Hello Stranger,
Waking up at 4am is like getting a really strong slap on the face out of nowhere – my head is ringing, suddenly everything is a blur and I’m walking around rubbing limbs that have gone numb from the shock. I’m finding salvation in Nirvana’s songs. I must have listened to them last 5 years ago. But “Something in the way” helped me tune into the early hours of the last Friday I will ever be in my twenties.
The Hamburg airport is becoming a well-known stranger. We greet each other with a cordial head nod like English royalties. We take regard of each other’s existence and hope to plunge back to our separate lives quickly and with not much interference. I have 3 flights on my agenda today, 2 of them before 10am - Düsseldorf, Zurich and finally Barcelona. Like an old dog I’m going back to the one place that has left more storytelling on my skin than the ink of my tattoos. Words like sun, love, friends, mystery, cancer, disappointment, yearning, hear, hope, fight, courage, eternity roam the streets. I welcome them all like old friends and equal enemies - inconceivable elements which have shaped the edges of my being.
Why is there so much fascination about Barcelona? On the outside the recipe seems fairly simple and easily reproducible – throw lots of stones, dirt and people into a pod and stir energetically. Yet only a handful of places can make this mixture worth returning to repeatedly. It’s the secret ingredient. Like every great storyteller, Barcelona knows how to keep her admirers drunk on the sole words she whispers in their ears. So many people like me have carved their deepest sentiments into the walls of this city. It’s like a giant ship carrying the load of centuries of romance, failure & hope. And she’s sailing toward an unknown destination. You can feel her moving, you can sense her body breathing heavily under the weight, yet her face remains gracious and unrevealing. Whatever secrets she has swallowed, she keeps them locked forever in a heart made of sandstone and salt water. And I, like a foolish young soul, will always love her. No matter what the terms of our relationship, she manages to draw out from me new metaphors in search of ways to paint her proud image. Some people fall in love with Barcelona for all the practical advantages she offers, others hate her for the truly untamed character she exhibits. I’ve developed an immeasurable affection for this secret keeper, who’s found space within her mysteries to guard tenderly a piece of me as well. It’s her streets that lead me like a lost child back to the path where I first found how strong my will to live is. The city is now an eternal symbol of the strength I needed, of all the ghosts I had to overcome, of all those friends and strangers who stretched a hand to pull me out from vertigo of sorrows and fear.
That’s what Barcelona is for me – that secret box some keep under their bed, the locked diary hidden among a row of books, the old photo album neatly folded under a stack of magazines. And when I turn the key and peak through the belongings I’ve surrendered to her, I find so much happiness I’ve been blind to for years. Like the way May has always made me feel in my childhood – the first month of the year with long warm days, which undresses you to the comfortable layer of a thin shirt. It’s the month when the lilac tree in our garden will begin puffing clouds bursting with sweet aroma. My home town will suddenly become alive under the chimes of high school graduation festivities and all sorts of other holidays. They will throw the locals into a long string of busy preparations and celebrations, making all troubles fade quietly into a thin vale of indifference. Once all this hype begins stirring the air together with the lilac blossoms, my stomach will murmur pleasantly with anticipation of my Birthday.
I’m turning 30 on Monday, a memorable day NOT because it’s my special day, not because I’m getting older or because I’m stepping into a new decade, but because sometimes such milestones matter for the mere fact that they help us find the way to that box, diary, album. Putting importance in a sheer moment can help us dust away the lid over those unpractical feelings & memories we tend to ignore in our daily round. They are the ones that remind us why life is a great story and that it’s up to us to decide how it will be told – like a short newspaper strip, a smooth sailing report, a catching thriller, a wild romance or a sad song. And today flying towards the laid back sunny face of Barcelona, towards the vault of all those old friends and enemies within me, I wonder if I have managed to grasp the grace and wisdom from all the adventures in the past 29 years, if my heart has healed from all the battles and mostly – how do I want my story to be told.
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| Els Castellers, Port Vell, Barcelona |
I look over my left wrist. The "BE NOW" phrase is tattooed on my skin and it gives me a feeling of complete calmness. No matter how hard my screenplay has been at times, no matter how often I’ve wanted to leave the skin of this role & fast forward, now I know I prefer this novelty - the one with ups and downs, which bring new encounters with people that change me, the one filled with sarcasm and humour in hard moments, the one with a lot of memorable revelations, unexpected travels and hopefully with a little bit of love. It has taken me 30 years to arrive at this gate and understand how thankful I am for the story of my life and every moment in it. And I’ve needed a great city like Barcelona to finally make me start living in the meaning of the words “BE NOW”.
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| Direction?, El Raval, Barcelona |
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