Translate

Tuesday 18 August 2009

What goes round comes round


This image is a scene of a part of a garden of a house I lived in. This tree is a Holm oak (encina), and our garden had 38 of those trees. The garden was organized within the trees placement and the house was built in order to have the field containing as much of these trees as possible. My mother planted loads of aromatic bushes and flowers and we left the main field with the majority of trees creating a small Holm oak forest, where we had a hammock in between 2 trees and was the best place for reading, relaxing or drinking a refreshment. The garden was decorated with sporadic pots and amphora like pitchers, as you can see in the drawing, and the paths were delimited with small rocks put in a line drawing the garden's natural shapes. We also had a pond with aquatic plants and small fishes.
We had to sell the house. We accepted an offer of a guy with gold necklaces and rings. We said the condition to sell the house was to protect these trees, which they are classified as protected trees. He accepted, although, he said he will remove a couple of them by being transplanted to another place so he could get more light in the house. Everyone was happy. The house was sold.
My family left to live away and I moved to another house in the same area. A month later, in mid summer, they called me to go there and collect the post. I went to the house, and at first sight, I saw the wood piled up by the front wall. I thought they should be very organized as it was too early to buy wood at that time of the year. When I turned my eyes to the garden I felt my heart stopping out of a sudden.

The field was bare.

The trees were ALL cut, but 4 trees displaced at the corners of the field, and the plants were left to die of drought. 34 Holm oaks.

All the memories were slaughtered in a blink inside my heart, too.

I built a painful knot in my throat and my eyes started to water. The knot affected my breath and adrenaline was flushing through my veins. A classic liar, another bastard. The kind of people you'd like them to disappear from the surface of Earth. All those years caring about something, building it, loving it, shaping it in the tremendous slowness that nature is typical of, ... everything was destroyed now, in a few weeks. The last kind of people you would like to sell your home: the ones are going to destroy it. With my stomach pulled I walked towards his door. I knocked his door. He opened the door. 'Oh, yes, the post... here it is!', he told me with a smile.
The rage I was feeling in those moments was clouding my speech and I didn't really know how to say what I wanted to say. How upset I was. How impotent I felt. I took the post with my both hands, and I looked into his eyes. Tears of rage were falling down my cheeks while I inquired him he lied to us, that he was a bastard and never again I will be pleased to talk to him or his wife, because he was a man without WORD, and that is one of the most disgusting aspects of man.
I turned around and left. He called me later, trying to make me understand that they wanted to live their dreams too and to create their space too, and to built their home as well. He said the house was theirs and therefore, they could do with it what they wanted; it was their property now. Nevertheless, for me, it doesn't forgive him for lying in the deal, when it was so clear, when we had other buyers that loved it as it was, but needed more time to get the money. Who created all this tension? Them, because of lying to get the house as soon as possible? Or us, because we couldn't wait to the other people for over a month to sell the house? When you have a buyer, you sell, isn't it?

Since then, every time I had to pass by the house the knot, the rage and the stomach pulled in aroused in my feelings. I always wished to have the courage to punch the wheels of his car, to draw a graffiti on his fence, or similar stuff that I daydreamed while I passed by. I never did anything. I lived my life and moved on.

Now, 6 or 7 years later, some rumors come to my ears. The house is going to be repossessed by the bank as they can't pay the mortgage, they had arguments and fights with home services suppliers because of not paying bills since a year ago, and the house looks abandoned and very deteriorated. It seems is not their home anymore either.

But I don't care anymore. Or should I dress up like a devil, toast wine with my friends and laugh about them? Anyway, I let the universe do the job. I can build my home everywhere I go, as beautiful as I want, and with all the patience is needed to, ...as a good stateless. ;)

1 comment:

Thanks for passing by and leave a comment.