Where the Almond Tree Stood
Memento
During a flight back to my new “house”, from my old town the new one, I took the phone out and started typing whatever came to mind after having visited my hometown for a week or so. This is the juice
I have been gestating my feelings and thoughts thruought this week. I have come home, to my native town, after several months and even years. I have walked on the ground where I took my first steps, where I fell in love for the first time and fell out of love. And so many times… A smile, a lollipop, a kind hello, and a pretty face were sometimes all it took for me to imagine a movie where we lived happily until the end of our days. Just as I later saw they smiled at my friends in the same way, and my world came crashing down. For me, falling out of love and falling in love were a snapshot; they were never a video. And I would play at blaspheming and asking the Lord for forgiveness, to see if some kind of punishment would come.
While we played in the park, I ran through my thoughts, begging the Lord to strike me dead for having imagined a car running over my mother, for wishing death upon a cat. And I repeated that anguished, repetitive phrase to the point it became sickening: “I take back everything I said to return to my normal life.” As if there were another… an imaginary, parallel world where I was the greatest villain and, at the same time, a hero. I killed Hitler several times. I resurrected him and killed him in increasingly creative ways. My grandparents paid with several lives in my imagination, and I always deeply regretted it.
It was an almost impossible mental exercise—an unstoppable one, too—and I always maintained that direct line with the Lord, who forgave me upon saying the magic phrase. All this happened simultaneously while playing tag, hunting for friends, or playing cards.
I remember once, while crossing the street on the way to school, holding my father’s rigid, strong, dirty, and hardworking hand, I found it inevitable to wish that the truck would run over all my classmates. Puddles of blood, mutilated bodies, and wailing would be my crosswalk. But I soon returned to normal life with a smile as soon as someone spoke to me. I suspected someone might see it all written upon my face, that all these thoughts were publicly accessible and that I would be severely judged. But no—the judgment, the so-feared judgment that made me lose sleep, never came.
I have recently passed by that park where this whole amalgamated ball of feelings, pain, and thoughts rolled freely. I remember there was an almond tree where I openly confessed my feelings to my first love, swearing I would kill her brother if necessary to take her hand, as if her older brother were the dragon that kidnapped the princess. I remember challenging him to a fight and losing with dignity. And she gave me a flower from the almond tree, and I smelled it and smiled.
At that moment, I hated the brother for humiliating me, but a little later I felt warm, soft lips on my cheek that healed all the physical damage absorbed during the fight. And I forgave and even thanked the wounds, for they were the medal of my bravery for confronting such a monster.
To tell the truth, my beloved smelled a bit bad. I remember her hair was quite long, black, dry, and greasy at the same time—a kind of scouring pad after washing a frying pan. But I loved it. And she looked like a primate, and I partly did too. We were both very hairy for our young age. I thought we would have climbing children. I imagined a future together in this city at high speed. And, going at that high speed, the accident was even more lethal. The next day at school, she appeared holding my best friend’s hand and giving him kisses on the cheek. I hated both in silence and several times wished to open their bellies with my sword, to pull out the betrayal that was inside them. But seeing them together, I understood they made a better couple. And she seemed to laugh more…
Could it be that Jordi (a fitting name) defeated the dragon—my beloved’s brother—in combat? In Catalonia, it’s a legendary tradition. I understood then that perhaps it was written in my friend’s honor and decided to leave them in peace in my abnormal world.
In the park, that almond tree is no longer there, nor is there any trace of the other fountains where we used to bathe and play at dodging their jets. There were nine small jets that emerged from the ground like geysers. They followed several rhythmic but interlocking patterns, making it difficult to figure out which part of the choreography you were in, having missed the beginning.
My friend Molina, a man with a big heart and little brain, often got wet because he could hardly count or remember which fountain had shot previously. I remember spending two years playing at dodging the water while also playing Kraken (the chosen one who had to chase us to ‘infect’ us, and in that case, you became the Kraken and had to tag others)—all thanks to basic math and a bit of observational attention. And all this while wishing the most horrible and unspeakable things upon anyone who dared to irritate me or smile at me. Molina used to slip on the wet ground, fall on the fountain, and get hit by the next jet. A spectacle. A pity the fountains dried up, just like my memories.
Going towards the main square where we used to play when it snowed… The dogs used the green area as a toilet, and when making snow angels, it wasn’t strange to end up covered in feces. It was a risk we were willing to take. But all those meadows have now been fenced off, I suppose to protect children from being happy.
If childhood is happy, life starts at the summit and one can only descend. And the aim is to create Sisyphuses, not rocks that fell from the summit.
I walked past my old house, and seeing the entrance door brought back memories of all those times I wished not to go home yet, not to stop being outside with friends, and wanting to stretch time as if it were chewing gum that, when chewed, gave me life. All the times I passed through that threshold—afraid to go to school, emboldened, or simply in zombie mode—without considering that one day it would be the last and that I would stop living in Eden.
Last night, just going up the ramp on my street, a drunk confronted me, apparently wanting to fight. I already had enough containing this wrecking ball of emotions charging against the foundations of my personality. So he snapped me out of my reverie with his sharp way of suggesting a fight:
“Hey you, asshole.”
“That’s me,” I replied with a smirk. Honestly, I wouldn’t have minded a confrontation; I have a good kick and sharp elbows. But the drunk wasn’t alone; with him was my old neighbor Fran, a man who has fought hard to be happy. The situation in his home wasn’t optimal, rather common: a father who loved the bottle more than his wife, and a woman who fought in silence because if she objected, she would receive the fury of a frustrated man. The son mediated to avoid coming to blows. Our rooms were wall to wall, and I could hear him cry every night.
And there was Fran again, avoiding confrontations. Who knows, maybe one day he’ll prevent a war. So upon seeing him, I abandoned my desire to unload my emotions on the drunk, smiled more, and said: “Hey Fran, long time no see? How are you?”
“Sorry, sorry,” he said, and took the drunk away, fulfilling his purpose on this planet.
I continued with my night walk, thinking about how different lives can be. Two people separated by a wall barely 5 cm thick: one lives in heaven, another fights to maintain the status quo in hell.
I have planned reunions with old friends, and if I have to summarize the experience, it’s that I don’t know if those who stayed are substantially happier than those who left. I feel that, being from the same generation, the veil of youth has been torn equally in all of us, and we now see the play without special effects: raw, cold, and poorly rehearsed. And through that opaque prism that no longer emits rainbows. In essence, I have returned to a puzzle that, having changed, no longer has a place for this piece. And all that’s left is to file down my edges to fit again… or change boxes.
I have felt like a stranger at home. There are thousands of new buildings, and the population is either old or newborn: several adults trapped in the cobwebs of routine and several spiders rubbing their legs together.
Routine will make us free from life, thanks to the goddess Distraction. And then we will demand an account from Time for having hidden.