a sequence of thoughts

on silence, cold and longings

There is a silence being carried in the wind. It’s profound, and it announces the end, the metaphorical end of the year. It’s a silence that has presence, it’s a silence felt in the heart. It skipped a beat just now: it’s the anticipation. The days after Christmas are carried away by time in a suspension of reality. We are waiting for the chance to begin again. The desperate wind asks: will something change? The first days of the new year will be just the same as in every year: lived in the same suspension of reality, with thoughts and hopes about many things to accomplish, to do, to live. The excitement dies out after the third or fourth day. Everything is the same again. The new year soon becomes old, and another Christmas will be upon us in a blink of the eyes. The wind knows this, for it’s been here before years were counted for, and their change celebrated. The wind only waits for the moment when something will actually change. Perhaps the change will be within each person, and the excitement and hope will no longer die after a few days, but prevail through a whole orbit around the sun. Or perhaps the change is that we’ll be gone, and everything will be perpetually silent, except for the breaking of the waves and the billowing of the wind, a melody that will echo through the Earth unheard. Until then, the wind blows and whispers about these longings and lost dreams, awaiting.

***

I don’t know the world anymore.

When the windows are shut, there is only silence in here. I open them and I am baffled with noise.

It’s cold outside.

When I am outside, I can’t feel certain parts of my body, that progressively freeze in the winter air. My hands, my feet, my nose, my chin.

But inside, all is warm. When I am inside I like to open the windows and feel the cold breeze, because when I am inside I can feel my body and I don’t freeze. And I think I breathe better when it's cold. I love to feel the winter air in my lungs, because it feels fresh and new and filled with things to be discovered.

When I was a kid, I used to always travel in winter time. And so for me the winter carries a certain nostalgia, different from any other nostalgia I’ve ever felt. During winter, in the air all around me my memories float. I feel them in me, utterly, persistently, in the cold. They whisper to me, they keep me here, inside, where is warm.

***

I light a candle by the window, and it withstands the cold. Its light is soft and kind. The flame doesn’t flicker of fail; it burns, perpetually. If not in this same room by this same window then in another. But the flame is always lit, somewhere, eternally.

***

I once closed my eyes and dreamed.

This is the way I tell the story now, when somebody asks me about it, although hardly anyone does. When I desire to understand how I came to be where I am, I tell the story to myself, entirely. And when I tell the story to myself, it goes like this:

I once closed my eyes, expecting to find darkness and silence, a place undisturbed by the world outside. However the darkness never came, and in the closing of my eyes I felt a thing unfurl from inside of me to my eyelids and from my eyelids into my mind and soul, where the thing was visible, although blurred by some sort of mist. When I opened my eyes, I couldn’t see the thing anymore, but I could sense it profoundly; and the vision I had, alongside its sensation, stayed with me. As from that day, the whole of my life changed. Everything I saw in my day to day life became unreal and distant, as if I wasn’t fully awake. It was only when I could sit in silence, and see the perpetual things - such as rocks, that never fade; such as the birds’ songs, that endure; such as the clouds that pass swiftly through the sky; such as the stars that look to me and to all that lies above me; such as the moon that follows us incessantly - that things actually felt more real, tangible and filled with meaning. I couldn’t understand what had happened in me, what was that thing that breathed inside of me and curled on itself when in contact with society and the ordinariness of Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and so on and on. Yet I kept close to me the things that still made sense, the simple things that anchored me in this world: books, films, art, honey, tea. Sometimes, I remember, I laid down on my balcony and closed my eyes, listening to the city sounds that were for me a burden, a constant reminder of my stagnation; of my imprisionment in these things I couldn’t get rid of or understand, listening to them with my eyes closed and imagining that once I opened my eyes I would be in another city entirely, across the world, where possibilities felt more real and the city not that much of a burden. I imagined that I was laying down in a street in London with cars passing beside me, that I was in a rooftop in Paris with the city at my feet beneath me, or sometimes I just tried to ignore all of the sounds and imagine that I would open my eyes and be in a green meadow, all alone, where it would be spring and I would have fox friends, and squirrel friends and owl friends and we wouldn’t need to talk at all, because we could comprehend each other with the language of the eyes and the soul and everything would be simple and peaceful and perfect. Yet every time I opened my eyes I would be in the same exact place and unchanged, except for the dreams that only grew more and more inside me.

With time, I grew accustomed to the feeling of always being outside, watching; the world could touch me and change me, but the reality we ourselves weaved is now too rooted to be changed, and even though I hope to leave my small and insignificant marks upon it, I know it will all eventually fade away into stellar dust. What I have are dreams, that warm me when it’s cold, but also push me to a dangerous edge, of knowing too much. The vision I had that day stays with me; it’s unshakable. I can never unsee it. I attempt to live in the midst of this desert called life, by swimming in the waters of the absurd and of creation, by daydreaming even when it’s dark. It doesn’t matter that on certain days all feels lost, meaningless. The rocks are still here, and they perdure against the sea, and they will be here, even when I am long gone. I know they will also fade away eventually and that gives me hope, knowing that it will all return to the nothingness that it was, in the infinite night that surround us, lighted by stars.