This is an original writing, unpublished book I wrote from 1999 to 2001. When I was so sick and without a treatment and furthermore, without doctors support…Later I had the diagnosis, it was a hard to deal, painful part of my life and my family’s life too, during more than 10 years I had no idea I suffered because of a genetic disease called Cystic Fibrosis.
So then, lately I began to read again what I wrote back then…It hurts a bit but I want to share it. I tried to translate it to english so it’s very bad and I’m sure I need a proofreader ^_^;;;
It’s a long book, so I’ll be sharing it chapter by day more or less! thanks so much for your caring, support and love! it makes me keep my fight on! 😉
Letters to no where
Living imprisoned in this century is a true punishment for me.
If I least I would see the light some decades ago…But no, I was born on 1976. And I did it in the middle of Xmas,
like I wanted to annoy. With the cold, hand by hand with December and in a just opened new hospital.
My mother says to me that the labor contractions began after lunch, watching «Little Women».
I read the book so many times when I was little.
I grew up with Verne, Mary-Louise Aboltt, Michael Ende, Saint Eixupéry, Dumas, Harriet Beecher-Stowe, Edmono di Amicis,
Dickens, Eleanor H. Porter, Gerald Durrell, C.S. Lewis, Dahpne du Marrier, Agatha Christie…
I liked to go to School, my parents were fabulous, I had siblings to whom I drag to my fantasies and we spend the weekends in the country-side.
Yes, I had a wonderful childhood. Perfect.
But who minds?
Only to us. Only to me.
All the memories are to me essential to subsist. I had them tattooed around all my body and, even If I wanted to, it will be impossible to make rid of them.
The good ones because I need them, the bad ones because they are just a few but very insistent.
Damn odds and ends of human diversity… Naivety, pain, hatred, remorse, love.
And an endless multitude of words from I truly unknown the meaning.
I will never understand myself completely. How many times I tried, and I just get lost in the way.
And it is useless to try to explain rationally what is absurd and incoherent. And that is what I am myself.
My life is an absolute chaos. I mean about this agitation I feel here inside, within my head.
I wish I was born, like you, on that end of the century from I constantly drank, hand by hand with Tolstoy, Austen, Baroja, Chekhov…
It’s the World about what I only can know that musty, rancid black and white photographs, with Sunday-best dressed gentlemen and Ladies sitting quietly, holing a book in their hands.
Ana Karenina appears to me beautiful, hieratic and consumed for the passion, next to the train tracks, the train that every Sunday took to the capital.
I can see her now too.
She wears a pretty coat, fur cuffs, carrying case. And her curly hair,
the same that Madame Recámier, who David painted in the middle of an austere ambient in what she shined with an incredible unhelpful the frivolous Victorian gem.
Before I close my eyes when the day ends, after talking alone with God, the images of my reality come like in a movie by Porter or Griffith.
A train heist, heroic telegraphers, naive loves, cheeks rubbing…
I guess It was so hard for you*, to lose so soon the person you loved the most. If it’s of any consolation, I can only say that when I don’t feel well, I take refuge in your tales.
And I’m not a kid (I think). Your talkative animals, I know them from long time ago, believe me! so much before I discovered you. It was when I was a kid.
I was that kind of brat who grows up in a world just created for her, that is: without defects.
I live in The Guadiana, is a country-side house with a big piece of soil ornate with trees and lots of anthills.
I named the anthills because is one of those things that are part of me, even if it can seem silly.
I spent hours, that in my World were just minutes, looking at those tiny, hardworking little ones. I also like spiders. I know, I know. To more than one they are so
frightening, but I ask myself which is the one who must be scared? you or the spider? …
I tenderly become friends with snails too, and I can assure you that even thought I love eating, I refuse to cook something with whom I had some kind of conversation. In the end, what’s that? it’s you just are bundled sucking ridiculous shells…*2
I remember a summer in the beach, and my auntie Ana.
She lives alone. She’s that kind of singles aunties who come mostly in the movies, you know. But, no. Forgive me, I forget that I’m talking with someone who is an outsider within this burger culture that has been cradling every kid around the whole World.
We are entering a new century and there is not even a person who has not kissed with enthusiasm MAMA USA. I myself grew up with Spielberg.
The movies about singles aunties and uncles are just like…popcorn and sliced bread.
My auntie is a masculine woman, and I don’t mean any sexual orientation,
She is tall, strong, and always wear trousers and shirts. She loves ties.
She has at least 50 and not even one is the same as other. Incredible isn,t it? so for me, who in men always see the ties all the same. It’s an stupid garment, but it doesn’t look like so when auntie Ana wears it.
She smokes a lot. With this theme I always have a «discussion». I write discussion in quote because to discuss with Auntie is impossible.
Furthermore, what will be about Auntie Ana without a cigarette in her lips?
Some days forgets that I’m there and light up one.
When I begin to drop tears and wink non stop, she puts out the cigarette and smiles to me to apologize.
That summer I was 8 or 9 years old and I became a very good friend with a snail. His name was Pedro.
Have you ever seen the mouth of a snail? Me too. I even let him to nibble my fingers, before getting to look how he attacked with pleasure a lettuce leaf.
How far away is all of that now! Memories and childhood are synonymous of The Guadiana to me. Now it shows to me different, More little, without mysteries and unknown corners…without games.
A bit sad in winter but radiant and comfortable when the spring goes on.
Your farm Hill Top, in Swarey, must be a perfect paradise compared with my Guadiana. I don’t know. I have never had the chance to go out my country, Maybe some day I can go visit yours.I wonder if it’s very changed…Your watercolors show it to me like a delicious messy of orchards, ponds, moss and trees.
Some fences, mailbox and a little road that leads to your house, to HOME.
In The Guadiana I have cats, two dogs, chickens, doves, turtledoves and quails.
Somehow my father is at fault but all of us love animals.
We also had hedgehogs, frogs, parakeets, canary birds. Even goats. Well, a goat and a her little son.
Oh my God, I,m already losing myself! To whom I’m writing? Maybe it’s just to my alter ego…Am I writing to myself? Me, who always though I had nothing to tell to myself.
Tomorrow I have an exam of Aesthetic ideas. I can’t continue with this…
Sorry Beatrix, within me there is such a confusion, and so then, even knowing I will not get an answer from you, I say good bye.
Someone who admires you.
(I must say names and some characters are fictional! but not the memories and the feelings)
It will be continued as soon as possible ^_^)b thanks for reading so far.
ORIGINAL IN SPANISH: CARTAS A NINGUNA PARTE
*1 I’m talking about Beatrix Potter, to whom is redacted this book.
*2 in Catalonia is a tradition to eat snails with tomato sauce (cries)
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