You need to learn how to turn, are you going to go in circles all your life? a grandfather asks his granddaughter in the park. She is learning how to ride a bike and going full speed in a circular area. Again and again. She’s laughing, the grandfather is smiling, I’m smiling, too.
Yes, I need to learn how to turn, I tell myself. Cause I went out of the circle and then I stopped, practicing again my favorite sport: contemplation. Inner and outer contemplation. The yellow taxi at the other side of the park, the white dog, the puppy. The man wearing red shorts running in the park every day at 7 and a half in the evening. Maybe he trains for the marathon. He’s taking a circular route, too. I smoke and I watch. I watch everything. What do we know about the inner life of an introvert, unless the introvert tells us about it. What do we know about the inner life of a cat, sitting at the window, all day long, in a house with a garden, where plants grew partially wild, but flowers still take turns in blossoming.
It’s been raining, I like taking the umbrella and venturing myself around the city. It’s hot and moist, maybe this is how living at the tropics feels like. Today, thunders and lightnings. Like in a Shakespeare theater play. You’re romantic, my friend says. She’s right, I am. I have the impression the public is waiting to see what the next step will be. They’re waiting eagerly and I like to prolong the suspense. I promised myself I will do only impeccable acts.
At night, flames and fireworks.
I should have been celebrating my freedom today, I wanted to take a walk on the main boulevard, in silence, wearing my freedom dress. My freedom dress is an ex day-to-day dress, which was retrograded to pyjama status. It was my sleeping costume, in Barcelona, one year ago, when a thief entered through the window. It was the dress I was wearing early in the morning when I walked to the police to tell them: I don’t have any luggage, money, cards, phone, identify. It was a lucid, crucial moment opening from the threads of time, when I realized I worried too much for imaginary things, but when it is really needed, even the worst situations can be solved. It was also about the emotional luggage, of course. And since then, I started dropping all the things that hindered me from being light, one by one.
I didn’t wear my freedom dress today on the boulevard, but I paid a silent thought to all the people learning how to turn. And at night, I had some apples with the firefighters, watching a street lamp that could or could not catch fire. Miss, with all this rain, there are street lamps catching flames all over the city tge wires are not well isolated. Fireworks buzzing at the corners of the streets in darkness. It’s almost funny, me and the firefighters watching a street lamp, on the day of my first contact with freedom celebration. It’s like a theater play.
Thunders, rain, flames and a romantic writer. Don’t worry, miss, you can go to sleep, we will be here all night long, guarding the light. And I close the door, thinking this might be the most romantic things a group of man ever told me.
