little book of thoughts forgotten

[Ruby Blue]

i wrote this when i was in spain. so i guess this was -2011? hah. time flies. i found this the other day in a very small book i had been carrying with me for my travels...a book i had totally forgotten about, until i found it again while moving to my new house.
small things are easy to forget and miss-place.
i had been watching this old woman struggling to walk...her spine bent over into a perfect "S"... struggling to carry her bag. i would have asked her if i could help, but i did not know the correct way to ask in spanish. if i could go back to this moment i would just have taken the bag from her, without saying a word. forcing her to let me carry it for her. but i did not. i thought if i were to do something like that then she would think i was trying to steal her groceries..so ...with that...it's better i didn't try and help. we all have to carry our own baggage, i suppose, that's life.
i only had this handbook of simple phrases in spanish to get by on... ...i'm a fool. a real don quixote.... quixotic.
i love seeing how well i can make it in a foreign place without speaking a word of the language. china taught me you can get by pretty well anywhere in the world if you follow your instincts and understand body language.
anyways this is what i wrote after observing her
~
old people are brave. old people are brave because their bodies have become so fragile and they have to live in a world thats changed so much from what they once knew when they were younger. then again, people are astoundingly adaptable! and those who cannot adapt, die young.
what do old people think about? the past? death is something very near. do they think about death a lot? maybe they have a lot of peace inside? maybe they don't. i guess it depends from person to person, just like anybody else. some people live in the past. i think that most likely a lot of old people must live in the past. constantly going through memories. maybe it's better to lose your mind completely, have no memories at all. then again, that depends on what kind of life you've lived. but i'm sure all people have memories they would gladly forget. it would be hard not to live in the past, after a life time of memories.
i wonder how old people survived at all?
will i grow old?
i think not.
i smoke too much--and i don't have money--a husband--or a family.
i wonder how i will die?
i picture myself laying on the ground--eyes open--glazed over-- head bleeding.
am i smiling?
i hope so.
i hope i see the angels and spirits come fetch me to help me find my way to that other place.
i've always wondered, how can you see with no eyes to look through~ mmm. that's a tricky question!
will daniel be there?
i hope so...
i wish i was brave enough to grow old.
but maybe i will be brave enough to die for some thing or some one?
that would make my life worth while.
i think if it was that way, then i would die smiling.
i didn't find anything special in madrid but maybe thats because i'm not looking hard enough, or i'm too blind to see it.
i found Ritiro Park, the place i dreamed about. in fact it was that dream of ritiro park that led me to come to spain despite all odds. if it weren't for that dream i wouldn't be here. first and last time i will ever have a dream about a place that really exists in reality. maybe? maybe coming here was just for that. just to see that park? for some reason ritiro is a distant memory for me. it is as familiar as a person, a close friend, a lover even. when i walked through that park it was like visiting a memory forgotten. i believe that, that park called me to it. it must have. other wise i wouldn't have had that dream. that dream i had a year before finding the park existed on planet earth! it must have called me to it, otherwise i wouldn't have dreamed about it, otherwise i wouldn't have found it.
when walking through it, i felt joy at first, but then when i walked to the center where there is that square lake, just like it was in my dream, just like the tourist video i found on the internet shortly before i booked my flight. the video that confirmed that my dream was about a real place. that lake ...that square man-made? lake!! that made me book my flight to spain!!
when i saw it there so silent, so still, it was like so much had changed, and yet remained the same. but how could i even know that? how could i know a park so well? my heart broke, and i started weeping. i will never know why that park means something to me. my heart understands things that my mind never, ever, will. i just wish i knew. i just wish i knew what that park meant for me... in a past life...
what am i missing? why did i come here? to find direction? i feel so lost! the only thing familiar to me is that fucking park and i walk through it every day as if asking it to tell me it's secrets. explain to me why~ but it is just silent. it just stares at me as i stare back at it. the only sounds i hear are the ducks in the pond, the wind through the trees. the music played for the tourists. the talking and laughter of people walking by. the park speaks in a strange way. but there are no words for it, really. it is silent. like a grave. and only my heart seems to know what my mind will never translate. did i die there in a past life? or was my heart broken there? i will never know.
the economy is fucked but so what... the whole world is fucked! what a mess we live in.
i don't have any finances to worry about. the economy being fucked really doesn't make a huge difference to me. it's not like i have any investments, a morgage or a career. i just have a highschool education and a head full of my life dillusions. i'm just a wandering fool. and yet, i guess these things have a way of affecting all of us.
i just don't feel the impact of it. or i just don't care enough to notice it. no i care, i care enough to force myself not to. to get through the day...i have to pretend that i don't care.
i try to pretend not to see what i see. people starving. doing anything possible to get a dime. protesting. angry. and rightfully so. i really was expecting bad things to happen to me here. i expected to get robbed or raped. or both. nothing bad so far. lucky.
lucie says that i am the most unlucky- lucky person she ever met...this is because she wittnessed time and time again things go wrong, and then right with me. i was always loosing things and then getting them back. my laptop i left on the airoplane, i got that back at the airport. only realized it was missing once i reached my hostel. and my camera went missing and returned to me also. yes, i am unluckily, lucky. lucie...she was my best friend in madrid.
in a way, in the deeper part of myself, i didn't mind if some thing bad happened to me. i was expected nothing less than death going to spain alone. of course at the end of the day, when it comes down to it, the will to survive is strong. human nature.
although, my trip started off as a kind of a suicide mission and another one of my very strange experiments. this has been the most dangerous experiment so far... i wanted to see if i could survive with hardly any money, not knowing anybody, or the language...literally following my dream. and...well...i survived, at least until now... that really surprised me. and i'm grateful.
i hoped to lose my life, but i keep on finding it, again. funny how that saying is true. after daniel died i really went off the deep end. going to spain was the butterfly effect of daniels death. when he died some thing in me died too...died and came back to life.
pretending that i don't care.
i feel like an asshole walking by a beggar. sometimes i have nothing to give. some times i do.
none the less it always makes me wince, and pinches at my heart.
what are we going to do?
how does the story of mankind end? well...i guess if we knew the beginning we would know the end now wouldn't we!
random thoughts--i've met so many people--some i'de keep in contact with, some not.
different people have taught me different things.
to name a couple of the many:
lucie taught me how important it is to try and understand other's no matter how different they are. that friendship is really one of the most important gifts! if it weren't for lucie's friendship i would have felt a lot more lost than i already did.
alvaro taught me how easy it is to be so dangerously miss-understood by other's and he showed me a kind of selfish hoplessness that really blew my mind. his room-mate comitted suicide after he did a monolouge about "the pillow man" which is a bed time story about death! a monolouge that personifies death speaking about how it is this nice comforting thing...like a pillow that sofly puts you to sleep...
that same night he preformed this monolouge his roomate went out to some train tracks outside the city and put his head on the tracks. his body was unidentifiable...or so alvaro told me. the room-mate did it because the girl he loved did not love him. terrible. was it alvaro's fault. no. strange coincidence. who knows? life just gets too painful for some people and they let go. alvaro's monolouge about the pillow man probably was just the last straw, tipped him off over the edge. a helpful nudge? brutal. life can be brutal. and it can be beautiful. sometimes when people intend to help, they don't.
spanish men have taught me that... they always leave!
i've gone from one empty romantic encounter to another.
but i guess to be really honest. i wouldn't have wanted any of them to stay.
i'm crazy, i know...i must be crazy.
i'm crazy because despite cruelty, dissapointment, and broken relationships i still believe in love. i believe in love like i believe in god. they are one and the same.
we don't always get what we want -- and we generally want what we don't need or are not allowed to have-- and some times the things you love the most, life demmands it back as a sacrifice. i have always had to sacrifice the things i love most. i am never allowed to keep love. it demands me to let it go...and i always do. maybe it makes the space inside for me to love bigger... i think if i could try and count the amount of how much love i have, it would be as numerous as the stars in the sky. boundless. endless. infinite. free.
one page seems so big...in a small book.
i mean that, a short story in a small book, seems bigger.
~although, i added a lot of things here, that i didn't write down originally in my small book. it reminded me to write all the things i forgot to mention before. like the dream. and the park.
the truth is, i am an old woman...i am an old woman trapped inside the body of a 27 year old girl. when i saw that old lady walking, i could feel what she felt, like it was me walking there...inside those aching feet, inside that crooked back. inside the past.
lost in thoughts.
do we all have a life dillusion that keeps us going?