Saturday, October 20, 2012

There is a free spirit in my room

Liberación by Tania Franco
There is a painting in my house you can’t help but to smile at its sight.

The painting alone could light up any room, and it is not because of its vivid colors, it is certainly on the bright side of the spectrum. It was painted a few years ago by a very talented young woman.

It features a girl. She is wearing a white dress and her arms are lifted. It is as if she was hugging the world and because of this the world is happier. She has that kind of power.

I think she is hugging herself too.

The way I see it, and let us remember that art is always subject to interpretation, it’s the painting of a warm fall. The sun is setting in the background and a soft breeze cuddles the girl in the painting.

The girl has no defining facial features, and why would she? A feeling this liberated cannot be limited to an exact expression. That kind of sensation is a lot more than that, it’s more than a face, more than an unblemished smile.

The floor underneath the girl, as well as the tree next to her, have to know of her joy, otherwise they wouldn’t be as festive, colorful and full of life.

They all make a whole (or at the very least a feeling of wholeness).

There certainly is an air of intrigue in these characters. When admiring the beauty of their feelings one cannot help but to feel joy a hint, jealousy, and wonder: what does it take to be that way?

Realizing that there is such a sensation could be the first step.

I have seen this painting everyday for the last few years of my life. It makes me smile inside and out. She is a spirit that has realized that she can be happy, and I want to share that with her.

She is the love of my life, and she is free.

Sunday, May 27, 2012

In the Shape of a Heart

Photo by: Edgar A. Morales
I consider myself a very fortunate individual. Even though I am not swimming in money I have, in one way or another, obtained everything I really wanted. Sometimes I worked for those things, and others they were just given to me. 
 
I am grateful for all.

But there is one present in particular that meant a lot to me, actually there are two, and they were given to me by the same person at two different times in our relationship. To be able to know what those presents meant you would have to know the context in which they were given, but this time around I’ll only tell you about the first one.

You would have to know that I fell in love with her long before I got those presents, and that I was certain that she loved me back. I am not going to go into too many details, but I’ll tell you that our relationship has been one of steady growth.

We went out on a picnic once. It was but a couple of months into our courtship, and we were getting along famously. I had actually been looking forward to this day because she said we were going to a place she enjoys very much.

She made a prosciutto, mozzarella, sun-dried tomato and garlic sandwich that was absolutely delicious (even accounting for the excessive garlic) and come to think of it, I hope she makes me another one those soon (hint). We accompanied that with a merlot and headed for the beach.

She loves the beach. She can spend hours upon hours contemplating the sea, thinking and admiring its beauty. There is a spot somewhere in Baja, five miles away from Rosarito, behind an old beach house that has a bench facing the ocean. It’s like a balcony with some loose stones underneath and the beach right after. When the tide is high enough it reaches the rocks beneath the balcony.

We sat there and had our picnic. We spoke. We laughed. We contemplated the sky and tried to make sense of the different shapes in the clouds. We saw the ocean and some lights out in the sea, I thought they were boats, but she said they were tiny bonfires in the middle of the nothingness, and I believed her. We saw the sunset too.

We went back home and when I was dropping her off she went inside her house and asked me to wait for her in the driveway. When she came back, she asked me to close my eyes and extend my hands. She placed something in them and when I opened them I saw a rock in the shape of a heart.

She loves to walk on the beach and collect rocks that look like hearts. They are not easy to find, believe me I have tried. She said she found that one just a few days earlier walking in the beach. She said that when she found it she was thinking about me. And now I was holding it in my hands.

I don’t know if that was her heart that she was giving me to care for, or if it was my own heart that she had found after all these years. Nowadays, I like to think that it is a combination of the two.