#18 ‘AgeLess’
ELEMENTARY
18.
‘AgeLess’ - Puppy Love
Time was never passing for me in a linear way, and my age did not follow the expected curve of life. In my small years, I was able to offer mature reactions as they were asked of me and I felt as if a grown-up person was living inside of me. Maybe this is just in general one of the qualities of time, but sometimes the feeling I have is as if living life backwards, going forward in time and age to be born again, while shedding more and more layers off the child within me.
From time to time, there are moments where I get overwhelmed by triggers that make me think about my roots, belonging and passions as driving forces towards that youthful eternity. Moments like when someone dear passes away, moments in which I feel the reality is shifting.
This is one of those days. I am listening to the songs of a warmhearted poet, singer and heartbreaking activist, a peaceful worrior that planted a seed of collective sentiment into us, citizens of a country that doesn’t exist anymore. This is one of those days when the tectonic plates of time are trembling and I find myself weeping for so much at once, my home, country, mankind, and my own destiny while mourning his death.
And just like that, I am realising that I am crying for the jar of honey I already ate a long time ago. Honey made of flowers that don’t grow any more… Just for a moment, I can taste it again and it feels real. Just for a moment, I can smell the white t-shirt of the boy I had my very first dance with on top of one of the humble roofs of my neighbourhood. The search for that scent never stopped. The craving for more and fear of the unknown. The search for that first touch, kiss and excitement of the unfinished.
He was turning eleven that afternoon and I was to follow him shortly. Just for a moment, I was in tune with the time. I felt like an ugly little duckling that couldn’t believe someone that handsome came so close in such a gentle, caring way. In a way that felt that there is so much more to it, only we had no idea yet what. If we were to follow our heartbeats, we would run away scared. Run into the future all at once, run downstream of our emotions, where the blue Danube meets the Black sea, following the smell of the river that makes it all matter.
Born at the same time, sharing the same playground, school, class, teachers, protagonists in the same fairy tale and hymn. Belonging to a generation invented by a story of ideals…
And suddenly, by chance, after what seems like a whole lifetime, our paths cross. We transcendent in time and are eleven again. At the same time, we carry a visible emotional load of two grown-ups and at that moment, we realise we are ageless. Words are not stopping as we are confessing our experiences and the hardships we went through. We are rapidly uncovering our scars in front of each other, drinking all we can find in the grail of time. And suddenly, I have to think of the first heartbreak which I never recovered from. Suddenly, we look at each other and we know by now what exactly would come next. I have to think of the scent that I wish would be around me until the end of eternity. A scent I recognise as my destiny and a part of me that never stopped hurting. It feels lost like all the other elements of living, one grain of sand per heartbeat.
He was a free boy and I was a grown-up girl back then in time. He thought I was shy and all preoccupied with responsibilities. I thought he already had it all by being himself.
It makes me wonder how much our shared excitement for November and sadness at the appearance of the light on the first days of spring have to do with our first kiss, how much it had to do with the search that we have in common, for the edge of the beauty, and how lucky I must be to get this gift of revisiting the imprint of this moment in my life. I am travelling in time and I can all of a sudden, so clearly taste the elixir of what being in love is made out of for me. I am recognising the drops which I would later add to all my future adventures… I don’t know how many drops are still left, but I know I am overthinking it again… I will try to take it easy.
Goodbye, dear poet and singer! Thank you for your selfless love and for the ideals which made us a rare sort of humans. Thank you for making me so sad to open the door to the field of the flowers I thought I will never visit again.
