From an undefined place comes the high-pitched barking of dogs. Then, the birds fly in a flock, making a pattern in the sky – as if embroidering the impression of their passage in cross stitch.
Just now, a bumblebee that looked like a small helicopter passed close to my head. A drone – someone younger would say if they were here… The ground is still wet from the night’s intense rain and reflects the vegetation. I’m back in the field. I know that only the church bell will mark the time soon. Being back, now that it’s no longer summer, is like opening a giant photo album where memories take shape and have sound. It is back to the place where I grew up that I realize who I am and how little or nothing my essence has changed.
Today I’m tired of letting the memories advance too much. I could go to the beach, see the sea without diving, but I slept very little and woke up with a racing heart. I dragged an armchair outside the house and tried to follow the flight of the birds as if they were planes about which we know nothing about their departure or destination. Now that I think about it, life is nothing more than a giant airport where we wait for departures and arrivals. We go through the days between hope and inevitable death. Expectation feeds us.
This morning I had a curious conversation about something I really wanted in the past and that I easily discarded today. I told my interlocutor: everything is similar to love, we are obsessive until we achieve it and careless when it comes to achieving it. Often it is only the search that makes us feel alive. Crossing the finish line first is usually the biggest goal of runners, but I believe it’s the idea of running that makes them feel alive. I don’t run.
I now saw on the ground the reflection of a large bird crossing the sky. An eagle? Perhaps an eagle reflected in the water, the one left over from the first rains of the season.
The field allows you to see everything with a clarity that is sometimes almost distressing. I’m sadder and happier. There is no middle ground for those who are here: either they are looking for cleanliness or they live stuck in the mud. Whoever stays here faces fear in the dark night without a lamp or dazzle.
Just now I delayed the pace of an ant that was following its march, colliding with my arm. This is also what happens in the countryside: a silent pact with nature is attempted. No one is extra, as long as you don’t fall into the temptation of subtracting instead of adding.
I didn’t go to see the sea but, scrolling through my childhood album, I remembered Alda, a girl who went to school with us. His father, a fisherman, died very young on a stormy night. And we, children, didn’t know how to deal with the girl who had lost her father, swept away by the wrath of the waves. There was so much left to say to Alda and the other kids. We had no way of knowing how to deal with pain greater than waves.
The bell is now ringing. The cat that walks my mother’s memory has just appeared and looks astonished when she sees me standing here, as if a menhir had fallen here overnight. I am the menhir of minor importance. She jumps into my lap and without much interest leaves me straight away. I notice that the bell is ringing differently and my mother, if she were here, would have already said: “someone must have died”. One day the bell rang for her, drowning out, as now, the birdsong.
I am very happy in the melancholy that the countryside brings me. Everything takes on a new and profound meaning, as if I were invited to remove the film that normally covers life. Like cell phones, yes. There are those who never remove this film, fearing that they will damage what was created to be ruined. Everything has an expiration date. Us too.
A lead-colored sky weighs over my head. I review everything in detail, but only the past. I don’t have a chance to think about the future. It’s like not knowing where the birds are flying this autumn. The silence that this afternoon brings back to me could be almost frightening, if I didn’t like to see even the origin of the pain clearly.
We have been trying to escape our ghosts for too long.
The heart still beats.
