YOU WILL SEE THE LIGHT

She spent her last hours saying good bye to the sun, flat on the floor, inside a bright, warm craddle under the window , dreaming of places she had never been;  rainbows up in the sky, near a big yellow globe that yawns and smiles amid clouds that flee away, with the fear of melting under its beams.  And wet green fields where she frenziedly rolls, feeling the freshness of every raindrop on her body, like tickles, and perceiving  scents that nobody but her could smell or enjoy.

She woke up and it was dark again . She felt kisses and tears raining down on her and a whisper in her ear: “Good bye Sweetheart. You’ll see the light once more”, then she let herself go.

She loved the sun so much that she chose a Sunday to pass away. Wherever she is, it must be sunny.

Sonnet

She came yesterday with a wan face and tears in her eyes

in such a different guise that no one would have said she had been back,

wearing a heavy winter coat that she had made from  dark skies,

followed by a flock of clouds like sheep; some were grey and some black .

She just clicked her invisible fingers  and instead of blossoming flowers

 many umbrellas, like autumn mushrooms, appearead in the street.

She is as old as the world is and, despite her age, she still has magical powers

and she indiscriminately makes use of them on lovers, rendering  them sweet.

We were longing for her warm breath when cold made us very low

but she seems to have fallen in love with the winter and being his wife.

She went to work, with no hairband of leaves but a crown made of snow.

And he kissed her when she left and her lips became frozen as she had no life.

Marry the sun! Accept his bright golden ring.

We miss your gentle being. O’ Spring!

Written on the second day of Spring in the style of William Shakespeare

Shooting star dogs

Some special dogs are like shooting stars. One day they come into your life from nowhere, stay with you for a while, enlightening the gloom around you, and silently fade away, leaving a trail of memories behind them. They are dogs with a mission that should never be revealed. Secretive dogs, agents from an unknown agency in the universe, whose main task is sharing love. Dana, undoubtely, was one of these dogs. She came out in Spring, like a weird, black and white flower, on the most appropiate season for such a joyful dog. Her official biography tells that she had been abandoned when she was found in the park, tied up to a tree, wearing a homeless dog costume. That was actually part of the mise-en-scene, wisely made up to catch the attention of the person who would bring her home. The plan worked and Dana found a name and a family. She was a magnificent actress, far better than Lassie because whereas the collie dog only had to play in some movies and even had a stuntdog, Dana had to play the role of a silent, quiet and docile dog for weeks to assure she would be accepted in her new home. Only my oldest dog was suspicious about her and they both nastily gazed at each other when they met in a reduced space. Experienced grannies have the gift of clarevoyance and when Dana showed her real personality of alpha dog instead of the persona she had been adopting, I could see in my oldest dog’s eyes a grudgy expression that meant: “I always knew that this would happen”.
Dana’s personality erupted like a volcano on an island in the Pacific. The shy dog became a cheeky monkey with a clownish soul and a thunderous voice. She barked claiming attention and she only stopped when her Einstein-esque head was stroked. Everybody at home had to tiptoe to not awake her wildly barking instinct. Even my English teacher practically had to land on the chair to not move it. She was like a Tasmanian Devil in the park towards other dogs and no one dared approach her unless they want to lose an ear. It didn’t matter if it was a softie Great Dane or a grumpy Chihuahua, every dog had to know she was the boss. Despite her strong personality, she never forgot she had a mission and she followed me everywhere I went by day, as if our shadows had been sewn together and, when the lights were out and the writers of dreams were about to read me a new story, she would jump onto my bed, put her head on my hip and sigh.
Now she’s gone. She played her old role of silent dog when she passed away. A silent shooting star lost in some part of the universe. Where is she? I’ve been told energy is never destroyed but transformed. Dana was energy from her snotty nose to her long pigtail and there’s no bigger energy than love, so this energy, the love she shared, has to have flown somewhere. There is a well known legend about passed away dogs that go to a place called The Rainbow Bridge, a sort of canine paradise where someday dogs and their owners will meet. I have a vision of an endless queue of dogs waiting to cross the Rainbow Bridge while Dana, with the red punky crest she had on her last days, lies down at the bridge’s door and growls at any dog who wants to come in. I can hear angelical voices from far saying: “Dear Lord, please, don’t move your throne or she will bark again!”. If Dana went to Heaven, it wouldn’t be a peaceful place anymore so I would choose for her the biblical option that affirms that when a dog dies, its soul goes back to earth. One day she’ll be back with another mission, in different fancy dress but in the meantime, like a pilot who waits for a plane and a map, she looks at the shooting stars and wonders which is hers.

My dog Dana passed away on the 3rd of March. God bless her sweet soul

The swing II

There is nothing in the world but the swing and I. I’m inside the basket that hangs from the olive tree at my grandmother’s house. I can hear my mum telling a story in hushed voice to my granny; they don’t want me to know what they are talking about, that’s why even the invisible insects that sing in the garden are making more noise than them. Suddenly, a word doesn´t want to be anonymous anymore and escapes from my mum’s mouth. Silence says hello and mum seems as embarrased as the day that my brother said “shit” in church but I know a new word now: “Gynaecologist”. I’m younger than two so I think that such a appalling utterance can only be a cat’s name. I don’t like cats and I am scared of them. My granny has many and I hate them because they have big green eyes that flash in the dark corridors of the old, ghostly manor house which, for a baby, it’s terrifying. I’m thinking of the cat that scratched me because I have baby’s sweet smell of milk and sugar and I want to cry but a soft wind rocks the swing, as if Nature would comfort me and the sun whishes to make me smile, drawing funny forms on my dress, shining through the leaves of the olive tree, that look like little silver swords, ready to protect me if a cat attacks. Nothing can do me harm inside the swing.

The swing

My oldest memory might have been during  the same summer that I had my first experience with cats, when I learnt that behind magic green eyes may hide a devilish creature. Summertime was as long as a bad preacher’s sermon then, as if life was going to last forever. I spent the first holiday that I recall at my grandmother’s vacational property. She had inherited it, after the Spanish Civil War, from distant relatives that had tragically passed away, shot down by revolutionaries. That was the story I had been told years before but, as I was just a baby the year I went there, maybe younger than two, the only knowledge I had of the evil that the place had seen, were those feline eyes down the dark corridor, like a lighthouse leading sailors to murky waters,  and the scary and hipnotic purring that the cat produced. Although the redish-tiled house was in the centre of the small village, it had an immense garden with trees and even a pergola, where the ladies of my family sat to gossip and tell stories, some of them secretly whispered when terms like “gynaecologist”, “breast” or “giving birth” were the main topics. The swing was beside the pergola. It hung from an olive tree branch and the person who made it probably chose a short tree for safety reasons , just in case the rope broke, although it was hardly a metre high from the ground.The swing had not the usual wooden seat rather a big basket with a comfortable cushion inside and I was so little that the swing was my cradle by day. I still have memories of the acrid smell of the dry straw inside the basket and the tickles on my tiny hands when I grabbed its rough edges. That day the sun was shining through the narrow leaves of the olive tree, whimsically drawing forms on my dress , according to the soft breeze that was shaking the foliage, sparkling as if it had been made of silver. My eyes squinted every time the leaves made way for a sun beam, hot like a dragon’s kiss. I was gently rocked by Nature’s hand and lulled by a choir of singing insects. The swing was the spaceship that took me to Planet Happiness when life was in black and white and in slow motion.

My bedroom, my sanctuary

The first impression you will get if you come into my bedroom,  will be that the owner is not an urban vampire whose only aspiration is to see life through dark glasses. Everything inside is light, from the walls, painted in a pale lilac colour, to the window,  iron beds  and doors that are white, maybe as a reflection of myself. I’m crystal clear like a drop of water on a mirror in both  every action and towards the people I know. After a deeper observation of the elements, messily disposed of in the room, as if something had interrupted me as I was moving in, you’d probably be lead to the conclusion that The Theory of Chaos was not about The Universe but about this small and cosy den. There is nothing wrong with chaos as long it’s controlled. Chaos is the finest form of creativity and it’s really creative to combine within a reduced space like a wooden desk surface, varied stuff such as batteries, a comb, a red candle, headphones, wires of different lengths and colours, books, a lamp and an impaired earring that lost its  better half in a battle against a domestic hurricane. I wouldn’t dare you to open the drawers of the desk, chaos would explode under your nose like a supernova in a remote galaxy and would kill you in quick and blinding flash.  Don’t look under my bed either if you are scared of strange beings. You’d probably hear a creepy breath coming from there, as if an alien were secretly giving birth.  But don’t worry, it’s just a dog that has been brought up like a child and dreams, her head on a shoe, of a woman who feeds her chicken soup with a spoon. It’s a pleasant  bedroom, though.    

The accordionist

The same melancholic waltz sounds every day on my street. The accordionist invariably performs it, whatever it’s scorching hot or so cold that he can hardly move his fat fingers on the black and yellowing keyboard of the old instrument. The melody slows down in winter and flows like a stream of vibrant notes in summer. The speed of his performance, along with the shed of leaves, marks the end of each season. He sits on a small stool beside the corner of the avenue, where the Sun stays longer. At his feet, on the grey cobled pavement, a cardboard box keeps the few coins that people, dismissively, throw into. The old lady, in a beige coat and wig-shaped hairdo, eternally searches inside her old-fashioned hand bag until she finds the least valued coin, maybe five cents, then she drops it into the box and keeps on walking like a female Charlie Chaplin with no hat nor walking cane; the civil servants that work at the institutional building, hard to tell from themselves*, walk past him mumbling with a fag in their mouth and, some of them, throw a few coins too, that fall with a dull clinging sound into the box. The accordionist nods as a way of thanks with every coin he gets, but never stops playing. He sways his tough body while he taps one of his feet in time with the music, raises just one of his thick, dark eyebrows and there’s a broad smile on his round and tanned face. Some days a small dog is tied up to the parking fence where the accordionist performs. It’s one of those ugly furry dogs, the living reminder of a forbidden union between a pet and a stray dog, the luckiest in the litter, a survivor dog who shamelessly licks its private parts, without paying attention to the ladies on the street. It stands, like a memorial statue in a pet’s cementery, close to his master who keeps playing until the evening comes.

Each morning I pass by where the accordionist sits and, although I’m hurried, I slow down my pace to listen to his music that is like a glimmer of magic in the moronity of the rat race. He notices what I do and probably guesses that I like the waltz he’s playing. He looks at me then, raises his open hand in a friendly greeting, and says “Hello, hello!” in a cheerful voice. It’s just a short break, the only moment when music stops sounding on my street.

*The sentence is grammatically incorrect but it’s an artistic license. It should say “hard to tell them apart”