Eclipse

Many years ago, I was in the hospital. I was in the hospital because they had to operate on my lungs. I was home for a while. Then I would go back to the hospital. I was going back and forth. When I was at home, I knew I had to go back. It was just a matter of waiting. I was preparing for my final exams and I only saw my school for short periods. I didn’t complain. I don’t remember if I complained. I would go back to school. I see the people I had spent the last few years with, and then fade away again. At home, I didn’t get along well with my parents. But the period was calm and I couldn’t complain. I was learning right and accepting what I had. I didn’t have the strength to ask for something different. Having someone who could help me was a priority over everything else. As I went back and forth, my life left small images or shorts in my memory. Shorts that have no sound.

In one of these memories, I'm in my room with the blinds drawn. I can still hear the noise. I remember the sound of the blinds, but not many bad moments. Maybe they are hidden in my memory. 

I'm in the room. There's little light, but enough to see around. I remember that one row in the blind didn't close properly. In particular, one on the left. And a lot of light filtered through that hole in the morning. My room's window faced the direction of the rising sun. It must have been summer, because it was a slow, warm sun that filtered through in the blind. It cut through the room and reached me. Where I must have been sitting on a living room chair. I must have been alone in the house. The table in front of me was a camping table. One of those plastic camping tables. It was an old table and it moved slightly as I wrote. I was studying something. Maybe for my final exams. Maybe I was writing my thesis. I don't remember.

I’ve always loved provoking people and breaking the mold. I couldn’t accept that the world ended with the words people told me. They could tell me what was right, and I could even give them the satisfaction of nodding in agreement. But then I would do the opposite. Always. If I had to describe who I was with an image, I was a dead man dragging itself along, and instead of being afraid and asking for protection, I stood up and provoked. And everyone around wonders why I didn’t stop being annoying or why I was not afraid. Like everyone else. Why I didn’t do what everyone else does.

My thesis for the exam. I already had a terrible relationship with several teachers because of my provocations. To make matters worse, I decided to write about the student movements of the 1960s and titled it "Those Fabulous 60s". 

My professors idealized them. Their 60s. But I thought these years had so much more to offer, compared to the things they said. So I spent months reading and learning about them. Learning what no one told me.

I was writing my thesis. I was going back and forth to the hospital. I didn’t know about the many trips I would take. I didn’t know that I would then be sick and then even worse. I didn’t know that I would have a family, daughters. At the time, that was far from me. I lived my life one day at a time in a mix of pain, anger, sorrow, and a longing for somewhere else.

And there are two other images from that period that are from August 11, 1999. I didn’t remember the date. I asked an AI that kept this information somewhere in its neural network. August 11, 1999. In my mind, I have a small photograph and a short. The photograph is of me sitting in a hospital, waiting for results. The room is bright, a light yellow. There’s no one there. I’m in an empty, almost deserted room. I must be on a high floor of the hospital. There are windows but they’re not close to me. I can see a lot of light filtering in and I feel the heat. There’s no air conditioning. So it’s hot, and that heat is another light that I feel in my eyes. It’s the middle of summer and I’m wearing ruined, short jeans. I look towards a corridor on my left. I look down the hall and I have a strong feeling that I’ve been waiting. Waiting for someone to arrive for a long time.

Then there’s a short, which I think comes after. It’s me in a park not far from my parents’ house. I’m near the road and I’m smiling. I can still feel the heat on my back and I look towards the grass. As I look at the grass, I’m holding a colander. The shadow of the colander is projected onto the grass. And there’s something unexpected in that shadow. The shadows of the many holes aren’t circular. They’re crescent-shaped. Each hole casts a crescent that gets smaller and smaller. 

That day, there was a total solar eclipse.

And here I find myself facing the void. I know about the colander. I know about those crescents. But then there's nothing. So empty that my fingers stop and ask me how to go on. 

What comes after these lines is a pure search for meaning. And everything slows down. It slows down like when I look beyond the path I’ve taken and wonder where to go. I can keep walking without asking questions. No one's watching. No one's judging.