Abstract Nº 20

My first intention was typing something personal at the moment of uploading every abstract image, but I'm sooo lazy. Will not happen with every image, then.

Finally I'll do something now. I remember my first trip alone.



Ruins...

Reminding this now, at the flow of thought: When I was 12 I made my first trip alone. (Before that I had made my end-of-course trip with my elementary school class to another province, much farther, but it was a frustration, and I was not alone.) A month before my 13th birthday I ended elementary school, then I took two weeks to prepare the trip, called a hostal to reserve a place, and convinced my parents and grandparents that I was mature enough for the travel and accomodation; I had secret savings, was secretly preparing a trip to a secret place, the kind of place I always liked secretly too. I always liked deserted places, specially ruins and cemeteries. That is because of their melancholic characteristic. Through the years I've seen that some people attach the value, or tag: "depressive" to melancholy. Melancholy and spleen are not depressive, they are delicate and delightful states of the soul, that a mind not prepared might confuse with a destructive state of mind. The history of the most genuine artform of my country is built over melancholic states: the Tango, which is a slightly unknown form of art, in its genuine state.
So I earned the trip, and I did it, completely by myself. It was for two weeks, to return home by my birthday. I traveled to the Cayastá ruins, more than 500 kilometers away from home, in a bus. As soon as the bus hitted the open road an immense sense of freedom took over my soul. I slept in a hostal at arriving at night. (The owners looked at me curiously, and the night after invited me to eat with them, and asked me many questions.) I woke up before the alarm clock sounded, before the sun, took a shower and went to visit the ruins, walking through the prairie, no-one was there, everything deserted. The moisture of the ruins was perfect, wet bricks with moss at the breaking light, my left and right hands were touching those walls while I walked with my backpack through the narrow corridors... I seated several times inside the ruins, it was very cold. I went to some dry place later that day, meters away from the ruins, lying on the grass with a stick of grass in my mouth. I was alone with my thoughts, and my Miguel Hernández's book of poems. I had enough friends to make the trip "stupidly cheerful", but why ruining a perfect possibility of sweet own melancholy adding company? Keeping the melancholy alive is very difficult at that age, when you have a lot of people around. Even for a silent and bullied child of elementary school it is almost impossible to feed melancholy and having moments being truly alone. I was so far away of earthly mundanity, that I felt becoming an ancient wall with moss myself. Later moments were sweet too, lying over the grass of the sunny prairie with my walkman, the Beatles and the Miguel Mateos band. Other students that year were listening Baltimora and the Ghostbusters soundtrack, :-) "god help them all". Alone with my thoughts, saw, at my twelve years, at that moment over the grass, that the trend is to go into melancholy by force and not by choice in life... I reminded those two old women that I saw alone at the funeral service of another old woman months before... reminded the neighbour whose wife died; reminded that the bully in school never tolerate the silence, the own self, and talks to you, as a person, when they are enclosed in the same place alone with you... reminded one friend, daughter of a violent family, and suddenly saw the pattern: I was lucky in my time alone, I choosed it. I saw the time flowing to the future, and people was going alone by reasons not clear to me at that moment... people in ruins were building over ruins, like Troy built over Troy many times after a seizing war. I watched the ruins, I lived the ruins, the upcoming ruins, the all-present ruins. Outside the ruins the sky was beautiful, great summer sun, hard thick green grass, wide prairie sight, nobody around... lovely ruins from the outside, but extremely cold at touch from the inside... freezing remaining walls of defense.
I went home and they almost screamed: "look at your tan! how good it made to you". I said "Yeah", with my shy look of those years.

Wow, turned out a pretty round story, good to post, will never happen like this again :-)
Cheers.