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L'Arbre de l'oubliremember when you drank wine in the garden,that was for this.-rumi Children played in the ruins of an old building in a field in the distance. Or left half built. For no one would ever live out there. And the builders had just built for days and weeks before thinking about its purpose. A kid ran along with shorts on the outside of tight leggings, dirt on his face. Concrete sprawled before me. Horse and carts cut off bmw's or old beat up junk cars with doors that were so rusted that they wouldn't shut any more. The man beside me hadn't said a word to me for the entire trip. He offers me half a chocolate bar and I thanked him, but still he said not a word. Only at the border did he speak to the officer, telling him that he didn't know me. He handed me his identity card to give to the officer. In the photo, his eyes made me shudder. Perhaps this is why he never talks. His eyes make people cold and it makes him feel bad. He was born in nineteen sixty nine and had seen much, here.I feel a freight train of memories rushing on through me as we approach the city. Pass the place I departed from four months ago. I never find people smiling in this city. Never. It has known too many miserable things. We pull up outside his place and he points towards the central city. 'Go, walk for one kilometre and you're there. Go now, please.' and he opens the door and walks away. I follow him, wanting to thank him. To tell him the importance of this journey, this last intricate part.'Go', he says again, 'go now, please...just go..'I left him. The paint on the walls here was peeling off and everything else was grey. I shuddered again. They were his eyes, too./The trip was long, broke me through, cracked open windows inside of me. Forgot how it is to have no skin, sometimes. But by the time I'd got here, I'd built another of feathers and leaves collected on the route. To pass six countries in three days is a ridiculous act, almost a murder of something. My footsteps were different now, sounded deeper, fuller. Four months can build mountains. Ten seconds even. That's how long it takes for them to rise from the surface, isn't it? What is four months then? That's 8640 mountains in a day, 2,629,74.383 mountains in a month. Then what am I now? Perhaps mountains are not created in every moment. But there have been several in these last months, this I'm sure of.Misplaced pieces of concrete keep tripping me up. I laugh and a woman looks behind her, shocked. She tells me, 'no laughing, here' and I apologise but keep laughing. I rarely say things I don't mean, but she'd caught me by surprise. The new skin isn't as strong. I must be careful, here. If it wasn't for sunday, and if I would have known how little time there was, I would have stayed in Lyon and then moved softly, slowly, waiting to be strong to see her. Instead, I was here, already, suddenly, exhausted and feeling weak if but courageous. They don't tell you that these things can be mixed. That fear and guts create something incredible. That your wings are always stronger than you think. That you're capable of anything. To never believe what they say. Not ever. Rigour won't lead you to where you want to go, and neither willasceticism, suffering, or what you think you understood.Spice will lead you.[shaman, sierra grande]You go with what you feel, regardless. I am here, I think, and the buildings lean and leer over me. I laugh again and this time the woman doesn't turn around. A warm happiness fills me, one of a returning, a falling into place. Exhaustion will pass and tomorrow, she will wake you with a kiss on the forehead, sleeping outside on the terrace, waking the whole night long in anticipation. It will be the first time in a third of a year. This is a lifetime. Even if she will soon disappear. Bottle these moments and live them with the lungs of a giant breathing underwater. After all this waiting, this patience. It is here, it is here.
