NOEMAYA

The other side of hell! Yes, that’s where one ought to be. One must walk through hell, and that’s the best thing that can happen to heaven.

To be living is to be side by side with hell, and it’s a law of nature that one always starts off facing hell and can either stay still or walk in a straight line. 

The other side of hell, is the wise man’s choice, for at least you’re facing away from it; but to get there, and in accordance with the law, one must walk through hell.  

I remember reading in history books that early communities, primitive people, always chose to live in the vicinity of water, as that’s the most nourishing element of life. 

As regards the soul, man has always lived in the vicinity of hell. And that’s where life develops and thrives. 

There is always more hell in life than life in hell. 

The shadow; it’s the shadow of all things that calls all the shots, that arises in all anonymity and touches all that can be touched and hears all that can be heard, and knows all that’s known and all that is unknown. It’s a matter of all differences, of an old woman in the cave of the heart who beats the drums of eternity so that we may awaken from our innocent slumbers. I have heard the footsteps of hell, as it makes its way to my crown, and the click and clack of its heels echo ceaselessly so that they become all that I hear. And I live in fear, and all that hell had to do was to create the echo and not the evil itself. 

Who knows what sense can come out of nonsense! Who knows what this wall is all about, these steps that spiral down into a melting core of undifferentiated mess. And there’s the statue, in the deepest of all depths, of a man with a rising arm and without a head, with missing fingers, and he’s partially lit by the flickering fibers of the eternal fire. In one instant I feel the warmth of a distant memory, a shadow on the wall  that takes me back to an island in Greece where my heart can’t even fathom the bliss. I am this idealist and carry an unrealizable heaven within me. It’s so sweet, it’s so warm, like the afternoon sun shining on a resting body after its meal and tropical drink. That’s where the gentle wind blows through the half open, tall windows and caresses the sheer curtains; it’s calm and the mind dwells in the ground where it belongs. We want nothing else from this moment, absolutely nothing else. 

Where’s the depth that speaks to us, in its secret language that we feel but can’t decipher, neither do we feel the need to decipher. It’s the open secret; it’s the known unknown. And I long to melt back into those moments, moments that can only be found in the past, for they are created in passing and in the past-ing.

They say memory is information grafted somewhere in the brain. But that’s not how I experience memory. My memories are living experiences of parts of me that are still living in the places and situations I have visited. I have left them there because they didn’t want to leave but they are still living. And it strikes me that if I am still living everywhere and at all times at once, then all places and times must be living within me! 

How can I put in words the overwhelming memory of a simple glance at a wall I had in a random moment at a random part of a street in Favignana island in italy? My heart is still there; I am still there, more of me than it’s here. That setting sun and the inviting water that in the dark of the night became the most sublimely terrifying being whose presence couldn’t be ignored. And how about that presence? The presences that still present themselves even in the absence of a face and a form! When there’s fear! When there’s nostalgia! Ahhh, nostalgia. It’s this eerie but at once sweet feeling. But nothing has as much weight in my heart as the late afternoon hours of the sea. It’s the most unfathomable and yet memorable moments of my life where I can remember all the things and the shades of the things with their peculiar arrangement, with all feelings and moods that I had at the time. It moves me as I write, as if I am a man of sunset and nothing else. I feel so strange right now, and more than just feeling; there’s a weight, an existence that is painted the golden sun of the late afternoon sea. Oh, late afternoon hours of the sea! There’s so much existence in that hour, so much curvature and so much being and so much unspeakable feelings; it’s in the heart and the gut. 

I am that I am, I like to be buried in a late afternoon by the sea, when the beautiful blue sea transitions into darkness, the chameleon that the sea is. When the watchers get up and take their leave one by one and the sea is left alone in its frightful majesty and swallows the whole sun, that’s the mesmerizing hour of my life. The world is different at that hour. There’s a sense of finality to that hour, a finality and horizonality that I wish was never final. And this reminds me of a similar mood when I’m walking in the airport after seeing a friend leave and fly away. And can you imagine how burdensome it can be to stand alone in the airport after the departure of a friend and all of this is happening  in the late afternoon hour? That’s where the heart chokes, and I choke, and yet there’s something strange about these things that can’t come out. There’s something ineffable there in those hours, in some hours, and I can’t put a finger on what it is but I know that some hours are more than other hours, that Being doesn’t distribute itself evenly in time. In the late afternoon hours of the sea, something ineffable about the truth, about the nature of reality itself, even about God!