Everything started at the beginning.
In a very confused moment I was informed that I had been born.
This happened, years ago, on a small isle with an unpronounceable name: Ghawdex, in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and even if everybody attending to the event asserts I was there, too, I must admit I cannot remember it.
I was baptized and they say that in that precise moment all the water in the font evaporated, but I guess it is an overstatement.
I tore down my childhood petal through petal, building reality as an infinite pieces multidimensional puzzle unfolded over the eternal hills of the natal hamlet.
Puberty and adolescence assaulted me without warning, preying on my inexperience and youth. I repaired my rent inner tissues dealing the distressed moments of my treble voice with those of off-key baritone with the charm of a diplodocus and a horsefly trying to dance the black swans 'pas de deux' together.
Finally time put me the adult costume but my entrails did not know it, adulthood is a chronology, not an ontological condition. My face came in my help: I looked adult.
During some years I tried to save the world but then I realized that my arrival was late... Way too late!
Astride on time I let it carry me ahead, the sad voice of the Mistral and the icy breath of the Cierzo followed my memories after leaving the cosy world of the 'Mare Nostrum' and the universe opened up to my amazed childish eyes of toddler who looked like an adult.
That very innocence and ignorance were my deliverance, nobody could believe that I could be so imbecile! (perfection does not exist except for especial cases as mine) and that belief made them, (people around me) to cook up stories of conspiracies where I abet stronger and darker forces or that I was that darker force myself with wicked, hidden, and unspeakable purposes. This same stories awaken trepidation and fear and took them to show an esteem toward me that they do not feel really, but served well to preserve me from greater evils.
So I flew over human miseries, mine and others, filling my empty days with arias and readings that as guardian angels wrapped my soul and let me be happy even in the middle of cruel vicissitudes.
Then again, the meddlesome time stated that I was an old man and to my chagrin my body agreed: each time I told to my body: "Let's run to that bush and jump over it"!, my body answered: "Who, me ?!!
And it happened that the inner child found himself alone: older people thought him crazy, and younger fellows, not understanding his predicament, thought him a lunatic.
Again, innocence and ignorance came to help me, looking around I found that my experience in languages acquired in years of traveling our rickety planet could be used to balance different cultures from language to language.
Unscrupulously and with the freedom that only youth can use I started to be a translator and Luck, who as a good female she is, loves naiveté and babies rewarded me letting me feel my intention accomplished, which is all you need to feel successful... Years went by and one day, adding to my already very confused nature I was informed that I was not any more part of those that warm their bones in the fire of Life.
With my usual soft resignation to the inevitable, I tied up my little baggage with the few belongings I had: some blurred memories of warm and kind hands which owners I couldn't remember and with a feeling of light-heartedness started my journey toward the unknown.
After a trip on a parallel line to time I found myself on a beautiful meadow almost alive in timing with a breeze that made the stems of shining dandelions move as a lively sea.
Colours danced between earth and sky leaving hue wakes that filled the eye with new scents and Immensity coiled in the hollow of my hand as if infinity wrapped around my fingers tried to comfort that daily solitude that clothed me in life.
I quickly removed my footwear and began to walk on the soft grass that carpeted the ground. The contact of the gramma and soil with my feet revealed a new secret:
This was home... No, Home!
I started to run and jump over low shrubs, now my body followed me in happy conjunction.
I felt the urgency to lie down over the grass as long as I were and I must be very long since I could not see my feet. I looked up to the sky, the clouds were so beautiful that I wanted to sing and tell the world my feelings so humankind could be with me in this extravagant experience.
Then I knew it! I had to sing it!, I had to write it! And I remembered a sentence read many years ago, I do not recall where from: "unless you change and become like little children..."
That had been, that IS my Gift: "to change and become like a little child", all my life was like that, full and filled by grace. I understood it then and I wanted to convert that gift in my legacy.
I took a thin dandelion spike and moistening it in some dew drops I started to write this tragicomic story of mine and the secret message so, if there are people who still ask themselves what are they doing in the world, could find a small compass showing that deep in our heart always there is a reason to live.
And then again, my innocence and ignorance make me believe that I have thread for a yarn and as a writer this words will reach the heart of my readers...
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- Written by Liam O'Donnell
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