Where is my symphony?
An old singer is right: the city seems like a world when you love one of its inhabitants. Intimidating, vast, desolate…
I remember this as a dark and rainy night falls in the middle of San Jose. It’s an ordinary weekday, and I pretend to have tea at a cafe in the center. I try to drown out my thoughts between the city and its hurried inhabitants.
Through the smoke and a book I see their faces, their gestures, the eternal rush, I create a life, a role for them in this world that seems like the city.
The executive with his secretary promises her a better life, as she deserves, so beautiful and capable; the father who is raising his children at the same time and playing in the puddles on the avenue; the mother who longs to return with her offspring, stops to buy peanuts; the teenager in his life of TV and YouTube seems not to notice that it’s raining where he walks; the university student who dives into a sea of papers looking for money for the bus fare; the lonely rose seller; the baker who buys one to fix his latest mistake…
Don’t think that I’m judging, I’m playing to give them a life, to suppose how the little figurines move on the board, but I know that everything is in my head. It’s an exercise in self-defense, I entertain myself with what’s outside, because inside there’s confusion. I fell off the board.
If you saw me now, what role would you imagine me in? Will I be Penelope? Waiting. What am I waiting for? You’re not coming back.
I never followed the rules of the board, if the dice said 2, to me it seemed like a 7 and I moved 3 squares. I wasn’t in a hurry to win, the journey was more important. Right?
I rested on the squares I liked, faced the bad ones as soon as possible, rested halfway, skipped turns. Moving only forward? Getting depressed to start over? Not getting out of the squares?… that was for the other pieces.
They followed the rules, I interacted with the other pieces, knew what they were playing and what they wanted to achieve; what I’m not sure of is whether they knew why they wanted it.
I wasn’t a horse, or a bishop, or a little blue round piece, nor a house… the only purpose of the game was… to play.
Until one day you appeared (in these stories it’s always you who appears, I learned well, love stories are always the same) in a corner of the neighborhood, another chaotic piece, different.
When I saw you, I ran like Forrest Gump… but I always fell on the square of “return to the corner” and there you were, looking at me and smiling. You can’t run forever, but you already knew that.
When I finally ran out of breath and strength, you took my hand, took me to your square, gave me pajamas and prepared dinner. You promised me to play together, a love story? They weren’t part of my game… you said you would teach me.
A new part made for two, someone who wanted to listen, two little pieces traveling the board together, inventing new moves, looking for loopholes in the rules, moving farther, reaching new places.
I would write between my notebooks and you would put on the music, I would write a story to put you to sleep on rainy nights, you a symphony for my dancing feet. You reached out a hand and asked if I dared… I had already jumped off the cliff.
Poker afternoons, movie days, book club, theater, dance à la carte, kitchen secrets, cat meows. All documented in my notebooks, all recorded on my skin, sweet taste on my palate.
Until one day (there’s always an until one day) I tried to enter our square, I couldn’t, at the door a letter said “you can take everything away”… and she had used it.
Since then, the shock was so great that I fell off the board, I tried to find you and you were silent, I’m afraid the game will absorb me, of getting lost, like I lost you, turned into a piece that can’t escape.
Now I only see the world from afar, remembering through others, waiting for an entry to a new game, where the invisible ties are more powerful than paper, ink, metal or plastic, where it’s not what it should be, but what is, where the rest of life doesn’t matter, only here and now.
My tea is cold, like so many others, I’m still waiting for you or at least my symphony. Here’s a story… where is my symphony?