Happy new year

   The last place has always been paired with all the bad connotations. Being last is seen as having virtually no good qualities. Sometimes, not even bad qualities. You just don’t have anything going on for yourself if you come up in the last place. You might as well not run or participate, many think. But the truth is that there will always be a last one, as nothing in this world lasts forever and everything and everyone is doomed to disappear. And someone or something will be last, because things are finite.

 Can you imagine being the last human in the world? Yes, it would be extremely lonely and sad but you would be the last one, the last creature walking in two legs with a brain good enough to create things that are almost impossible. And you would be the last one in that lineage. You would be the last one to understand what feelings are and the last one to know how to attempt and explain them. You will be the last one to love and the last one to properly cry of real sadness.

 That’s all very beautiful, poetic even. You will be the last recipient of a vast history, encompassing bloody wars and beautiful romances. In you, the last remaining body, memories of all that has been and had been before you were born would be deposited. A brain acting as the last vessel for all human thought and advancement. Every single thing that humankind has done will be imbued in your blood and your flesh. When you die, being the last one of us all, an entire part of the history of the universe will die too.

 Tragic but there’s beauty in all the most awful things. We can deny it all that we want but that’s the way it is. Awful things can be fatal, can mark the last part of something, and maybe that’s why they can be beautiful, even in the darkness and among the most despised of human occurrences. Not everyone can actually see that light in the dark, but when you do, it’s the most beautiful thing you can ever see. That’s the world we live in and the world we have made around us, as members of the human race.

 So when you die, being the last of us, you will encompass everything beautiful and everything awful in your own essence, in your body and your soul.  All the concepts, the ideas, the feelings and thought, they will all somehow live inside of you, still breathing even if barely, trying to survive one more day. But, as we said before, being last is something that happens forever, something that does not change, no matter how much we would like it. “Last” is forever and that’s the way it is. So we will have to calm down in the last moments and just appreciate what was and never will be again.

 A year is the same. The end of this year marks the end of a series of events that marked our life that made us into the people that we are. Of course, many of those things will spill put into the next year and the following years, but as our live are so short, we can really define each year with ease. It isn’t difficult to put a name to it, to define it as something. Some years are bad and some are good, for example, depending on whom you ask. That’s the base of it all, the one that’s stored inside our heads for the future.

 It always happens that people begin to think an awful lot during the last few days of the year. They regret not doing some things and are happy that they did some others, but they know very well that whatever has happened cannot be undone and that they will have to deal with it. Nothing is clearer than when a loved one has passed and we remember that year because of it. Of course, its painful, but it’s also the reminder of our own mortality and that we should appreciate every single day on this Earth.

 The thing is we start thinking about what we have done only when the year is coming to an end, but rarely before that. Maybe in birthdays or days when we feel especially sad or down about something, but in many countries the last month of the year is the one with more suicides, homicides and, in general, more violent deaths than any other part o the year. Maybe it’s precisely because we start thinking about things and we decide we didn’t do enough or others didn’t do enough either. It can be a mess.

 The best thing is to think about every single thing we did and not only fixating our look on the bad stuff, which is what we tend to do often. Bad things always seem to be more serious, like their matter more, which is ridiculous. Feeling good and happy should always be as important as feeling like shit, so we should never take it for granted. Taking everything into account is very important and never forgetting that we are creatures made to feel everything, no matter what is and that nothing is forever.

 At the end of this year, we shouldn’t thing too much about the next one, we should just feel content with what we have done and just be on the lookout for the next year. If we want to achieve something special, then we should work towards it, doing whatever is needed to properly reach our goal. And that’s it, do things if you want or don’t do them if you don’t want to. It’s that simple and you should never complicate yourself with silly thought in a moment when you should be celebrating instead of feeling like shit. Jus enjoy the time you have because it is limited and there are no do-overs.

Happy new year.

They speak to us

   If you stand in the bridge, you wouldn’t be able to see it. You have to walk south, by the great way. It’s a rather short walk. On the left bank, you will see a beautiful meadow plagued with trees that are not tall or especially beautiful. However, if you walk across the meadow, close to a wall that limits the growth of plants, you will see a small hill and three trees on top of it. The one with the straightest trunk, clean leaves, and no roots on sight, is the one I want to tell you about.

 Beneath that tree, a friend of mine was buried a long time ago. He was not especially strong or fit or brave. He was not particularly remarkable in any way. He was just my friend and that is the reason why that tree is so special to me. I’ve been there many times, at night and during the day, a few minutes and also several hours. And every single time I visit that place, I talk to my friend. Sometimes there is nothing to say, other times it’s different. It changes, as life happens to be.

 I like that meadow because the sunset look gorgeous from it, the golden rays from the sun seem to be touching your body in such a magical way. Even when it rains, the green field looks as if it had escaped a book of fantastical stories. It’s the kind of place where, in stories, ladies and lords encounter beautiful white unicorns and heroes lift a sword out of a stone. I wonder if thing like that have actually happened there but maybe it’s best not to know for certain and just imagine.

 It feels good to be there, laying on the grass and just hearing the wind caressing the greenery. Flowers are scarce but when you find one, it is sure to be one of the most beautiful botanical being your eyes have ever seen. So many colors and such beautiful designs. They make you realize how perfect nature is and how intricate life can be in order to create things that have apparently little to no value. That’s how simpleminded and stupid humans are, because we just do not understand.

 I’m not saying I do understand but, when I’m there, I do feel different than usual. Sometimes I feel my muscles are stronger than ever and some other times I feel it is my mind that has grown one full size, in intellectual terms. I have attributed this particular feeling to the fact that my friend is there, beneath the tree or maybe inside of it. I have a special connection with that place, that goes far beyond it’s location or the many ways the sun touches the leaves and the rain flows down the small hills. It’s just something that I will never be able to understand or explain.

 I never go to two of my favorite places at once but I do have another natural space where I like to relax my aching bones. It’s a prairie, many hours away by walking from the meadow. It’s on the outskirts of civilization and maybe that’s the reason why it feels so special. It might also be the fact that many great people died there a long time ago and the place became a graveyard, although not on purpose. There’s not a sign labeling it as such and there are not tombstones to read.

 You feel the presence of thousands of soul when you enter the prairie. That one, different from the meadow, is filled with flowers all over. As trees are scarce, flowers grow on the ground, big as the fists of a mighty warrior. The colors are unimaginable if one has never been there and the sound of many birds creates a wall of sound that no scream or weapon can pierce. It is very beautiful but it can also be a little bit too much, if the person doesn’t know how to handle it.

 I’ve gone there for many years, from a very young age. Family members were buried there for generations and I feel that my body will also lay beneath the many flowers of the prairie. It’s not a nice thought on my head, but it comforts me that, at the very least, my final resting place could be that beautiful place full of all many of the things that people in other places don’t really have anymore. Birds and flowers are considered wild nowadays and people don’t like that too much.

 There are no hills, no real elevations on that never-ending prairie. There’s just a road on one side and a road on the other. The rest is grass and flowers and birds’ songs. Nothing much besides that. I relax on the meadow but not on the prairie. The prairie makes me think too much sometimes, about my own mortality and about the many things I have yet to do in this life. It makes me feels I have little time, which is true, but I suddenly hear the clock ticking and it’s unbearable.

 When I go, I only stay for a couple of hours and then leave without a prayer or a word. I don’t talk to anyone there, even if a good part of my family’s bones has fed the flowers that live there. I don’t feel comfortable or happy there. But I don’t feel sad or persecuted. It’s just a very strange feeling of not being quite there somehow… I don’t understand it and I just go there when I feel I need to pay my respects, which happens when I take the road north in order to get home after several days of hard labor. I go because I have to, in a certain way, not because I want to.

 My final spot is not very far from home. I live in a beautiful mountain, which oversees the most amazing green valley you have ever seen. Only a small amount of farms break a beautiful natural landscape. The sound of the stream is the one that always tells me I’m only a few minutes away from seeing the faces of my family. When I pass the rushing waters, I can almost feel their skin on my hands, their perfume on my noise and their happy laughs on my ears. It really is home.

 When I’m there, I often take my family to the other side of the mountain. It’s a bit colder and rockier than the place we live in but somehow I really like it. It happens to be the border that separates our country, if one can call it that, from the rest of the world. Beyond the rocks, you can only see the tallest and greenest trees in existence. They make a kind of fabric that extends for several kilometers and then some more. Water can be heard but not seen and animals are the only ones populating it.

 There are no roads that cross it. No one really dares to go through the maze that is the forest. Some daring neighbors love to go there in the summer to pick up grapes, the wild kind, that grow on the outskirts. The yare very sweet and have a beautiful purple color and kind smell. However, wolves have been known to attack people that stay there for too long. It is not a place for humans to thrive. But it’s nice to look at all those leaves from above, while having a warm drink.

 I enjoy the view alone or with my family. We spread mother’s ashes there some three years ago and I still remember how the wind carried the dust the deepest parts of the forest. I stayed there, waiting for the cloud that was my mother to fall on top of the trees but the wind kept on carrying it away, farther and farther away from everything that woman had ever known. It made me think about her and about every single person I had ever met that was not in this world anymore.

 Those are my favorite places on this Earth. They are so different the one from the other but they do share the fact that I feel my people on them, I feel their hearts and minds and, certainly, they souls. They guide me still in this wretched world.

 I know I will become one of them someday. It might be today or tomorrow or in several years. But I know it will happen. In a very strange way, it calms me to know that they are going to be there, on the other side. And I will still be able to visit all my favorite spots.