solitude
15 june
The years pass by. In so many ways, we are wiser. And weaker, without doubt or contradiction. It is the same coin, endlessly turning in the air. They say that to be more aware of our own limitations is being wiser, but it also is to submit to new barriers and new fears. Or not new, but finally real and scary.
Like the fear of being alone.
As others, I am not inmune. Twentyplus years in a fulfilling relation is no impediment to remember the misery of being alone. And the pleasures, too. That coin tumbles faster that I can even realize. After all, what is being alone? aren’t we always alone? Or is it precisely the contrary, aren’t we always in the company of our friends and loved ones? I couldn’t tell, or rather I can tell, and depending, the answer will keep changing.
Take this writing of mine.
Beyond argument I write for you, whoever you are that is reading this. And yet I am here right now, alone in front of this keyboard, hitting keys and hoping for a spark of truth. Am I alone or I am with you, my reader? I could not really tell. I can’t tell what are you going to get of what I write, I can’t know if you will discard it, or if you will flight with my lines, and go somewhere that I never thought of. If you do so, will I be there with you? Or will I remain here, banging for some more words?
Or take family life.
Few hours ago, in one of those random star alignments that do happen, our son showed up at dinner time, and joined. We were sitting in the garden, and Mercedes Sosa was in the hifi, playing softly. Eventually a song that I used to sing when biking, with my son sited behind me in his small chair and joining the chorus, came up. We all smiled at our good memories, at that summer 16 years ago when we sang together and cycled around NL. And yet, this time I explained to my wife and my son that they could never know what I feel when I sing that. Is La arenosa, a song about going away and coming back. Or not coming back at all. They are not migrants, my son and my wife. Stronger, they are no venezuelans, and they will never know what ios to come from a country that does not exists no more. The years have passed and I have lived a great life with my son and my wife, a life with so many good memories made, memories that will accompany me untill my bones join the soft hearth. And yet. All this years I have sang, and my son has joined me, and we have no idea what that song meant for each other.
Are we together then? Or have we always been alone?
And perhaps, perhaps my dear A and my dear B, you to whom these lines are written for, or written to, perhaps this is the wrong question alltogether. Because I have been alone all these years, and I also have been with my son, and with my wife. And with you too, my dear friends. Perhaps we are alone and we are together, always, in that coin that thumbling away, never stops enough to know which side it is. Perhaps is both.