I write these words sitting on the chair of the balcony outside of the kitchen, in José Saramago’s house in Lanzarote. It’s a windy Canarian winter day. “Beautiful and windy Lanzarote” – as I’m calling it since the day I arrived, little more than 5 days ago.
Lanzarote, the house of José Saramago. A place where I’ve always wanted to come to – to get to know him, to listen and to share. It could not be. But I still came. And here I am, in this chair where Saramago is no longer but where he was. Where I am now, letting myself feel what he left, even if he no longer is. And I feel that this chair awaited me, so that I would also sit and share, in writing, the sensations that one day I might have been able to share, in conversation. It makes sense to be here. It seems that, as the sentence in “The Elephant’s Journey”, “we always arrive to the place where we were expected”. Here I am. And the elm looks at me with complicity. Had it been expecting me?
I was thinking today, while getting ready to come here, about what moved me so strongly to come back to his house where I was yesterday. Searching what magnetism could this place possess so that I would want to return and sit and write, in the house of someone who is no longer. And part of the answer is recorded on the film by Miguel Gonçalves Mendes – “José & Pilar” – that I saw again yesterday.
Saramago expressed his wish to Pilar del Rio, journalist and the author’s wife, when she asked him what he wanted her to do through the Foundation bearing his name: “To continue me”, he said.
And what I am doing in these lines is just part of this as well. To continue him. Through my own history, my own vision.
To wander around his house, through part of his history and through a small part of his life that was told during the visit – this was like a journey into the essential. A journey into “feeling more” of a particular person. A walk through places where the books share visions and caress one another, a walk through a time of seeing, a time of being, a time of creating.
To feel the world of José Saramago was, for me, a form of connecting to a way of being in the world, in which the most important thing is what you add to the world itself. What is left after you are gone? What difference do we make while we are here? Where do we sit observing life?
And the confirmation of the obvious is found in each encounter between souls of which place I go to. That the life of those we consider to be great persons, of the authors of those works we consider great, are also “made of such stuff as the dreams are made”: the simplicity of the small things. The meals around a kitchen table full of friends with whom you create projects and you debate life while tasting a nice coffee; the books that you savour from a chair from where you can see the sea; the wind in the sea and in the chest felt in a lunar landscape; a kiss in the old night; tightening the hands of the person with whom you share life; an olive tree that you see growing because you believed it would.
By feeling great – this is how people are made great. By nurturing on the air, on the beauty, on the emotions, on consciousness.
Simple as a glance or a short sentence that says it all.
“To count the days by the fingers and to find the hand full” – such is the phrase of the back cover of the “Cadernos de Lanzarote” volume that I bought yesterday in the shop of “A Casa” (The House). The same sentence was today on my sugar package with the coffee that is offered to those who visit his house. And that is the sentence with which I finish a text inspired by his way of feeling. May it be that the days I count by the fingers always find hands full, of large fingers that are prepared to seize life. So that life is not drained through the open fingers, so that it’s always seized with the desire to BE. As Saramago used to say about death – it is nothing but the difference between being and having been. So that while we are, so are the hands. Full, open and with an all-embracing consciousness.
Thank you, Saramago, for this space of peace and beauty of words that remains free to a wind that blows strong and yet warm. Feeling you during this couple of hours in your balcony was a wonderful journey, made by a small elephant that feels in a big and grateful way.
Lanzarote, December 12th 2013
(Text originally written in Spanish)
Lanzarote, the house of José Saramago. A place where I’ve always wanted to come to – to get to know him, to listen and to share. It could not be. But I still came. And here I am, in this chair where Saramago is no longer but where he was. Where I am now, letting myself feel what he left, even if he no longer is. And I feel that this chair awaited me, so that I would also sit and share, in writing, the sensations that one day I might have been able to share, in conversation. It makes sense to be here. It seems that, as the sentence in “The Elephant’s Journey”, “we always arrive to the place where we were expected”. Here I am. And the elm looks at me with complicity. Had it been expecting me?
I was thinking today, while getting ready to come here, about what moved me so strongly to come back to his house where I was yesterday. Searching what magnetism could this place possess so that I would want to return and sit and write, in the house of someone who is no longer. And part of the answer is recorded on the film by Miguel Gonçalves Mendes – “José & Pilar” – that I saw again yesterday.
Saramago expressed his wish to Pilar del Rio, journalist and the author’s wife, when she asked him what he wanted her to do through the Foundation bearing his name: “To continue me”, he said.
And what I am doing in these lines is just part of this as well. To continue him. Through my own history, my own vision.
To wander around his house, through part of his history and through a small part of his life that was told during the visit – this was like a journey into the essential. A journey into “feeling more” of a particular person. A walk through places where the books share visions and caress one another, a walk through a time of seeing, a time of being, a time of creating.
To feel the world of José Saramago was, for me, a form of connecting to a way of being in the world, in which the most important thing is what you add to the world itself. What is left after you are gone? What difference do we make while we are here? Where do we sit observing life?
And the confirmation of the obvious is found in each encounter between souls of which place I go to. That the life of those we consider to be great persons, of the authors of those works we consider great, are also “made of such stuff as the dreams are made”: the simplicity of the small things. The meals around a kitchen table full of friends with whom you create projects and you debate life while tasting a nice coffee; the books that you savour from a chair from where you can see the sea; the wind in the sea and in the chest felt in a lunar landscape; a kiss in the old night; tightening the hands of the person with whom you share life; an olive tree that you see growing because you believed it would.
By feeling great – this is how people are made great. By nurturing on the air, on the beauty, on the emotions, on consciousness.
Simple as a glance or a short sentence that says it all.
“To count the days by the fingers and to find the hand full” – such is the phrase of the back cover of the “Cadernos de Lanzarote” volume that I bought yesterday in the shop of “A Casa” (The House). The same sentence was today on my sugar package with the coffee that is offered to those who visit his house. And that is the sentence with which I finish a text inspired by his way of feeling. May it be that the days I count by the fingers always find hands full, of large fingers that are prepared to seize life. So that life is not drained through the open fingers, so that it’s always seized with the desire to BE. As Saramago used to say about death – it is nothing but the difference between being and having been. So that while we are, so are the hands. Full, open and with an all-embracing consciousness.
Thank you, Saramago, for this space of peace and beauty of words that remains free to a wind that blows strong and yet warm. Feeling you during this couple of hours in your balcony was a wonderful journey, made by a small elephant that feels in a big and grateful way.
Lanzarote, December 12th 2013
(Text originally written in Spanish)
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