In wonderland

I have that clear image of happiness, and if you have read my blog for a while, you already know this. In this post I explained it for the first time, by writing a little fragment from a writing of mine which after translated I could not understand anymore. It seems I’m even hard to be understood by myself, sometimes. No wonder. I remember deleting the translation, but today, while searching for some pictures I found a “New Word Document”and opened it up. It was the translation. I tried to adapt it and change it so it would be more understandable and less a translation. If you notice mistakes, be kind and pluck my sleeve.

Explanation.

Now, I would really like to explain it first, I’m afraid that my poor English will interfere with your understanding of my writing.

When I wrote this I was very unhappy with my friends, with the society I lived in (and still live but meanwhile I decided  I will ignore some things). I hated how in my little town there are 2 clubs, one library missing a lots of books, one theatre, no cinema, a lot of pubs but no book club and so on. That wouldn’t have been that bad if the youth in my town still frequented the library in a larger number, and the theatre not only because they feel rich doing so (although the theatre is not the proof of wealth of the one who frequents it, they still feel rich going there, they don’t go for the culture, but to dress in a more special way, wear make-up and socialize). My friends back then were like this too. Clubs and drinks and expensive dresses. I was the only one reading in that group. And I still think it is very sad for a library to be less frequented than a club (a bad one too).

So I imagined myself in the 1800 period.  Let’s say I just traveled in time. I was wearing my regular clothes, I wrote about my REAL passion of looking at asphalt, streets and houses and seeing the things they saw. I imagined a relationship breaking-up because the marriage wouldn’t have been a good deal for their families. I gave life to the house telling me this story.

I imagined  the people being as superficial as today. Wigs, thin waists, little umbrellas for the sun. I imagined them laughing at me because I wasn’t like them. All I wanted for it to mean was how unaccepted I was feeling in both my reality and my imagining of the past.

Somehow when the horse scared me, I was already at the end of the city. I throw myself to the ground, I am the traveler in time who wakes up in the country side, in the same time period. I remember my image of happiness and I see that girl who makes me go up the hill. When the deer ran down the hill, I followed it. And that was happiness. Similar to what I believed it to be, but still different. In what I believed to be happiness there was no deer, no other girl, I was dressed in a simple dress, not in my modern clothes. Maybe what I tried to say by this is that … although the happiness we feel or receive is different from what we imagined it would be, it is still… HAPPINESS.

I wake up with a headache and realize that happiness was a dream. When the horse scared me I hit my head, and so… went instantly to sleep.

In the end, again, I felt I didn’t belong  to the past  nor the present. I could choose to imagine a past which didn’t accept me or a present which didn’t feel mine.

Read it, if you want. And tell me if it makes sense, or if I can explain more.

I don’t belong…/ The imagined time traveling by Miss Audrey

19/04/2010 

I would like to walk on a long street, with beautiful old buildings, telling me their stories about stupid wars, about secret loves, full of passion, about accidents. One of the buildings will tell me (with a tough voice) how in her time, the children were still children, not pure souls dressed as adults.  Another building will tell me how once it was the witness of a break-up between a fine woman, from the good society (it seems back then “a good society” still existed) and a soldier who was having a leave. He was without fortune. The building tells me how the two characters only allowed it to listen because her windows were closed (oh, but the house looked anyway… through the keyhole!) After the break-up, smoke was exiting through its chimney – similar to what happens at Vatican when the new Pope is chosen, the house tells me, for telling the other buildings the delicious scene. “But I don’t believe in Religion, I’m not but a house”, the house tells me and closes its windows.

I would love to walk on an old asphalted street with the fabulous speed of 1 cm / minute, holding a huge magnifying glass in my hand. I would love to feel the asphalt, it’s not necessary for me to see there anything special, I will believe that I see because the asphalt is old, the women used to step there on every Saturday night on their way to the theatre, then Sunday evening on their way to the Opera. They had long dresses, tight – too tight at the waist but large below the waist, they had little umbrellas, so the sun wouldn’t burn them, lacquered shoes and white socks – it didn’t matter that white fattened, what it counted was that black attracted the sun, not that it would have made them look thinner. They were always holding hands with men, but only by those who they knew or the society would have had a wrong opinion about them.

I cannot find anything on the asphalt. I think, just fascinated, at the entire scene in my head when a car races in front of me and spatters me with mud: “Damn!”  I know, it is not nice for a lady like me to talk like this, but a lady like me is also not looking good covered from head to toe in mud, and still…here I am.

And so  I would like to take a walk on an old street, on its side there are old houses, older than me, so old I just can’t know how old. I am dressed in jeans and a chemise and I’m the discrepant thing here, in this city, in this country, I would not go as far as saying “this world”. Anyway, it could be said that I am too full of myself to be dressed so simply in comparison with these women who are struggling with the tight garments, because they want to align in their own beauty ideal. They feel good. They feel loved. But they are all the same. They all have curls, they all have dresses, and they all have the same kind of shoes. They all wear strident make up, they all have a man stuck on their arms.

But I am alone. Maybe I would be burned alive for my courage of not wearing much make up when going out. But it is not the Middle-Ages I imagine right now, so let’s return to our time period.

Some women laugh discreetly when seeing me. After I pass-by they gossip with their company. I can hear them but I do not really care. Maybe I am too willful to care. I DO NOT BELONG TO YOUR WORLD! I do not belong to my world… I do not have to be like you to feel good, mais merci, merci beaucoup Mesdemoiselles. Do you actually know what the music I listen, the books I read, the books which meant something for me; do you really know what these things that can make my day, my life brighter, mean? No. The things that exist in my world do not exist in yours. Probably you’re as ignorant, naive, in my world, as I am in yours.  I chose to be.

I could simply listen to music, but the horses running make a sound which is special for me, special probably because it is too rare in my world. What is the price for a carriage? I have no money.

A horse gallops towards me and afraid, I throw myself on the pavement. I actually fell on something soft, I open my eyes and see it is grass,  I realize that I exited somehow the city, not long ago, and the horse that sent me directly on the ground was coming from behind, with a carriage driven by an ugly man. “Damn it!”, I say again.

I lay on the grass. It is soft and somehow I feel like at the seaside, with the sun blinding me, entering my eyelids which are, it seems, not opaque enough.  There is a feeling of peace, in the nature. It is quiet and it seems like the time stopped.

I have known since the time I was a child the image of happiness – for me, of course. There was I, running down a hill, in a hurry, with the wind blowing up my dress. In this image I had braids, like Heidi, and I was laughing. I never found it, this happiness…

But I stay on a hill, with trees behind me and I read an interesting book. I am alone. But why would you be less lonely between people that you don’t like– actually – who do not understand you – actually, than between the trees, between the insects.  In the Universe. We are alone and still we are not. We are born alone and we die alone. The rest is optional.

A deer approaches me.  Behind her there is a girl just a little younger than me. The deer lets me stroke her fur, so I stop reading.  The girl’s eyes tell me to follow her. She has a beige dress, way more modest than the ones I have seen in the city not long ago. Her blond hair is braided beautifully and lies on her shoulders. We were climbing the hill for some minutes when her house appeared in my sight. The house was also modest, and close to it there was a stable. The deer though had other plans and started running down the hill, and I decided to run after it. I was dressed in my jeans, my chemise, and I ran laughing after the deer, the wind was blowing up my chemise. That is pure happiness.

I have a terrible headache. I open my eyes, I see the sunset. I do not know how much time has passed since I fell down the hill, since I practically fell on my head.

I am walking home; too much time has passed since I left the city. It is Saturday night and people are going to the theatre. Or to the club. It really just depends in which world I choose to live at the moment. I do not belong to any, so what is the difference?

Tags: books, fiction, life, love, past, people, relationship, society, stupid people, travel, writings