The Story of a Storyteller
She kept on gazing at that distant canvas of smoke, slowly dissipating.. There had been a fire, a past, commotion, fear, metamorphosis. Only the heavy scent of burnt remained; there and then something faded away and underwent a transformation.
In her eyes, one could still discern the devouring flames, while she was wondering sadly why people had so little trust in the natural way of things and so much hope in control. From the entirety of her closed brown eyes subtly outlined in black, emerged yet another tear. Water and fire — spark and tear. Everything had a beginning and an end. And in that interplay, water and fire reminded her once again that both signify death, as well as life.
She departed from that location, allowing the tear to be gently dried on her cheek by the ocean breeze. She proceeded along the same path upon which she bore her steps and aspirations. It seemed like she was always searching for something, that same something. It wasn't easy to get to know her, to understand her, to decipher her mystery, although it appeared so at first glance. She was the woman with the widest and most childlike laughter, yet the saddest eyes. That penetrating stare that brought confusion to anyone who dared to look at her for more than a few moments. That gaze that saw beyond faces and bodies, that gaze that seemed to carry memories long forgotten and unravel the distant future.
Life was carrying her from one day to another, and one year to another, with the same anticipation in her thoughts. She loved the myth of each day, but often lived in the future of her deepest dreams. She was constantly filling her soul of future possibilities. She dared to be proud of the fact that she didn't live in the past like many of her acquaintances, while forgetting that she was chasing her present in pursuit of a distant imagination. The past remained the canvas on which the color had dried before taking shape, and now she was searching every day for the blank canvas on which she hoped to create her new beginning. The new tomorrow. And thus, after each fading sunset, she always said softly, "from tomorrow"...
I hadn't known her, I had only watched her. I found her always wandering in the same places. In a city with so much, she always chose so little: mud walls, narrow streets, scents of oud and rose, much like the fragrance of her skin, antique shops and her favorite souk filled with spices, teas, baklava, candles and lanterns of all colors. I observed her constantly, sometimes with intrigue, other times with a desire to speak to her.
She was dancing the beginning of each day, with the same curves of her body, to the same melancholic flamenco verses, and perhaps after midnight, to the rhythm of jazz...With nostalgia, she was sipping her Turkish coffee each morning, in the resonant echo of her own prayer, carrying it with her afterwards amidst the bustling crowds boardings or merely resting on her bared shoulders, carrying the pastels of every sunset.
No one knew her origins, and often, people were speaking to her in Arabic. She always continued the game, responding with a smile in the language dear to her soul, Spanish. Carrying Greek, Gypsy, Spanish, Lebanese, or Turkish origins in her DNA — many tried to guess — but she was the only one to know the underlying note of her own legend. She was only saying what was written in legal documents. That she was Romanian... Her path wasn't altered frequently; the locations held onto her fragrance, and she relished walking the same steps over and over again...
I followed her shadow so that I could watch her, hidden...She was gazing into a shard of a long-broken mirror, preserved for so long...finding herself in those fragments. I knew she was reliving her story, while summing up her soul to a single metaphor: "a shattered mirror." Subsequently, she would proceed. It seemed like she was always running. It seemed like she was always searching.
She - an Escape and a Search in her Journey.
Then I saw her hurrying her steps toward the music record store for the gramophone she kept at the heart of her residence. There, she was wiping away the tears born earlier in the mirror shard. She always bought the same names: Andrea Bocelli, Leonard Cohen, Gipsy Kings, Vaya con Dios, Lana Del Rey, Vanesa Martin, Yasmin Levy, Beth Hart, or Melody Gardot. She never got tired of listening to the same voices that described life to her without her having to repeat it in her thoughts. And they swayed her eager body, which often wore polka dots and crinkled long dresses. Most of the time, red and black or all shades of green. As she childishly explained: the colors of overwhelming passion, cunning mystery and the healing of human endurances. She had an affection for meanings and scoured each pavement stone for definitions. She anchored herself in synchronicities and dates and memorized intricate information, all in a not so common language. She had learned about constellations, oracles, numerology and ancient legends. She had sniffed through books of ancient beliefs and didn't stop there. She embarked on a Journey in search of them, through temples, sacred places, throughout the whole world. She always mingled in foreign crowds, while hiding afterwards in the heart of her own bedroom for days, with drawn curtains and lit candles. She yielded to the Connection, only to return to her own Self. It seemed like she was running again; in fact, she was replenishing her resources. She continued to hum "Me ha dicho la luna" as she exited that store with a few records in her hand, then settled on the steps near the dock to gaze at the ocean and the seagulls. The birds, beings of utmost freedom. That was herself, as well — a bird that traveled to nearly every corner of the globe — yet with a heart that belonged to a single place, a single longing, or perhaps a single destiny... She was looking at the sky remembering how much peace the Moon brought her with all its phases, the thousands of stars, and the rain that she missed in this arid place. She was always in the company of solitude, yet was unafraid. It had been a good companion and all she knew about life. She had learned to create in the absence of faces, in the quiet of her abode and at the typewriter. That space of hers, filled with wildflowers and healing plants, that house with walls covered in books, always welcomed her just as she was: stripped of material and uniform. In her nakedness it accepted the moonlight shadows, the pearls that gently outlined her neck, and the baths with petals and oils. And then she started writing.
She wrote about what she loved, what she longed for, and what she dreamed of. From the first years of her life, she had kept fragments of images only of what she had loved the most: the freedom of rural landscapes where her grandparents (her mother's parents) had raised her in adoration. She still got goosebumps recalling that long-gone, yet seemingly recent time. Childhood was defined by a peeled orange by the hearth, while snowflakes heralded carols and a family reunited around the Christmas tree. That was her favorite picture of those years, even though there were others that didn't bring her joy to reminisce. She cherished the moments when her mother would recount the story of her birth every time they met again. She loved listening to a story she had experienced from ground zero, but had no awareness of. And her mother knew how to tell it in a lighthearted tone, although it had been so much pain and risk for her life. She knew that those who recognize their Path have less easy and ordinary circumstances in the most important lessons of this Journey. It was the Guidance of Intelligent Kindness that reminded us, humans, why we came Here: to be a human being who lives a fully human experience as close as possible to "being" and who returns each time to what is: Creation. She had chosen to embrace this Path from the moment of her premature birth at 7 months, and she always wore this mark, each day that life didn't seem gentle; that´s when she was remembering how much she had struggled to be here and now. She identified herself with the very work she pursued: Nonduality. (Nondual Kabbalistic Healing - she was a Healer) She danced with a playful spirit, her eyes gleaming as she referred to herself as a Child of the Sun — the Mighty Ra — running with flowers in her hair through fields of sunflowers. She was born at the end of July on a day filled with fire — 29. A number that mystically concealed symbols of high priestesses and hermits — those who sought truths by traversing the longest tunnels to finally find the Light. And then, she averted her gaze to once again hide in the melancholy with which her lips softly hummed ballads and untold stories. She loved reverie and conversations about life so much, because those subjects can be touched under the moonlight, remaining unanswered, to the point where she had ceased to correspond with groups and episodic silhouettes. She allowed everything to flow by: the times, the longings, and the people... And so she delved deeper into writing and hundreds of collected volumes. She was a reader of great creative minds and a simple narrator of earthly lives. She had no other knowledge, yet her desire was to be among souls. To provide that space where a person feels understood and accepted with everything they are, without hiding from themselves. Yet, they failed to knock on her open door.
And she understood... I almost touched her once in the deafening silence of her home, during a time of isolation for all of humanity and the scent of fresh paint. She had just moved into her little house with the garden she had dreamed of and for which she had amassed years of work. But then, I remember her in despair, in conflict, in rebellion against her own fulfilled dream. She felt betrayed by life again. She felt like she had paid for the realization of one dream with the death of another. And she had to accept it; there was no other way. I tend to believe that since then, her search was no longer measured in distances traveled but in the meaning and understanding of her own soul. Now I watch her as she puts on her sandals. It's nighttime, and she heads towards the house with a bag full of the same remedies and dishes. I increased my steps to enter her loops, to caress her shoulders covered by a veil, and I finally dared to ask her:
"What are you looking for, daughter?
And why do you keep running away?"
She heard me immediately, and stopped. She searched for my presence, although she recognized me in that cool breeze. She whispered unintelligible sounds at first, and among tears, I deciphered a story that was never shared. A story carried for a few years in silence and distance, where the only word uttered by that person was "family." And then he had left leaving behind, her Escape, her Search, as well as his silence and absence. And the years never forgave, they just passed...one, two, three...while the counting was beginning to fade, slowly. In this blessed Journey she had been on, she knew only a few certain things so far: that Nostalgia makes you beautiful when you're open-hearted to receive it, that Melancholy leads you towards creation born from the depths of your being, that Loneliness is the most honest promise, and that Happiness is found in the Belief of Existence: It is what It is. In all her human limitations, she now knew that there was one place where she had failed: the eternal lesson, hardest to comprehend on this earth of ours: Love. But she chose to write all those words that had wanted to be spoken someday, so they wouldn't remain mere words in the wind. Someone was writing unspoken words. Her. And I...I am the Self who kindly told the Story of a Storyteller. Dear Reader, Welcome us both.
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