Chapter 4- SECRETS...

CHAPTER 4

SECRETS.....

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Somehow its easier to forget, if your the only one who knows ..once a secret is out ..the memory is shared..often without knowledge....and one becomes many.

Soon you have a circle of secrets..so where do you stop?

and how do you forget?

because now, even  if  you kill your memory,remember, someone else is keeping it alive..hiding it somewhere you cant see......
but you can hear it breathing all around you..

So even if I cant remember who i am.... I know someone else does..

 Deia

Spain

My notes make little sense.i need to sit down and take a moment to breathe , the air always helps me..it feels different here.In one breath i can take in the whole village and their life.

I've been living in this village for the past five days like vagabond,wandering from place to place hardly eating ,hardly sleeping.

i feel dead..inside and out.

i havn't seen my face for days..just the ones of  people on the street.I see women pulling their children closer ..men checking they pockets candidly, and the beggars ? I could write a page about the beggars in spain...they treat me the worst.Yet we waste pity on them.

You never really know where you are, until you leave that place to live another's life.

I'm in spain,the village of Deia, a small coastal settlement in the island of Majorca.I suppose people might call it 'pleasant' , with its orange and olive grooves on steep cliffs, overlooking the mediterranean..Not too long back, there was another englishman here, Robert Graves ,a writer and poet, who fell in love with this village and wrote many stories centered around it during the first world war . He wrote 'Hercules My Shipmate' sitting at this at this very spot..apparently,its not doing me any good.

He lived here till he died ,and his house in now a museum.

I 'm nothing like him and no one gives me a second glance out of interest. i've walked through every street ,seen how people here live, i've had their staple food..which in this case was a thick stew  or a cake of eggs and potatoes..

i could talk about their art and music, but misery blinds me and hunger covers my ears...the rumble of my own stomach is all the music i can take.

i cant live like this...i've seen spain as it should be....and i've had enough.

but why am i here?

the question i seem to wake upto every morning, the one that slaps me across the face and yet never leaves a handprint.

i feel like tearing the world apart ,my head is breaking down to pieces.

i need to find water.Its the only element i understand.

remember robert frost

"some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice.."

water..this single element is all it takes to end all life.

the same liquid that quenches your thirst can drain you, squeeze out every last drop of life.

 some say drowning is best way to die.As if the means of death would really matter.

but its really quite simple you see ,we cant live in water, so what do we do?..we learn to swim,to make boats and ships and oxygen cylinders and pretend to have conquered water, because it satisfies this ego that we carry around with us....

what if you were pushed off the edge..

a tiny splash and your dipped into this freezing cold blur

 and you cant breathe..

how simple is the process of death?

everything is designed to be simple

and we try so hard to complicate it

we are fighters

 we cage animals,dig out earth, destroy forests and all this with a smug smile our faces.That ego that feeds on us..

I wonder who is laughing at us?

or even who we are trying to impress?

think about it, one big tidal wave and a million dead.

The money, the hours,the lives,the quarells are all washed away by  water

as if  you was cleaning the floor of all that mess

but this is not enough to prove anything

are we all just that blind..?

..we need to be powerful

so we create life....we replicate people.

test tube babies and clones..

and then, the next tidal wave...and eye for an eye makes the whole world blind

so really,

when are we going to stop punching ourselves on the face?..

...................................................................................

"padre?"

I turned around to see a young man..hardly 20 years or so

"what do you want?" i snapped

 ...after days of being spat at i was in no mood for courtesy

he was taken aback..he spoke back to me in english.

"I'm sorry sir, i thought you were my father from afar....you resemble him..he is also an englishman,"

the boy spoke quite fluently ,i was amazed.he seemed so distant ,yet too close.

"i'm not ,as you you can see now.leave me alone" my voice was gruff,sore from thrist.

"i dont think he is coming"

"i never asked, did i?"

the boy stared staright at me.He had a peircing gaze, beautiful brown eyes, somehow very familiar.He was pleasant on the eyes,this kid.I never noticed before...and I, notice everything.

" i think you should come with me."he said

" and why would i?"

" you hardly seem in a position to refuse my offer either way,what do you have to lose?"

i thought for a second,another day spent wandering aimlessly was of no use to me.

" fine, i hope you have bread whereever you live "

he grinned,charming , this boy.He is used to getting his way.

"my mother will be pleased"

"to know that her son has brought her a replacement?"

he shrugged,still smiling

" you enjoy sarcasm"

"no, i was being rude"

.........................................................................................................................................

'pueblo'

i think that means village in spain...

The villages here comprised of parchment coloured dwellings stacked close togather with little windows to peep through.i'd call it 'pleasant', very convincing too.We climbed higher , it was exhausting to this boy jumping over ahead of me...i hate the young.

I wonder how old i am? i seem to be perpetually tiered.

I realized now that within the past week i had unconsiously slept throughout daylight.Deia at night speaks a different tale..one that can hardly be called 'pleasant'.But the village hides these secrets in daylight, using her utter transparency as a veil to cover herself.

And then,thats when it happened.

I stopped climbing and stood still...my body wasn't responding ...because i remembered...In a flash like lightning,it all came flooding back..or atleast part of it....and for the first time i knew.

i knew why i was in spain..In this particular village...i knew this boy and his father...but importantly i knew what i had to do.

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