People ask for so much gentleness, they ask for love and sacrifices, without offering anything in return, as if they deserved everything. But it’s not right, because the more you want, the more you have to be prepared to offer. People who don’t understand this, who don’t know how to respond to every gift, they don’t love and they don’t respond tenderly, become stupider than animals. They’re a waste of space on this beautiful earth, as Grandma would say. They waste the treasures of this world that are given to them abundantly. They just sleep, eat, and poop. And they cover over everything with concrete. The earth shouldn’t offer these people anything. They completely ignore crossroads and magical places and they always want to dominate. And these rebellious places exist, unexpected spaces, where power gurgles up, it teems, gushes out, communicates, gives, asks for, fights against, takes revenge, plays, inspires awe, horror…And mankind wakes up and finds that it’s smaller and weaker than an ant…
–Besides the places I told you about earlier, there’s another kind of place, which you have to find by yourself, your soul has to guide your feet toward it. Sometimes you come across it without knowing. Inexplicably, you feel good there and you want to stay a while longer, to catch your breath a little. This is the place of happiness. You feel light there, you forget all your worries, you forget everything, your memory disappears, your hunger and all your needs disappear, nothing moves, time has stopped flowing and you feel complete peace all around you. And you surrender to that state, in which your body and soul are one with the nature surrounding you. I know several places like that, but I can’t tell you where they are, they’re mine alone. There are lots of them in this village, it’s a big-hearted village, alive and generous.
–I think I have a place like that. I call it the island. A place where I lie on the grass and look at the sky. When I’m there, I don’t miss my parents. I’m not hungry, I’m not scared, even though I’m alone. Even after I leave that place it’s a long time before I get hungry or miss anything or want anything. There, at the edge of the forest, in the abandoned orchard near our vineyard, is the place I visit every year. The first time I discovered it, I was little, my parents were working in the vineyard and I went to look for walnuts. I went in and everything stopped, maybe I disappeared in that circle of earth. My parents noticed I was missing and they were looking for me everywhere, they got scared, where had their little girl disappeared to, and I was close to them, but I didn’t hear anything and I was watching the clouds through the branches of the walnut tree. It was as if I had entered another world, as if I were practicing for heaven. I was lying in the grass and the bugs, butterflies, and little flies were landing on me an tickling me. When I got up and left that place, I was so happy it felt as if it were my birthday, and I had received many many toys and gifts, Mom and Dad were kissing and hugging me, and I had also eaten an Eskimo ice cream bar, made in Bӑlţi, and everything in a matter of seconds and all at once, all those pleasures combined. As if I had woken up from a very happy dream. Then I didn’t go back there for a long time, and when I returned, I was afraid that the miracle wouldn’t happen again, that it had lost its charm and was now like any other place. I would find it quickly each time, by its grass, the shade of the tree, and the ground seemed a bit higher there, like the tiniest little hill. And, each time, I like in the grass and wait for nothing to happen, I tell myself, it was all an illusion of mine, I had fallen asleep and dreamed a place like this, an island like this, but slowly slowly everything starts up again, the very gentle fluffy clouds, the bugs that tickle me shyly and pleasantly, the soothing grass, and the sensation that all the possible joys and pleasures in the world are gathered together here, and they overwhelm you all at once, and you can hardly stand so much love, pleasure, and peace. Then everything slowly, slowly pulls back, returns to normal, the sky is the sky, the grass is the grass. And for a long time, I feel this full, almost heavy beauty in my chest.
From Kinderland: a novel (124-6)
Seven Stories Press, 2023
Originally published in 2013
Read-alikes:
Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland
Labyrinth Literature 