The boy rode his flying horse galloping through snow trails turn into soft clouds full of foreign dreams. He traveled out of his farmland into boarding schools and Ivy League disciplines. He talked Economics in the big city to then change paths fulfilled by painted dreams. He flew his heart to colorful Barcelona to later find romance in Florence and end up in academical London always longing for more, always longing for change. He moved into filming thoughts into images in New York and overwhelmed by the old, found his new self in LA.
So here the boy-turn-into-this-massive-giant-man is, in LA.
Thirty-five years later for the first time longing for solid grounds.
The man traveled the universe and found the world in his chest.
Friday, August 29, 2008
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Little Girl
Once upon a time, there was a little girl that lived in a fantastic jungle surrounded by the big city. She was one more element of that nature. Every morning, she’d wake up with the cicadas singing from the trees and open her wooden windows to salute the sun, the birds, the flowers. She’d get out of bed still with a head of crazy hair firing curls into the air and her wide mouth full of laughter. She’d start her day by having her bare feet absorb the dew off the damp leaves and wet earth. She’d run around the little muddy trails playing with the branches, dancing with the flowers, kissing the air. She knew every bird by their exquisite singing; every flower by their singular whiff. She’d say good morning to the little monkeys and sit down to hear the old toucan couple love stories. She’d eat breakfast off the trees, filling her little stomach with oranges, bananas, mangos… Sometimes, she’d be lucky enough to find one of the wild chickens eggs left behind, she’d crack them open and eat them raw, swallowing nature down her throat.
The little girl was curious. She wanted to know why about everything. She would walk around the big city with blue make-up shadow under her eyes, claiming they were clouds and not shadows to whoever dared to ask about her lack of conventionality. She’d hold her mother’s soft hands and widen her tiny eyes to the big world full of wonders. She yearned understanding. She’d sometimes go off on a binge of “whys” and get tired by her own interest, she’d then ask mother if she was too much of a asker and mother would tell her to never stop being. Mother told her once that curiosity was a gift that most of the adults had lost somewhere through their rough paths and that kids like her were fortunate to have it. Mother would say that the universe was a mystery and auspicious were the ones who were never satiated by what humanity had believed before them. Mother was to raise her kids to wonder, to seek, to be curious. Father had said once that she was raised to embrace the big world, to spread her wings and fly into the unknown fearlessly - “Don’t ever be a wussy, you have what it takes!” Together her parents had told her never to fear solitude. She was to never forget that they were to hold her hands through her path without needing physical closeness; their presence was to one another unforgettable. They lived inside each other. But mostly, her parents warned her to never let her loneliness stop her quest for answers, for development, for growth. She was raised for the world and not for the little jungle on their backyard.
The little girl grew into a woman. The grown woman with the little girl’s heart remembered her parents’ words. She threw herself into foreign countries, venturing away from her parents’ lands. She traveled miles and miles of earth and upon arriving she realized she had never had so many questions. The grown woman with the little girl’s heart stepped on the cement of the new world she was presenting to herself, with eyes blinded by the new. She was overflowed by all her unknown abilities. She wanted to learn.
At first she felt lonely, too lonely. She felt that it was all so far from the way of being she knew to be. She felt outcast and wrong about her identity, about her ways. The grown woman with the little girl’s heart felt many times broken into pieces by heavy society hammers, only for her to glue each of her little pieces back together, now even sturdier. Through her path, she felt inconvenient in her questioning and unwelcome in her curiosity. “It is what it is, ask no more”. She encountered robot-adults that determinedly tried to shut her down, to show her how inadequate she was being for wondering too much. “Just shut up and sing!” they shouted. She felt beaten by their severity; she just wanted to learn them. The grown woman swam oceans of hardship and unacceptance. She cried her fears into rivers that merged into the open sea and little fishes fed off her salty tears gaining wings from her nutrients. The flying fishes would then always salute her through her sailing afternoons, reminding her of the nutrience of her tears; they’d reminded her that some people sorrows were to others strength, that her sad tears once had given them wings, and it was for her to choose to do the same with her misadventures. She chose to instead of getting hurt by the robot-adults, she’d grown her compassion even stronger, sorrowed by their ignorance. The more she persisted on accepting differences the more she comprehended her own singular identity. The more she kept asking about everything the more she found out about herself.
The little girl with a grown woman’s heart became unafraid of cliffs and downfalls, she had learned how to walk back as far as she could just to gain space enough to run into the cliff as fast as possible, awakening the little wings on her ankles while shutting her eyes and fulfilling her every cell with the little girl’s old dreams, and with that, suddenly, there she was running through her invisible golden ramps over cliffs and downfalls into new heights, Crescent Heights.
The little girl with the strong woman’s heart went through time and space eager to find new truths to break, new “news” to question. She slowly started figuring out her place in the world. She found a career she loved and friends that were to love and be loved deeply. She found a new castle to reside in and a town that she could call home. In the weekends she would run the highest peeks of her land and tell the air to share with her old friends - the old toucan couple, the buzzers, the monkeys, the trees… - that she had never forgotten them, that she had learned to take them with her wherever she was. She had their magic jungle land right inside her chest, and that pumped her bloodstream every time it got weakened by the oddity of a foreign life. She had learned that home was within, traveling with her the lengths of an infinite universe of questions and consequent wisdom.
One night the strong woman with the little girl’s heart started feeling tiny rips breaking out her shoulder blades. Her skin was ripping and it did not hurt; there was something to grow out of them. She fell asleep so fast that she became unsure whether it was a dream. She opened her eyes to a bird’s sight; she was seeing the world from the sky. The little rips on her back were now yellow and red butterfly wings. She was venturing into a whole new land of unfamiliar. She flew the night away drinking the fresh air as nectar. She woke up still sore from the new movements her body was learning, surprised with the dreams that were growing out of her brain.
The strong woman with the little girl’s heart started to feed her mind with fantastic ideas. She wanted to sow dream dust over the big town, inspiring curiosity and love out of the accommodated people in their closed up condos and tiny apartments. She wanted to uncover the secret inside each human being. She wanted to ask the inappropriate, to disregard the absolute truths told, and simply break each human certainty down back to their newborn eyes. She wanted to turn out the brains, which had frozen through the years by their own unforgiving winters, into spring gardens, awakening the sleeping eyes of a gray world into new wonders. She wanted them all to hold each other’s wings and sing in unison with the birds and trees and oceans and all the nature of the living planet they all resided on. She wanted for the world to be aware of their impalpable connection.
One day the strong woman with the little girl’s heart was flying distractedly through the blue skies, when she saw his wings. She had never seen a man so golden. She froze in her flight, as if time had stopped ticking; he had to be an angel. Their eyes touched and they were lost in awe. She saw in him her reflection; she saw in his eyes the curiosity she had only seen in a mirror. She saw in his open skull gardens and forests and high-rise buildings and throbbing dreams. Who was he? Who was that angel-man? They tacitly came closer and held hands; their potency melted in sweat. They were together pure electricity. She was stunned and stung by something she had never known until. That lighting angel was to her so familiar and such a mystery at the same time. It was so effortless to fly with him and still he was an abyss of unknown. She wanted to ask. She wanted to duck dive into his secrets and learn the depths of his dreams. She wanted to share all the life in her chest with him, and she was just as curious about the life within his chest; curious, as she had never been.
Destiny, smart as it is, knew not to overwhelm their longing. It had them living busy lives in different lands. They were to learn each other little by little, never letting the passion overcome the love. Their fortresses were far apart, with thick tall walls to trespass to get in. Through the years they had both learned intricate mechanisms of how to protect the treasure inside their chests. They were then two loners living their aspirations, while letting the people around come close enough to enjoy them without getting into their selves within. They were strong in their respective drives. They were, over the years, now finally grown into two adults with little kids’ hearts inside their chests, full of curiosity and love to spread, only not yet sure enough of how to do it effectively. They were inevitably compelled to learn their differences while always aware of their thin borders and delicate grounds. They were to enter each other’s land slowly, feeling the soft earth underneath their feet while allowing the sole of their souls to learn the best paths to trespass their massive gates. Their fortresses shared walls; they were potentially the same land.
Through the metal fences you could see the vastness of that beautiful world. You could see the highest waterfalls and the greenest grass. There were colorful gardens and thousands years trees. There were nymphs and fairies playing their flutes while sowing love seeds to the flowers. There were flying birds dancing their choreography, with the clouds playing along as their background and little funny monkeys climbing weeping vines and black horses and happy squirrels and loving toucans running around the grounds… That kind of world was to be undisclosed to the masses; most of the humans saw it as too extra-ordinary to exist. Most of the humans felt that world was to be disregarded and disbelieved, and that’s why they kept its metal fences and gates so well shut. But it was there; it was real to the few ones with pure souls and unbroken dreams. Their lands were their secret worlds, still with limited tours to each other.
Day after day, they started to learn to trust their minds to each other’s yearn, unlocking their dreams and fears to each other’s curiosity. Through time, they were to discover how to open up their metal locks to one another, slowly opening up the entirety of their lives; they were to nurture each other’s pure spirit, feeding themselves big spoons of inspirations. The more they learned about each other, the less they needed to ask, the less they needed to say.
What they didn’t know was that through that process they’d awaken hidden monsters and dark secrets that lived under their lands; they would get to encounter their veiled darkness and all the obscurity that they had learn not to expose. Every ogre that protects the Heaven’s gates would come out of their respective caves, jealous of the arrival of an angel and what that could expose them to. The monsters were to be the fear one has of their own self; the darkness that comes out when one breaks down. They were the little demon over the shoulder that says, “love takes too much work, don’t be silly, forget about it.” They were there to never allow one to be completely pure, completely vulnerable. They were to be fed by the carrier inability of facing them, hoping to one day be fueled by the ugliness of one’s soul and with that, contagiously hurt everyone around. They were something so deep and scary that a human being would never be able to face it without growing an inhuman rage into their hearts. The monsters hoped to use their evil tricks to sweep the foreign angel away from their lands, just so they could get back to their corners even stronger without ever being dealt with. The monsters knew to fight even harerd this time because they were aware that only angels had the power of transforming their darkness into compassion. Those two very angels were potentially able to turn their whole shit into fresh fertilizer.
The monsters got ready for the battle, they worn their dirtiest skin and their darkest features. They came out of their caves groaning and roaring, ready for the slaughter. What they didn’t realize was that by exposing themselves out of their own prisons, the two angels became potentially able to reach within their souls.
The angels watched the monsters circling them around, a throng of stomps in their warrior rhythm. But the angels didn't back off, they held hands instead and smiled at them genuinely. The monsters got uneasy, caught by surprise. And so the angels showed even more joy in their freedom of fear. The monster stopped, puzzled in eerie. The moment had presented itself; the angels came around in soft steps and herd them into their opened wings. The monsters shook, fought and groaned, but the angels' hug was too tight for their battles. They were clearly giving in. Slowly, each monster was nurtured into newborn seeds. Caress by caress, after every soft touch of kindness, each ogre started morphing into flower seeds. And from that moment on, a flower would blossom every time a fear was turn into comfort.
Together, the angels understood that they were to cleanse each other souls of all the demons that they unnoticedly allowed to reside in their deepest galaxies within. They were to turn every recurrent nightmare into renewed strength. They were to swim into the depths of each other’s abysses, while conquering their own fears through their partnership. They were slowly growing stronger as a unit, unaware of the golden keys forming in their pockets. They were through time, sculpting master keys to each other’s fortresses, and one day, potentially, there would be no more gates to be broken, they would have finally broken in into each other’s souls.
They will then work in their love happily ever after, flying into each other’s unknown fearlessly, just as she once flew into that foreign land.
The little girl was curious. She wanted to know why about everything. She would walk around the big city with blue make-up shadow under her eyes, claiming they were clouds and not shadows to whoever dared to ask about her lack of conventionality. She’d hold her mother’s soft hands and widen her tiny eyes to the big world full of wonders. She yearned understanding. She’d sometimes go off on a binge of “whys” and get tired by her own interest, she’d then ask mother if she was too much of a asker and mother would tell her to never stop being. Mother told her once that curiosity was a gift that most of the adults had lost somewhere through their rough paths and that kids like her were fortunate to have it. Mother would say that the universe was a mystery and auspicious were the ones who were never satiated by what humanity had believed before them. Mother was to raise her kids to wonder, to seek, to be curious. Father had said once that she was raised to embrace the big world, to spread her wings and fly into the unknown fearlessly - “Don’t ever be a wussy, you have what it takes!” Together her parents had told her never to fear solitude. She was to never forget that they were to hold her hands through her path without needing physical closeness; their presence was to one another unforgettable. They lived inside each other. But mostly, her parents warned her to never let her loneliness stop her quest for answers, for development, for growth. She was raised for the world and not for the little jungle on their backyard.
The little girl grew into a woman. The grown woman with the little girl’s heart remembered her parents’ words. She threw herself into foreign countries, venturing away from her parents’ lands. She traveled miles and miles of earth and upon arriving she realized she had never had so many questions. The grown woman with the little girl’s heart stepped on the cement of the new world she was presenting to herself, with eyes blinded by the new. She was overflowed by all her unknown abilities. She wanted to learn.
At first she felt lonely, too lonely. She felt that it was all so far from the way of being she knew to be. She felt outcast and wrong about her identity, about her ways. The grown woman with the little girl’s heart felt many times broken into pieces by heavy society hammers, only for her to glue each of her little pieces back together, now even sturdier. Through her path, she felt inconvenient in her questioning and unwelcome in her curiosity. “It is what it is, ask no more”. She encountered robot-adults that determinedly tried to shut her down, to show her how inadequate she was being for wondering too much. “Just shut up and sing!” they shouted. She felt beaten by their severity; she just wanted to learn them. The grown woman swam oceans of hardship and unacceptance. She cried her fears into rivers that merged into the open sea and little fishes fed off her salty tears gaining wings from her nutrients. The flying fishes would then always salute her through her sailing afternoons, reminding her of the nutrience of her tears; they’d reminded her that some people sorrows were to others strength, that her sad tears once had given them wings, and it was for her to choose to do the same with her misadventures. She chose to instead of getting hurt by the robot-adults, she’d grown her compassion even stronger, sorrowed by their ignorance. The more she persisted on accepting differences the more she comprehended her own singular identity. The more she kept asking about everything the more she found out about herself.
The little girl with a grown woman’s heart became unafraid of cliffs and downfalls, she had learned how to walk back as far as she could just to gain space enough to run into the cliff as fast as possible, awakening the little wings on her ankles while shutting her eyes and fulfilling her every cell with the little girl’s old dreams, and with that, suddenly, there she was running through her invisible golden ramps over cliffs and downfalls into new heights, Crescent Heights.
The little girl with the strong woman’s heart went through time and space eager to find new truths to break, new “news” to question. She slowly started figuring out her place in the world. She found a career she loved and friends that were to love and be loved deeply. She found a new castle to reside in and a town that she could call home. In the weekends she would run the highest peeks of her land and tell the air to share with her old friends - the old toucan couple, the buzzers, the monkeys, the trees… - that she had never forgotten them, that she had learned to take them with her wherever she was. She had their magic jungle land right inside her chest, and that pumped her bloodstream every time it got weakened by the oddity of a foreign life. She had learned that home was within, traveling with her the lengths of an infinite universe of questions and consequent wisdom.
One night the strong woman with the little girl’s heart started feeling tiny rips breaking out her shoulder blades. Her skin was ripping and it did not hurt; there was something to grow out of them. She fell asleep so fast that she became unsure whether it was a dream. She opened her eyes to a bird’s sight; she was seeing the world from the sky. The little rips on her back were now yellow and red butterfly wings. She was venturing into a whole new land of unfamiliar. She flew the night away drinking the fresh air as nectar. She woke up still sore from the new movements her body was learning, surprised with the dreams that were growing out of her brain.
The strong woman with the little girl’s heart started to feed her mind with fantastic ideas. She wanted to sow dream dust over the big town, inspiring curiosity and love out of the accommodated people in their closed up condos and tiny apartments. She wanted to uncover the secret inside each human being. She wanted to ask the inappropriate, to disregard the absolute truths told, and simply break each human certainty down back to their newborn eyes. She wanted to turn out the brains, which had frozen through the years by their own unforgiving winters, into spring gardens, awakening the sleeping eyes of a gray world into new wonders. She wanted them all to hold each other’s wings and sing in unison with the birds and trees and oceans and all the nature of the living planet they all resided on. She wanted for the world to be aware of their impalpable connection.
One day the strong woman with the little girl’s heart was flying distractedly through the blue skies, when she saw his wings. She had never seen a man so golden. She froze in her flight, as if time had stopped ticking; he had to be an angel. Their eyes touched and they were lost in awe. She saw in him her reflection; she saw in his eyes the curiosity she had only seen in a mirror. She saw in his open skull gardens and forests and high-rise buildings and throbbing dreams. Who was he? Who was that angel-man? They tacitly came closer and held hands; their potency melted in sweat. They were together pure electricity. She was stunned and stung by something she had never known until. That lighting angel was to her so familiar and such a mystery at the same time. It was so effortless to fly with him and still he was an abyss of unknown. She wanted to ask. She wanted to duck dive into his secrets and learn the depths of his dreams. She wanted to share all the life in her chest with him, and she was just as curious about the life within his chest; curious, as she had never been.
Destiny, smart as it is, knew not to overwhelm their longing. It had them living busy lives in different lands. They were to learn each other little by little, never letting the passion overcome the love. Their fortresses were far apart, with thick tall walls to trespass to get in. Through the years they had both learned intricate mechanisms of how to protect the treasure inside their chests. They were then two loners living their aspirations, while letting the people around come close enough to enjoy them without getting into their selves within. They were strong in their respective drives. They were, over the years, now finally grown into two adults with little kids’ hearts inside their chests, full of curiosity and love to spread, only not yet sure enough of how to do it effectively. They were inevitably compelled to learn their differences while always aware of their thin borders and delicate grounds. They were to enter each other’s land slowly, feeling the soft earth underneath their feet while allowing the sole of their souls to learn the best paths to trespass their massive gates. Their fortresses shared walls; they were potentially the same land.
Through the metal fences you could see the vastness of that beautiful world. You could see the highest waterfalls and the greenest grass. There were colorful gardens and thousands years trees. There were nymphs and fairies playing their flutes while sowing love seeds to the flowers. There were flying birds dancing their choreography, with the clouds playing along as their background and little funny monkeys climbing weeping vines and black horses and happy squirrels and loving toucans running around the grounds… That kind of world was to be undisclosed to the masses; most of the humans saw it as too extra-ordinary to exist. Most of the humans felt that world was to be disregarded and disbelieved, and that’s why they kept its metal fences and gates so well shut. But it was there; it was real to the few ones with pure souls and unbroken dreams. Their lands were their secret worlds, still with limited tours to each other.
Day after day, they started to learn to trust their minds to each other’s yearn, unlocking their dreams and fears to each other’s curiosity. Through time, they were to discover how to open up their metal locks to one another, slowly opening up the entirety of their lives; they were to nurture each other’s pure spirit, feeding themselves big spoons of inspirations. The more they learned about each other, the less they needed to ask, the less they needed to say.
What they didn’t know was that through that process they’d awaken hidden monsters and dark secrets that lived under their lands; they would get to encounter their veiled darkness and all the obscurity that they had learn not to expose. Every ogre that protects the Heaven’s gates would come out of their respective caves, jealous of the arrival of an angel and what that could expose them to. The monsters were to be the fear one has of their own self; the darkness that comes out when one breaks down. They were the little demon over the shoulder that says, “love takes too much work, don’t be silly, forget about it.” They were there to never allow one to be completely pure, completely vulnerable. They were to be fed by the carrier inability of facing them, hoping to one day be fueled by the ugliness of one’s soul and with that, contagiously hurt everyone around. They were something so deep and scary that a human being would never be able to face it without growing an inhuman rage into their hearts. The monsters hoped to use their evil tricks to sweep the foreign angel away from their lands, just so they could get back to their corners even stronger without ever being dealt with. The monsters knew to fight even harerd this time because they were aware that only angels had the power of transforming their darkness into compassion. Those two very angels were potentially able to turn their whole shit into fresh fertilizer.
The monsters got ready for the battle, they worn their dirtiest skin and their darkest features. They came out of their caves groaning and roaring, ready for the slaughter. What they didn’t realize was that by exposing themselves out of their own prisons, the two angels became potentially able to reach within their souls.
The angels watched the monsters circling them around, a throng of stomps in their warrior rhythm. But the angels didn't back off, they held hands instead and smiled at them genuinely. The monsters got uneasy, caught by surprise. And so the angels showed even more joy in their freedom of fear. The monster stopped, puzzled in eerie. The moment had presented itself; the angels came around in soft steps and herd them into their opened wings. The monsters shook, fought and groaned, but the angels' hug was too tight for their battles. They were clearly giving in. Slowly, each monster was nurtured into newborn seeds. Caress by caress, after every soft touch of kindness, each ogre started morphing into flower seeds. And from that moment on, a flower would blossom every time a fear was turn into comfort.
Together, the angels understood that they were to cleanse each other souls of all the demons that they unnoticedly allowed to reside in their deepest galaxies within. They were to turn every recurrent nightmare into renewed strength. They were to swim into the depths of each other’s abysses, while conquering their own fears through their partnership. They were slowly growing stronger as a unit, unaware of the golden keys forming in their pockets. They were through time, sculpting master keys to each other’s fortresses, and one day, potentially, there would be no more gates to be broken, they would have finally broken in into each other’s souls.
They will then work in their love happily ever after, flying into each other’s unknown fearlessly, just as she once flew into that foreign land.
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