelty.
I stroll towards the pond, amused by the absolute certainty of knowing that there I will find the same faces, as usual. Vishnu, Minerva, Amaterasu, Imhotep... they like to seat here, all contemplative, these peace fanatics, they get on my nerves with all their mysticism and their glances lost in the void of their own serenity.
There, in that corner, you can hear the endless chitchat of Ceres, Brigit, Gaia, Ama-no-Uzume, Flora, Tlacoc, with their hands immersed elbow deep in the fertile ground that born whenever they step on, harvesting, nurturing, sowing the fruits that they kindly offer to us every day and which we all feed of. Above them Ra, Balder, Dagda, Mitra, Huitzilopochtli, shinning gods of the sun, offer their warmth in a distant mating between earth and sky. I would like to say something about he many advantages of the flesh mating, but they are not especially gifted in what humor sense is concerned about, these harvest gods who only want growth without thinking too much about origins in themselves. I better go to the kitchen, you always have a good time there, basically because of the fuss that kick Dionisos, I-Ti and Heracles, who, for being a semi god, uses to got a hell of a drunk.
They always turn their alcoholic habits in tremendous parties which never are missed by
T´ien- Khuan, Hathor and Dazshbog, glad all of them to irradiate a little bit of that happiness that oozes through their pores. The roaring laughs and the intoxication ultimately appeals the musicians, Apolo, Pan, Taliesin, their melodies attracting the dancers at the same time, Talia, Bes, and even Shiva, who, if tends to prefer dancing by his own, doesn’t object to join others from time to time. Tezcatlipoca undresses his white Quetzalcoatl clothes and dresses in black, elegant, for joining the dancing.
One thing leads to another and almost all of us gather together, we are gods, you know, and we like to have a little fun, haven’t you noticed? And we don’t give a damn about neighbors, those poor misers whom still have to work every day, they live too much rejoiced in their own predominance as to bother in knocking the door of this house in which us, unfortunate overthrown gods, waste our time in our own wishful thinking.
Some of us tend to stay always a bit isolated, dark underworld creatures, serious and responsible, whom talks with and about dead.. Anubis, Hades, Hécate, Zernobog, Kartikeya, Osiris, Ba´al. They compound quite a gloomy gang, and they don’t tend to be in the mood for jokes. Death it’s quite a serious business, or at least that’s what they think.
The spree’s murmur floats through the unending corridors. Vesta, Neith, Audhumla and Chih-nii roll their eyes, such a miserable life the one of those order and home guardians, condemned to live among chaos and debauchery. From the rooms you can hear muffled noises, the lords of love devoting to their own hungry ecstasies, Afrodita, Freyja, Astarte, Lakshmi, Eros, Adonis, Dumuzi, Kama, messed up in an orgy that makes the house rumble to it’s foundations, disproportionate passions that feeds up with themselves devastating everything that crosses their path. I better move away, one could never know what kind of effect can pure wild passion make on you.
Here I see a gang to join. My friends and equals, Anansi, Hermes, Coyote, Maui and Sicksa snickers of one or another evil practical joke. I’m among my people, I’m Loki Skywalker, and I laugh to myself thinking in all that time that I passed planning Ragnarok for, at the end, the humans being the ones whom, forgetting about us, induced our decline. I’m sure my fellows would like this story, we’re old and forgotten gods, and the only thing we have left it’s laughing of one another.

In your dreams

2007-09-02T12:37:00.001-07:00

Surprised to see me again?
You shouldn’t. It’s been almost a month since you started dreaming about me, and this have just begun.
I guess you can’t understand why you dream about me. You know me, sure, that weird guy that goes to your same university, the one who always sits at the end of the Psychosocial Intervention Models class. We never crossed more than two or three words, but you know that I keep an eye on you, in class, in the hall, in the snack bar... a lot of times you catch me staring at you, and it makes you feel uneasy. I know, we both study Psychology, remember?
You can avoid me at the University, if you want. But not here. Here it’s me who makes the rules.
Seriously, I don’t think people give enough significance to dreams. “Subconscious projections”; they say, “ reflections of essay possibilities about external expression”... Ja.
Most people accept their dreams controlling their nights. But of course, most people don’t know what lucid dreams are, and those who knows doesn’t quite grasp everything you can do with them.
I know. Oh, I really do know, dear.
It took me months of effort and training to achieve complete control of dreams, but it well worth it.
In the beginning, I was content just being able to change my lucid dream so you would always be there, looking at me, talking to me, surrendering to me. I plenty entertained myself then. If you knew the thing I made you do in my dreams... Because in them I can do anything I like. In them, I’m God. Your God.
But it wasn’t enough. What’s the deal about being a God if your creation doesn’t know it? That’s why I had to go to the next level. It took me quite a long time, but I obtained it, too.
Did you know that, if you have enough practice in lucid dreams, you can make astral trips in them?
Now, I don’t have to manipulate my drams for you being in them. Not at all, now I can be in YOUR dreams, and play with them as I please. You know, before I was able to control my dreams, and now, my darling, I can control yours. And I do, oh yes I do.
You have missed some classes, and seem to be tired and sleepy. I noticed, too, that now you stare at me more than I stare at you. With fear, confused.
But you shall not fear me, I won’t hurt you. Well, not at the University, in any case, nor in real life, nor at vigil.
If you have to fear something, it’s falling asleep. Because I would be there, and there’s nothing you can do about it. If you are a good girl, if you don’t resist, I will turn your dreams into magical experiences that will make your imagination fly. We’ll fly together, hand in hand.
If not, well, you can always trust in old good nightmares, and I will be in all of them, making you remember who’s in charge here.
It’s late, you must be about to put to bed. You need some sleeping, dear, you look tired.
Nice dreams, my dearest. I will see you there.

The wardrobe monster

2007-09-02T12:36:00.000-07:00

I was six the first time I heard it.
Wardrobes always commanded respect to me, those huge spaces, so dark, from which I could see all sort of thing being taken out and in which all sort of things disappeared in, if I have to give credit to my mother, who sometimes practically disappeared herself inside one for coming out later with empty hands and a surly expression.,
But I never feared them, not until that night.
I remember I was half asleep when I heard a sort of grumbling coming from the wardrobe. And, between the grumbling, I could make some words.
-Open the door, open it. I want to get out and rip your guts apart, I want to tear your heart so I can eat it. You ´d have to open the door, sooner or later, and then I will clamber over you.
Even if they were only grunts, I could feel a dreadful smile behind them, a smile oh so full of sharp and yellowish teeth. I clearly saw the open and slobbering mouth from which those sounds came.
So I screamed. I screamed with all my soul, covering my head with the blanket s of my bed, until a blast of light proclaimed that my mother has arrived to the room. I crept out of my shelter, my eyes all out of orbit and all of me a heap of incoherent sobbing, until, by a huge amount of patient caressing, my mother was able to quiet me enough as for telling her what happened.
As I described to her the growls and threats, her face begun to show a relieved expression over the worried one in which she had bent to me before. She assured me that there was nothing in the wardrobe, and she even made an attempt to open it for showing me, but, at my hysterical yells, she chose to lock it.
- See? It won’t get out now.
When she was totally convinced that I felt better, she printed a sweet kiss in my forehead and left, knocking the light out.
There weren’t any more noises coming from the wardrobe, that night. But there were the next night. And the following one, and the another.
- I will go out one night, when you’re all asleep, and I will rip your eyes from their sockets, and I will drink your blood, just wait and see.
My parents begun to worry with the screams that invariably went night after night, and for a little while they took me to sleep in their room. I listened their rhythmic breathing, with my eyes fixed in their own wardrobe, but this kept silent. The monster still was locked up in my room, waiting for me.
In the mornings, although, I had no other choice but opening it for taking my clothes, and even if the first time I did I went rigid with fear, ready to feel it’s claws piercing through my body, nothing ever happened. I even emptied the wardrobe, with the security that I would find it crouching in one corner, but I never found it.
This monster seemed to hate light...
That night, the speech was quite different.
- Open, open now if you dare, without your father around and without sun’s light. I will pull up your head with a single bite.
Every night I locked the wardrobe and kept the key under my pillow.
Every night the monster threatened me, unable to get free.
Years went by, and my wardrobe wasn’t ever unlocked after sunset. I get used to the growls, feeling safe with the key in my hands. I went through childhood to youth, till I met my to-be wife.
I had been with other girls before, but I never took them to my house at night. Not with that thing waiting in the wardrobe,
My parents, whom always wanted to live near the seashore, gave us the house as a wedding present... or, to be true, they sold it to me for a more than reasonable price. My old room turned into my studio, and my wife and me moved to my parent’s room.
Every night I went to my studio when my wife went to bed (she had to wake up too early for work, and tended to get asleep in front of the tv), and listened the monster, but it seemed to have changed with the years, too. It’s voice didn’t seem as formidable as before, to me, nor could I find a grin behind it. It kept on threatening, but it didn’t frightened me as much as before.
Now I felt... pity? Nostalgia?
We had a baby, Daniel, who slept with us his first three years of life. Then we moved him to the room which occupied my brother, so long time ago.
Everything was smooth, we were happy.
Until one night, in which I was rummaging around my studio and heard nothing. I waited and waited, but no sound came from the wardrobe. Nor the following night, nor the next to that one.
A week later, at night, taking advantage of my wife and my son being on visiting my mother-in-law, for the first time in thirty years I took out the key and opened the wardrobe.
There was the monster.
It had the size of a recent born kitten, and it was trembling like a leaf, and, staring at me with enormous and scared red eyes, it told me in an almost inaudible voice:
- I will tear you apart with my claws... I´ll eat your heart.
And, while saying this, tears fell from eyes that if long time ago may had be as bright as flames, now were as vanishing embers.
The I did the only thing I could do. I covered it’s body, trembling and helpless as one of a baby bird, under my pullover, and took it to my son’s room, getting it in the wardrobe and locking it inside.
Since that night, as much as I expected, Daniel begun to cry every single night.
I listened to him, thinking in those wardrobe’s monsters that couldn’t harm any adult, whom, with the years, had locked their own monsters in their souls and minds. They could do nothing, except extinguishing and dying.
The first night in which my son cried, it was me who went to see what was the matter. And, even if I don’t doubt about him when he said that growls threatened him from the wardrobe, I heard something quite different.
I heard a soft whisper that said “thank you... thank you”.