Recuerdos
Mother Nature is having a bad day. Rain is pouring down and hail is knocking on the windows. The same windows through which I see a saber tooth tiger and a mammoth walking by on the street.
Kids are building a snowman, there’s some drunkard in a red suit strapped onto a reindeer and a random stranger with nipples painted purple yells it’s all a conspiracy theory. I am confused, to say the least.
The calendar tells me it’s been spring for a while now, the forecast tells me it doesn’t like to be labeled. Days of the week, days of the woke.
I walk around the house to fight the cold. Had it not been for the heartwarming love my family provides me with, I would’ve been frozen by now.
I grab a photo album and curl up on the couch in the corner. There’s knocking on the door, the sound of glass breaking and footsteps in the hallway. The door slams open. A masked man holding a blanket runs in and stops in front of me.
“What the fu…” I start, but the removal of the mask decapitates my sentence. “Michael Stipe?” I utter in pure disbelief. Why is the lead singer of R.E.M. standing in my living room?
He throws the blanket in my direction and points at me. “That’s you in the corner.”
“Michael, I’m…”
“That’s you without sun-light, losing vital organs.”
“That’s messed up, Mike. I think you should…”
He walks off without even listening, while mumbling something about a man on a moon, shiny people and how he sometimes hurts. I am left speechless.
I make sure there are no more celebrities hiding in the driveway, tell U2’s Bono to leave, and get back under the blanket with my photo album.
Turning theses pages is a trip down picturesque memory lane. Strolling past walls of text and numerous murals.
I view a scene of a first day in a big city, thinking an armed robbery could take place any given minute. A photo of a man worrying about a nameless girl that belongs to every man in her spare time. Pages full of questionable decisions, mistakes, lessons, depression and euphoria.
A photo in which I sit receiving advice from someone that managed to secure a job and now claims to have a doctorate in how to succeed in life and obtain happiness. There I see myself lonely in a crowd, there I am happy alone.
Photos of mountaintops in Peru, a sunrise from a balcony in Paraguay, a cable car in Bolivia, waterfalls in Brazil, a fight in Colombia, passion in Ecuador, sickness in Bolivia, tranquility in Argentina.
I put on my winter hat and gloves and turn another page, which is empty. That good old smirk appears and I grab a pen and camera. Having no idea what the page will fill up with. All I know is that I’ll make it worth while.
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