SADE SATI

 

I couldn't understand it anymore. Nor better. I know now, so long later. And I tell myself, that we are all children in his eyes. And that our conscience lives between lapses, some too painful for us to reflect on. 

Saturn took care of the effects. That was in April of ninety-eight. But much earlier, let yourself remember that the stress and pressure you had on yourself, on obligations, on the pleasures associated with work, on battles associated with successes that didn't come, doesn't the way i saw them draw in our lives, to get there, to the outcome. I was there. You too, still. Before April ninety-eight. 

I go back on the eternal repeat, in a loop that wants to understand of course, me rationalizing a past with no return, without alternatives, left there, in that peak of sade sati. If I remember, so do you. We had fallen out. My rebellion bordered on revolt, as if you could be to blame for all the bad feelings I had experienced until I met you. You were never guilty. On the contrary, you were responsible for having lived more than a happy decade, deeply happy. They say we are happy and we don't know it. I knew, most of the time and you knew that there were deep traumas that I never let come to light. First, it was easy, to take happiness by the hands, in the mouth, in the whole skin, in the smile, in the days and years. It is easier to value well-being after very bad events. And I knew, most of the time. Then, well, then things got complicated. Seven years have shown me that we should not take happiness for granted and you told me. You showed me. That's what you did. But I only saw what I wanted to see, of a childish blindness. The rhythm of the music began to change, precisely because of the music. Because music separated us, instead of the opposite effect it had always had between us. The disagreements were a slap in the face given by life, tests that we were overcoming or saving to talk about later. After. Always after. And you diverged and so did I. And you got someone else to blot out my name, or else, to forget my presence that was still with you. And I did the same. Then you came to show that you didn't like or didn't want your name to be erased. And you used the excuse of the fruit. There was the fruit and it had to be protected. Then you took the fruit with you without warning, and I had to redeem it. Then they were wounded in the soul. And then came the nostalgia. And it was high tides that invaded me, at the time, I was still unaware of the overwhelming power of the ocean. Or Saturn. I only knew your name and I only knew your smell. On the map of the world in my room there was only one continent. It was you. And then, hope came to inhabit me, when you came to pick me up with a poem in one hand and a hug in the other. And then, a fruit arrived, which none of us knew how to take, take care of, give it a name, a bed, a space, a chest. The garden remained with a flower, even when I sowed hope that day, along with Easter. Then you asked me quietly, so that you wouldn't even hear it, to solve the issue myself, to take care of the matter. Of this subject. From another heart that was not part of our garden. That it was strange to him, that he was not supposed to. And I obeyed. I tried. I didn't go alone. I did it, but cowardice always has a bitter taste, especially if it is not our cowardice. Because we cannot take the pulse of the cowardice of others. We are powerless before it. It is the other that concerns. And you said, to finish the matter that I had no way of solving, you told her that I had a fruit in my womb.  As a way to mitigate things to solve them. What was resolved was this first part, which the other was unresolved. In other words, the fruit of my womb was stopped. And I had, but you proved to me very recently that not even you knew it yourself. And I remember, when I close my eyes, that room with the undulating curtains, the metallic taste in my mouth, the ice bottle in my belly, the tears, the regret, the nights on the sofa, of alcohol and migraine pills, and then I remember the frequent laughter that arose before the moment of harvesting, during and after. Then I entered the growing phase of the abyss, those abysses in which we lose ourselves even of ourselves, leaving no clues to find ourselves. And even you didn't know how to do it. Years later, I realize that you didn't even realize it. As if I brought within me stories that don't belong to you, decisions made alone, unforeseen events that you couldn't equate with, only if you were god. Only if you were attentive. And you were immersed in a life parallel to ours, hanging between electric wires, between stress and immediate deadlines, between amplifiers and sounding boards and smoke machines and projectors and people full of hope that you would solve everything, that you did not have a life of your own, or that your life walked only there, around them. And so it was. So it was. 

Then I remember that double laugh, that fruit that didn't ripen outside of me, only inside, torturing me, taking me to the pain that I tried to remedy in the escapes. You watched the escapes when you were. Most of the time, you stopped being. You who told me that the doors should be locked, that people were not trustworthy, that they were not what they seemed to be, you opened the doors and windows, you let yourself be dazzled by the easy, the shortcut, the media, because stress oppressed you, because others had expectations about you, and you tried to fulfill them until you got sick in bed. I remember that at that time, my love was mixed with hate and compassion, an attempt to understand and escape. Escapes defined the entire decade that followed. It was in this tide full of disappointment, sorrow, disappointment that I lost hope. First I stopped watering it, I called it names, I wanted it to succumb to thirst, as I had done with myself, then, i found myself visiting his remains, hope stank and I needed to see his corpse, often, to be sure that it was not the fruit of my head, which had perished. From small panoti to small panoti, the sketch of the dream was there, dry. And when I realized, I didn't even have a garden, just a fruit kept at home, in schools, on the streets, and the severity of those high tides was such that the dryness came to show that dreams, as you said, they must be watered, like gardens, that seeds must be cared for, that plants must be pruned and you, who were gardeners like me, have left the craft and set out for a new spring. In April, it did not rain. Dried. And the seed never died. The tests are so often poorly observed that any gardener could detect aeration, storms, abandonment and prevent it, pruning, manure. I resigned from office, just like you and then I just ran away. Trying to be present to see the fruit ripen, trying to hide the pain so that the fruit does not wither. Music was the cleared field of weeds and, on the other hand, it was also the minefield from which the foxes sprang to trample on the roses, the pansies, plunder the chickens and raze the crop.

Then, it was us without you, it was us left to our inability to be whole, each one fleeing in the way they could, who knew best so that the pain would not hurt. The fruit left the music and I got sick listening to it. And stopping to look at the pain was too painful. Because it forced us to face the reality that we were not prepared for. And distance softened everything, but it never killed the seed. And it didn't kill me so much that I continued to go, alone and accompanied, to places where I could see you, without you, being present in full body And even when dreams don't thrive, they don't age. They suffer small setbacks, the so-called small panotis, but they do not know how to die. This Sade Sati was the beginning of my escape to Saturn. One does not run away from Saturn. It takes time, but it arrives, and when it arrives, once again, I will have stopped all the pain, all the escapes, all the fears, all the mourning. On that day, that year, in this life, I will look at the deceased as if they were birds freed from life sentence, from the prison to which I have forced myself, in order to learn to wither dreams. And maybe you're one of those birds flying to the rising sun. Or maybe I'll be just another star in the sky, with ripe fruit on earth. And only then, can I mirror myself again in the ocean you have become, after you have left the craft of pruning me. And in heaven, there is no sade satis.