Odds and ends, and you

A note came flowing up the stairs of the old villa; it was not made of paper but of something much more subtle, levitating through the ether, making its way directly into the dark hole that had settled where not so long ago there had been a heart. Like a candle looking for shelter, it lit up – and for a moment the gloom hole became a warm abode again. Who can resist that? The source of the melody she had dreamed of for so long was downstairs, waiting for the perfect moment to take her life apart.

There are no coincidences; everything in our lives comes for a reason at the perfect time. There is an invisible thread connecting everything, guiding us where we belong. That, she wanted to believe. She wanted to believe it with all the power of her being, and yet she could not see it. Something was so off... even surrounded by people, no one really knew her.

Someone in this crooked world had to be different. She longed for a special connection; someone to spend hours with, in countless conversations, sharing deep secrets hidden from the sight of mere mortals. Sometimes she could feel it, strong and elusive.

There was something so mysterious in nights like that. She could not really tell what it was – every time she tried to explain it to someone it just ended up sounding like... crap? She always felt that the deepness of her emotions was not concordant with her dominion of the language. “I wish a poet could translate my feelings – that's a poem I would like to read. Then people would be able to understand me, wouldn't they?” There are those who say that no one can truly understand us except for ourselves. She liked that in a way, although it also made her feel so lonely. “Damn journey to self,” she thought with a smile. She had chosen a road of solitude where she could just pretend to be normal – “you know, to kind of keep friends and family around” – or to get used to that look on people's faces.

But we were talking about those nights... she could close her eyes and actually feel them again so vividly.

Magnificent, deep, with a sky full of stars, the moon shining bright. On that particular occasion, it was thin like a mystical sickle. Closing her eyes to feel the gentle breeze of a late spring that brings with it not only the sweet perfume of flowers and nature but the feeling, that unexplainable heady feeling, both exciting and disturbing, like there was something she should remember. Something happened on a night like that, but what was it?

“Have you ever had that experience?” She found herself saying on times when, in a moment of distraction, she attempted to be understood by someone else. “That feeling when something ordinary suddenly feels so perfect, and yet so overwhelming, that you feel as if your body were not ready for all that beauty?”

“Hmm… not really.” It was a common answer, she was willing to accept that – but the look, that unsettling look in their eyes. They just didn’t get her. At all.

Over the years, however, she learned to be more compassionate to her fellow humans; Everyone is doing the best they can. That was the time when she started listening or, let’s say, paying more attention. And she could still remember the huge weight that was lifted from her shoulders. Everyone is here to experience life in their own particular ways, no two will ever be the same. It is not your job to be understood.

“What’s my job then?”

To feel

“And then?”

Be a sun, radiating from within. The rest will take care of itself.

"Loneliness is a rain that tears the clothes of the shipwrecked and leaves them naked in the open". “Not bad for a 17-year-old girl”, she thought taking a sip of tea from her favorite cup. No time was more profuse with creativity than when she needed to sit and focus on her studies. Every time she sat at her desk infinite ideas for projects would come to her mind. But at least verses were something she could easily write within those stolen minutes from her study time. The moment when she wrote her first poem... joy. Almost like a sadistic satisfaction. Antithesis of Creation… She could still recite it by heart. They were probably not very good. She was certainly not going to show them to anybody for confirmation and, in fact, she didn't care. This was not about others – it was all for herself. She had found a way of portraying exactly what she was feeling in the language of metaphors, similes, oxymorons... literature classes were not mere theory anymore. Clusters of ink, paper, and soul; like an alchemist she was transmuting darkness into light – all the rest was irrelevant.

The old villa was a place with more than 100 years of history, reflected by the pictures on the walls; previous inhabitants whose physicality had vanished a long time ago. Many curious objects could be found around the property: a loom; a telephone from the 1900s; or the disturbingly abundant images of sheep spread, for some reason, all over the place. But her favorite one had a whole room for itself.

The piano. She had never touched one before; however, there was something about it that provoked her deeply. Those sounds resonated within her in a particular way, and there was one melody mightier than any other. She could not hear it without falling into that ambiguous state, just like those nights... nostalgic calling from eternity, ephemeral like the delicate smoke of the incense that she used to light up, drawing its graceful traces, only to dissipate between her fingers, if she tried to grasp it. A memory that you just cannot evoke, no matter how hard you try, and you only remember the feeling that is left behind; intriguing signs in the sand.

The days at the old villa were interesting; a flow of people from different nationalities, working on the orchard, or the gardens, or helping in the house. She had never shared a place with so many individuals – traveling was so exciting! And then one morning she woke up and there it was, installed right in the middle of her chest – that uncomfortable sensation. But why now? She had only experienced that kind of void when she was quite young– maybe 11 or 12? She didn’t remember a reason either – it just came like a shadow, and after a while of settling it dissipated. “It doesn’t make sense, feeling so empty for no good reason,” or could it be that things need to be emptied before they can be refilled again?

In the evening, when the sky was transiting into dark blue – calmness in the air, a late summer motion in the trees – she heard from the second floor a car approaching the house. Stones collided inside the hollow space in her chest, until a spark flashed for a second. When destiny is around there are always signs, little details that announce it, but more often than not we fail to recognize them. Life is a vast scenario where multiple plays are taking place simultaneously, overlapping one another, and there we are, playing. Heroes can be extras, fathers can be sons, friends, enemies, healers or curses, even spectators or mere scenography… and some may wonder, how much control do we have on the roles we play?

The night was bright and warm, a breeze coming from the window, the curtains moving in a gentle sway. His fingers slid down gently positioning themselves just in the right place to turn her heart into a tingling mechanism. One key at a time, everything disappeared; there was nothing else apart from the vibration of that familiar melody, melting her away. Although this time it was not yearning that she felt, it was something entirely different, it felt... like a beginning.

“Can you help me? I want to bake an apple pie but I am not good using peelers.”

The idea that someone can be not good at that sounded a little ridiculous. Normally she would have spent quite an amount of brain energy trying to figure out whether he was too lazy or just wanted an excuse to spend some time with her. But this time the “Yeah sure!” came out of her mouth before she could even consider other options. And something was certain: never before had she experienced such joy and excitement from that simple task and she wondered, of all the people living in the world, how many would have had similar feelings arousing from the conjunction of peelers and apples. Too many things that we will never get to know.

There was a part of herself that was always overthinking, but he seemed to cast a peculiar spell. Like a switch, that part of her seemed to get shut off when she was around him, and she loved that invisible pull that could make her act and talk without having to even think about it. Like floating in the river, letting the current choose the way.

“I don't want to do something I might regret later,” she said in a whisper. His lips touched her ear softly, and the electricity ran through every millimeter of her skin.

“You know you will regret it more if you don't”. Those dexterous fingers ran through her shoulders making their way slowly down her back. She could feel the soft pressure increasing and... Stop it! The cloud evaporated in an instant, bringing her back from her daydream.

"So?" Two light eyes staring at hers in such a penetrating way that it was almost intimidating.

“What?” It took her a while to get back into the situation. The living room, the smell of the afternoon coffee, the lively murmur of her international roommates.

“Would you like to go? Tomorrow.”

He sees you as a friend, and that is good enough, isn't it? Don't ruin it! The voice in her mind was quite wise.

“To the lake,” he added as she seemed pretty confused.

“Sure, it would be nice to take some fresh air.”

He chuckled. “We are in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by trees and sheep, lack of air is probably not an issue here.”

He was always so literal.

But, of course, there was no way he could know about the hollow oppression in her heart, or how much his simple presence was comforting her.

He is different from anyone you have met before, you know it, don't you? You simply don't rush something you want to last forever.

Anxiety was a weird thing she could not understand. Maybe it was the long walk up the hill that brought her body back to balance, or the gentle smile on his face when he turned around extending his hand just in the perfect moment to help her climb a huge root from an ancient tree. But by the time the small group of travelers had returned from the lake excursion the hollow occupant of her heart had left, without even leaving a note.

She grabbed the doorknob and turned it with the gentleness that an old house demands if you are to be unnoticeable. Music was much better without physical barriers. She walked through the door and sat sneakily on the armchair, right behind the old piano. Listening, enjoying the process of vibrations turning into sound. Observing; the slight tension in his neck, the skin – a little red from the holiday’s sun that was so unusual for him, the muscles of his back and shoulders moving smoothly under his shirt, the fabric seemed to be so soft... She wanted to feel it, she wanted to place her arms around this person, hold him tight and never let him go. “Don’t leave,” she wanted to say. “Let's bake cakes and watch funny videos, let's walk in the woods picking blueberries, or maybe let's just do nothing at all; nothingness is so delightful with you”. But she was no one to ask him something like that. Their journeys were heading in different directions, probably to never cross again, so she shushed and agreed with herself to enjoy the remaining of these “whatever-it-is” hours as much as she could.

“I wonder whether he will even remember my name a month from now”. And if someone would have told her all the things that were going to take place in the next few years she would have never believed it. Or maybe she would have understood why that night there was a stormy sea emerging to the surface on violent waves, letting a stabbing pain into her swollen eyes.

To love doesn't mean to be together; the words felt strangely muffled as if her brain were a room full of cushions.

“Long-distance relationships just don't make sense; it is impossible to develop strong meaningful connections just by chat or phone”. At that stage she hadn't accumulated enough life experience to learn to never express maxims of that kind: I would never, could never, will never… and there she was, how many years later?

Sitting in the bed, 3:00 A.M., looking at her phone with a smile on her face that she could not remember having with any man she had ever dated. Happiness. Overflowing. The kind of joy that spread through, leaving the host unable to do anything other than thinking about the triggering object; that blond, sweet, yet somehow dark, naively sexy, triggering object of attention. And yes, “I don't like blonds,” she had said... by that time she had learned that the subconscious cannot tell the difference between a negative or a positive statement. It only hears the words and gets down to business.

Trust in someone with eyes closed; the times she had had that feeling she could count with the fingers of one hand. But this case was like no other; she barely knew him – how can you feel something so strong for someone you only spent a couple of days with? He was a huge mystery, a maze, and she wanted to get lost in it and find out how deep she could get.

“I have something for you”

“Really? Show me!”

“Do you know this one?”

She looked at the sheet of paper displayed on her computer screen: a title in French that she could not understand and a bunch of notes on a pentagram that had as much meaning for her as the cuneiform writing of a Sumerian tablet.

“Maybe if you play it, I can recognize it.” She was used to looking chill and easy, but on the inside she was craving to hear him playing again.

He had that ability to surprise her in ways that she thought were not possible. She hardly ever spoke with people about what she wanted. And this guy... he didn't know it either, and yet he always seemed to find a way of giving her exactly what was perfect for her, deep down. Actually, the fact that he was completely oblivious of his qualities made it both more satisfying and intriguing for her.

She could still remember, at the age of 7, she had come up with the idea that everyone around her was just pretending; pretending to be nice, pretending to like her. Everyone seemed so happy to see her, but she felt that they were just acting so that she could not notice the truth. How a little girl comes to such conclusions on her own is a story for another time – let us just say that with him she felt safe and, for our lady, few things could be more attractive than that.

And before she noticed it, birthdays and holidays became so special. In search of connection, he had become the perfect fuel for her creative engine. Distance was showing them a way of intimacy that didn't need all the distractions of physical contact. They had created their own world of poems, drawings, and music, along years that she didn’t dare to count.

And there were words that they never chose to pronounce since there is power in words that we haven't yet to comprehend, and there was a spell, delicate like a soap bubble, dancing through time and space on an early morning, dazzling with the reflection of the sunlight; full of colors, and magic. How long would they be able to keep it alive before it burst?

It was as if her body could just disintegrate at any moment. She filled the bathtub, and submerged in the water, trying to compose herself – she could feel the weight and warmth of the water over her body.

Appreciate the beauty of the present moment.

“What?”

Just take a deep breath and draw your attention to something else for a little while.

“But I don't want something else, I want him, now, now, now, now, now.”

Did we mention that the voice in her head was wise? But this lady was stubborn, and the wise voice was too faint in comparison with the momentum accumulated in her body that was yielding something completely different.

Sometimes it was scary; she couldn't even remember who she was before meeting him, or at least she could not imagine at all who she would have been if circumstances wouldn't have brought them together. She had gotten to a point where she didn’t care about anything else. That doesn't seem very healthy. She could spend entire hours thinking, imagining. Obsession will not take you closer, only harmony will. Not much that the voice could do at this point. But our Higher Selves never abandon us, even when we cannot hear them they are always there. Routing for us, with infinite love.

She could feel it, burning inside. Hot knife stirring her gut, like a poison corroding her fiercely. “Of all the things I have ever felt, this is the worst”, and of all the people on this place we call Earth, the last person she wanted to feel like this towards was him. Jealousy is destructive, and she had trained herself for long enough to accept such rotted energy running through her. What a great opportunity to put everything into practice, isn’t it? That thought almost slipped into her mind. Relief. She smiled lovingly to herself as it made so much sense. The higher you go up, the lower you fall. She had let her emotions ride wild for too long. Balance was the lesson and she was determined to succeed. Every time you feel lost, remember: possession and freedom are too different roads, only one has the potential to give you what you are truly looking for.

Laying on the bed, eyes closed, her heart pumping like a restless machine, blood cells playing races under her skin. A magnet. That was it! She could feel the tension in her whole body, invisible strings pooling every atom of her being. For a moment she thought she was going to dematerialize. She needed to find a way to breach the distance or say goodbye to her sanity, if she had any left.

Without noticing it, her life had become a peculiar collage formed with pieces of her past, stories that she had felt stronger when she was younger; during that time when movies and books seemed to be the only interesting thing that was going on in her life, she was going through the world like a mere observer. “Look at me now,” she thought. Now movies were not a thing anymore. Her life was playing in such a way that even the hardships felt exhilarating.

Like those books she used to love when she was little – Create Your Own Adventure. So many simultaneous possibilities coexisting in one single book, with the fortune of the characters in her hands, waiting to be forged.

Now it was one of her favorite scenes, only a little bit cliche; a foreign woman on a train through Europe, looking for her destiny. She could see herself walking on those streets, centuries of history, and battles, and love.

She used to do that when she was young but at that moment it felt better than ever; the car, the temperature of a perfect spring-summery day, and the music, that was her game, listening to the music while looking through the window and imagining that she was the director. She would choose the shots, the characters, the rhythm, and the story. This time it was a calming piece, perfect for the drowsiness of a Sunday afternoon: the clouds moving slowly – even the vapor from a distant factory seemed slow motion – the grass, the cows, the gentle driving on the way to the unknown.

She wondered what she was going to feel after all this time. But time is such a relative thing; she had kept him so alive in her heart that even though their bodies were apart, she felt him right beside her all along, and meeting him in person again felt like the most natural thing.

“Is the arrow looking for its destiny? Or is the target that is attracting the arrow; sending signals to be discoverable? And which one are we, anyway? Intricate blending of arrows and targets, giving and receiving, calling and being drawn...”

He looked at her with perplexed eyes. She smiled tenderly, leaning on his chest, letting herself be carried away by the lullaby of his heartbeat. After all, it was true, love does not mean being together. Love is what fills the space in-between.