Las cosas importantes caben en una mano:
cuando estás enamorado,te llevas la mano al pecho;
cuando necesitas apoyo coges con tu mano la mano amiga;
cuando hay que consolar, tu mano se desliza sobre la mejilla ajena,
aparta las lágrimas, escribe poemas,
guarda caramelos que te dieron siendo nieto y que darás como abuelo.
Lo que cabe en una mano es mayor que el Universo.
Yrene Yuhmi 2013
Uno de los escritos que mi madre encuentra de vez en cuando y que me hacen recordar lo mucho que he llegado a escribir hasta el momento…Este cuento es del 2002, año en que me recuperé de forma milagrosa, o como los incrédulos dicen «de forma inesperada» Os puedo asegurar que lo esperaba, y que no confié en los médicos, por desgracia para los que son buenos y a los que pido perdón por mi desconfianza…
Espero que ps guste, aunque sea un poco, amig@s lector@s 😀 FELIZ VERANO DEL 2013.
Dear Beatrix:
I have an old photo of you, where you are posing in the door of your Home, on Hill Top.
Maybe it’s the vision of your kind and healthy face, that let me use this adjective quite daring: «dear«. Maybe is because of the distance and the Time, and…Of course, you won’t reproach my lack of manners for writing to you in this way, being a total unknown from XXI century who tells you very odd things.
When I told you about the Death, I was scared, yes. In a few days I’ll be hospitalized to make me a liver biopsy.
I don’t know about Medicine history, so maybe you know or not about what’s a biopsy.
I know it’s nothing.
«It will not hurt» Doctors tell me. But I don’t trust them.
«Don’t be afraid» Tells me my Mother.
But She also is afraid, I can see it in her eyes.
I can see it every time she looks at me trying to not show the aversion that causes to see my scrawny body.
I cry every time I go to the bath, to take a shower.
I don’t have chest. My arms and my back, my hips, my ribs, all are just that. Bones.
I don’t have my face bright and flustered, neither the eyes shining.
In my suitcase I prepared some books. I also put yours with all my caring.
To my little sister I always tell that treat the book with love, that is a jewel of collector.
She thinks I exaggerate and the fact I doubt of her maturity hurts her.
I know, I know, that she knows very well how to treat books. She is a very mature girl for her age. I’m really proud of her intelligence. With only 14 years old has really clear ideas and knows how to talk better than lots of adults and with career.
The little one, of course, has only 4 years old, he is different, he takes everything but to draw on his scribbles. My auntie Ana says he is going to be an artist.
I guess he’s getting familiar with the colors, the drawings and every thing he sees in my workshop. He sits near me, and imitate all my movements. As Aristotle said, the Humanity learns imitating.But arriving to certain point of the Life, every person must shape their
personality from all that has been around, all the crying, all the imitations and the reflections.
This part of so simple theory, doesn’t always come true. The fashion, the urban tribes, the evil envy, leads a imitation that transforms the society in one of a kind of cattle ranch. That’s how the proverb says: Monkey see, monkey do. «Where is going Vicente? Where people goes» (Spanish proverb)
Well so, my little brother, most than one time ended all dirt of oil paints, and what a disaster..! So I bought a crayon box and card-boards for him.
His drawings of houses with chimney, cars and dogs, comforted me so much.
It seems that kids see the world in colors.
I think that the best thinkers of all Times, has not seen in the kids the perfect solution to problems and questions of Philosophy.Maybe all it’s lots more simple. We look for the Truth with all the possible biggest difficulties, while the TRUTH, that already has connotations of indecipherable and empty Myth, it’s instead in the simplicity.
The simplicity of whom begin to discover Life and the one who when sees a stone discovers a stone, and not a tangle of mysterious analytical schemes that converts it in a very long book that leaves us full of doubts.
And the Science, yes, it’s wonderful. The man, not, better the Humanity has learned to divide reality from fiction first, and after linked it again to do really unthinkable things. You can’t imagine what a limited and fragile that’s human being could achieve during this pick of the Earth Time.
You lived that emboldened start of 1900.
I live the unbridled excess of the near 2000.
How far away we are, dear my friend!
I correct: How far away I am from any alive thing…I guess I’m closer to you, nether-less these 100 years, than to any person of my age or my Time.
I can’t believe what’s happening to me. I can’t recognize myself.
And neither can’t do so my dears.I almost can’t remember clearly and in a sequence way that big discussion with Manuela. Time betrayed me, my body betrayed me, I myself betrayed me. In fact, this whole city betrayed me.
That night all we were celebrating Carnival.
I cos-played like a pirate: white blouse with frills, tight trousers, high boots and spyglass.
Manu disguised as a zombie and Pati as a magician.
Helena and her coworkers surprised us with quite pathetic costume of witches.
There was also a group who had the great idea of disguising as sisters with Ni*e sneakers, that’s a name of a brand that marks people like hot
iron to cattle. Then you are the powerful of the riches tribe, pretty and famous. Well, there’s not only N*ke, there are thousands of stupid names, that are not worthy of being named. Maybe I say one of them without noticing. In this Times people are not fighting for knowing,
but for appearing. At schools no one knows who is Cervantes, what’s Iberia Peninsula, or where the hell is that Odyssey. The knowledge does not take place (Spanish proverb, knowing more doesn’t hurt, doesn’t bother) but my skirt is cuter then yours and also more expensive. Furthermore why they want to know History – they ask themselves – if I master flirting and consumerism?
Everybody laughed when they saw that dozen of false sisters with expressionless masks, white as their sneakers. It wasn’t funny for me. It’s incoherent and stupid to do a joke about something we don’t know and so, about something we don’t have any right.
That’s also typical from these times. All is laughable.
I can’t tell too much about what happened.
Manuela grabbed the drinks bar and thanks to the heat of the wine began to chatter with euphoria, ridiculously, because of the boys who were coming closer to us.
I felt so embarrassed so with a few but clear words I asked her to behave.
_ Shut up!! – yelled at me with all her rage and hatred that was hosting within her.
That hurt me. She wasn’t Manuela, she couldn’t be.
_ Why I must shut up, I don’t have to. What you are doing is just immature and ridiculous.
_ Ha! what happens is that you are a washy-washy girl who doesn’t know how to have fun!
And so that really hurt me, because it wasn’t true.
_ I don’t need fuel to get fun.
I had Manuela fatty and ugly face engraved in my mind, looking at me with an indescribable grudge that always scared me. Even now I remember it and I feel very sad. It’s being hard to me writing about it.
I would prefer to bury it in the Oblivion, but that’s not easy.
At that moment I didn’t know if go home or stay or what…
Even I was swallowing all time, I had a big knot in my throat and even though I wanted to look calm, my hands were trembling.
The party was in the Sports Pavilion. In the corner of the wardrobe I sat down to wait for the Calmness. I couldn’t stop my trembling.
_ Have you lost your broadsword?
I jumped surprised: by my side, leaned to make his voice be clear with all that loud music, was Adrian.
I lost some seconds to understand what was saying because I forgot totally about my dress up. I looked at me and felt so stupid. And even more when I saw that he wasn’t wearing any costume.
I smiled and replied that I was disarmed in a death match.
_They must have hurt you…- he said.
I knew that he knew about what we were talking.
_ Yes, in fact a lot.
We were silent in the middle of the festive sound, during a time that seemed to me an eternity. Finally I felt so uneasy that I turned around to him and invited him to drink something warm. My throat began to hurt. He accepted and after taking our jackets we went out.
Even though it was the second week of February and the air was cold,
I felt lots better out than in.
That night we were just good friends. For the first time in my life I talked without fear with something who wasn’t Fidel or my mother. How it was possible so much confidence? We really got along.
I began to be aware of his attractive points, that little details that seemed I only could see and that made him exceptional and different.
Furthermore he always made me laugh. I was really prone to laugh back then. I was born happy. I felt the LIFE, I smelled it, I touched it and tasted it. I enjoyed…
I was in that age where every one lives their own fairy tale. And the bad thing of something so good is that you believe that is ETERNAL.
Carpe Diem.
Spanish originals, 1998-2000. I must say I don’t feel the same that back then, it was a time to suffer and be abandoned by people I trusted.
I fight against the river. I because it’s impossible for me to beat it, I just sink.
And that’s the way it’s been happening during the last 2 years.
Fidel has been the only one that has been supported me sincerely in a World where the sincerity is comparable to the well of fresh water that Saint Eixupéry and the Little Prince found in the desert. His sincerity didn’t open my eyes in the appropriate moment.
Now I can see how silly I was, and maybe some years later, I will realize how silly I am now because of continue tormenting myself.I would want to begin for the beginning but in my mind there is not a firm story with start, end and final. If I just had it!
I see my primary school days like the best of my life. We were a really siblings-like classmates and we enjoyed and have lots of fun, girls and boys, without any bad intentions, envies, grudges. Now, in the end of the 90, I can assure you that this kind of relationship is almost extraordinary. Back then we competed with grades, now they compete with clothers. I know it can seem a Cantinflas-thing, but no one better than Mario Moreno to say the truth with witness.
The 90, is the decade of the aesthetics more purely sensory. What you are doesn’t has any value, but what you look like. I have the proof in the Mass Media, but also in a more direct way,in my little sister generation.
At least she, like me, is a woman out of her time – and she is only 14 years old -.
My brother suffers of the same thing. He tells me that the girls look at them puzzled when he opens to them the door or let the sit for them on the bus.
And that’s because women nowadays look like prefer a good punch than a pampering or hugging: «let’s not look like we woman are different».
In High School, I met Manuela and Patricia. They were two humble, nice girls and I began to feel at easy with them.
Even though they began to pull out me to go out, I lived isolated in The Guadiana: I wrote reflections and take notes about flowers, trees and
birds who lived in that piece of soil. I keep many of them.
Yesterday I saw them.
They were laughing without any remorse. At least that is what they feign. I was driving with my car to The Guadiana coming back from an art exposition of my friend Fidel.
He’s a great guy.
We met in the Art Academy two years ago, when ALL began.
Tall and frightfully blond, he shows the appreciation towards me every time he meets me, kissing me profusely both cheeks.
He’s gay. But this is the less remarkable thing in Fidel. You can feel his nature in all the femininity that his gestures breath. I know, lots of homosexuals, has not that femininity, but the Nature mother makes run things with an arbitrary determination, and I admit that sounds a true paradox, but you know, my words were just spontaneous. And we are entering century XXI. What a civilization.
You would like Fidel. He’s one of those absolutely free people.
I know I can’t make use of the word Liberty because I unknown its true essence. Maybe you know what means in real.
To me, Fidel is free because he is not afraid to live and he does everything like carried away by the current, instead of fighting against the river.
When they called me to go to the disco, it was so impossible for me to sacrifice that communing with the Nature who awaited for me just after opening a door or a window.
And that’s why my home has lots of doors and it was incredible handy for me: because I hate unexpected visits – and the expected ones too – with only hearing Yacko barks, I went out or go inside through some door and so I slipped away. Or I go up the North Carob Tree or I just find a shelter in the pigeon loft. There I could spend hours drawing the pigeons.
They eat from my hand, and in exchange, very reluctantly, they let me see their little pigeons, up on the ladder that leaded to their nests.
At that time the most envied by everyone couple were la Moñi and Patablanca*.
He was a seductive one and always was courting other lady pigeons, while La Moñi continued being faithful, refusing all the insinuations of very handsome fantails who were infatuated by her lovely hair up. Maybe because of the unexpected visits that made me run to the pigeon loft, now I paint so many pigeons.
Fidel really loves my pigeons paintings. He has bought me two of my best ones. My favorite is a white pigeon with her wing extended, in the way they do when are sunbathing. The blues, lilacs, violets and whites, and so the composition, makes the painting somehow special. That’s why I gave it to my Mother. She is my main fan.
Fidel doesn’t paint pigeons. Paints the fragile: glass, every thing made with this material, glass scattered on pellets, soil, sienna, ocher, orange colors.
According to the books I’m colder. I love blue. In my palette blues are essential, indispensable. And that coldness, from where it comes? I can feel it now like a frost imprisoning my chest, but not like the blue color, which for me is a warm color. Who says the contrary, won’t give me an explanation.
At least it will not be nothing more than a conventional explanation. If someone can give me an irrational explanation, they will gain my admiration, because I’m irrational too.
Not explanation, but better Approach, virgin, untouched and raw.
And also a bit contradictory.
I was an age to flirt and go out with boys, but I have never done so. I always «run away» from my
«pretenders» that’s the way my Mother call them.
I was an age to go to the disco and dance, but I so hated those closed and dark places where there was no silence that I so very well know in the nature. And instead of the fresh air, I had to conform myself with dirt tobacco smoke. I’m talking in past tense because I’ve never steped
on those places again since almost 3 years ago. And if some day I went to, it was because of my tendence to the dance and fun.
Manuela was heals over heads for a boy then, even though she didn’t
even know his name.
_ It’s told that he teaches computer – she told me totally excited.
I was checking the hour on my watch. I will endure ten minutes more and I will be going.
When I looked up I found a dark-eyed boy who was smiling at me a bit cheeky.
When I realized that his friends were looking at me too, I felt uneasy and I just fixed my look in the music video screens.
_ He looked at us! have you seen it, Pati? Let’s go, we must get closer, dance by they side.
Without willing it, I was just dragged out to the middle of the dance floor, and I though about to rebel myself and just go home when the song I loved so much began to sound. I so loved dancing and my feet just took the lead.
I always think that dancing is like falling in ecstasy or lighting a fire within my cheast making that all its glint unbind in the face. And I danced.
And in my dance, time to time, I saw those black eyes fixed in me, but
I didn’t mind too much.
I only danced for myself.
Once I go out from there, I forgot about the black-eyed boy.
Just some days later Manu discovered that He was from Ciudad Real * and this information about him being a foraigner excited her even more.
_ Have you noticed how he glared?
Pati nodded touched by a baseless illusion.
_ And he is so hot, reminds me Keanu Reeves, don’t you think so?
The question was for me. After thinking a bit, I smiled and I just said that I haven’t noticed him. I knew that with that answer I will satisfy her.
_ How is it possible to not notice a hottie like that? you are such a geek, girl…
We were in the Coffee shop «Nieves», in «Santiago» plaza. I was saving the paper with the phone number of Pati, who has changed it, while chewing my last bite of croissant.
When I got home I began to feel sick, and I promise myself not to eat again croissants.
I was not very happy without dairy. I always have been a sweets lover.
In the toilet I relieved my tummy, and after washing myself, I wet my temples and lips and I looked myself in the mirror.
I found as always that girl with oriental features and round childish face, that was so familiar to me. I recognized myself and I was satisfied with what I watched.
I didn’t need not more not less.
So I stopped watching myself. I still have not discovered why in the hell are mean to the mirrors, if we never see ourselfs the same way others see us. The true mirror is inside the person who looks at us, and not in the false reflexion, that artifact of ancients origins and something more like a legend in our toilet, return to us.
In that time, I called the attention of the opposite sex in an embarrassing way. I can’t deny it really annoyed me.
I remember a day I was coming home from High School, when I still had not drive license, I was walking quickly in front of a Bank when I skin-head boy looked at me.
Of course, everybody knows that there are so many ways to look at someone.
I felt naked, even thought I wear my kind jersey, my marine style neck blue coat and my white boots.
Those white boots…
They walked me around thousands times.
They were the only ones in all the city.
When I wore them, I felt so completed, as if finally, something that had been separeted from me, was back to its place.
That day, my boots took me from the path that, in the sidewalk, that was leading me to the bald head.
But he still was looking.
Until he got near me, and spilling something rude, touched my buttocks. Disgusted, I turned aroung I released my anger with a poor insult that seemed to me a yell. But even I couldn’t hear me.
I got home and, lying on the sofa we had besides the balcony, I cried.
I remember that then I made my first reproach to God.
If I was born as a man…
Now that I approach it, there are not women and men. Only exists what the World see in me. And I think it’s a very little thing.
This deep well of memories, says goodbye to you.
*Moñi means Bun in spanish (it refers to the little hair up that this adorable pigeon has) and Patablanca, means whitefoot.
*Ciudad Real, La Mancha, center of Spain, birthplace of Cervantes and Don Quijote.
It will continue, thanks for reading so far!! *bows*
Continuará, gracias por leer hasta aquí! *venia*
^_^) YYuhmi
Note: all names are invented, I wrote all of this on 1998-99 more or less. Some things are true others are fictional, just a mix of my fantasy and life! Sorry for my bad English >_<
Yrene Yuhmi's blog 