FROM THE BOOK "DREAMS LOST IN TIME".
It was one of those summer nights where the heat of the day had accumulated inside the house. Miguel prepared the covers of the bed and put them on the couch where he slept every night, the same place where his late wife had fallen asleep in his arms. The music continued to play to complete the day and to fill the void of the silence that reigned in his life. He wanted to reach the end of each day and feel tired enough not to think too much, to avoid reliving in his mind the images of that final goodbye.
This new context in his life had led him to interpret his existence and one of the others in a different way. Miguel had always been naughty and stubborn about everything that he could not understand or accept as if it was fair, while in reality, it was not. Such a trend had led him to a chronic condition of contradicting everything he had considered as irrational regarding human behaviours and relationships, even to the point of trying to oppose life itself. It was this moment, when he lost half of his life, the other half of his soul, that forced him to accept the reality of facts as it is present to our eyes, how much it hurts our feelings with its contradictions and injustices of which we are completely powerless. Then, we finally realize that we are nothing although we represent a crucial piece of Creation itself.
Miguel was living the third phase of the natural cycle of life, the third Season that predated the Winter of his Existence. He had won multiple battles and experiences that had made of him an impenetrable barrier, where only people elected by his own heart could enter this world of his as so personal and private it was. The only moment that he felt weak and helpless was when he lost the greatest passion of his life, although he witnessed the final moments of several members of his family when still a child, yet different they were. At that hard and cruel moment, Miguel lost the will to live, the will to win this one more battle that life put in front of him. It was as if the Creator imposed him to live a final challenge to his resistance. Nothing had meant to him anymore, preventing him to survive, beating the last period of his existence, the Autumn of his life.
When he lied on the couch, there was in front of him what it had always been his secondary passion. Hundreds of vinyl records were arranged in alphabetical order and by genre, stood in a bookcase that stayed at the bottom of the couch. The old analog sound stereo system with the traditional turntable, amplifier and reel-to-reel recorder, gave an image of its real authenticity, the one that matched this little space of his.
Miguel had always associated his life with music; such was the intensity of this passion of his. The best and worst moments of his life were linked to sounds as through them he could relive all those memories, good and bad, a personal way to exist and correlate events and moments. Every time his friends asked him about his love for music, he answered that Life in nothing but a symphony to which he called "The Symphony of Life", and that absolute silence doesn't exist because even silence has its sound. Around him, all his friends and family shared this world that was so individual and his particular form of living that was associated with a way to experience life, nature and people in a very unusual way. This spirit of his attracted the people who wanted to share this spiritual dimension that was so personal and unique, many of them trying to understand that particular state of mind.
The small apartment where he lived for about five years was decorated in Canadian style, with wood-panelled walls, providing the natural environment of the fields and country life, creating an integration with the forests that surrounded him. Oddly enough, Miguel had always mentioned his desire to live in a small wooden hut where only his music, his books and the company of the one who loved him would be sufficient to fulfill his life. Unfortunately, his professional career dragged him into a different world which didn't correspond to his simplicity of spirit. For him, it was as if life had listened to him and had provided this environment so long desired at this late stage of his existence.
On this wooden wall, behind the recorder, there was the picture of his daughter in his company. In this photograph dated from nearly forty years, father and daughter shared this world of music and literature that was so beautiful and precious. An identical model of that same tape recorder was also part of this picture. In fact, Miguel had bought a similar unit just to relive this ancient environment and all that it represented to his life, the period in which he had been happier than ever, the time when one thinks that we're invincible and eternal, and everything and everyone are beautiful.
On the opposite side of this same wooden wall, a dozen photographs of his deceased wife were arranged. Therefore, mother and daughter were present in his daily life, despite the distance brought by death and different destinies that he had to accept. Given his freedom of spirit, Miguel did educate his daughter in an atmosphere of total freedom; he let her decide for herself about her destiny, even from a young age. For him, our children could not be created for ourselves but for the world, which implied an extreme freedom of thought along with the due respect for the personality of each one of us. In that same context, Miguel had to accept the decisions of his daughter that later on contributed to a fend between them.
Given the injustices of life and that respect for the self-determination of his loved ones, Miguel found himself completely alone in this Autumn of his existence. What was left to him was to live the memories and occupy his time in the most constructive way he could, fighting the shifting moods that brought him grief and unwillingness to continue living.
Miguel used to fall asleep every night taking with him the memories of all these fragments of time that dominated his mind, his soul. These images would never leave him as they were an intrinsic part of his existence. Also, Miguel possessed a very consistent memory, at the point to remember almost every detail of his life, even those that were reported to periods of an early age. Miguel was a "dreamer", as everyone called him. In fact, he lived a very personal world, as if lost in a dimension outside time, far away from the reality that we have to face every day and that sometimes make us perish.
Time and space had a different meaning to him and for that same reason, Miguel contradicted his existence regarding its natural cycle. This fact helped him to overcome situations that usually entailed behaviours adapted to our age, acting as a youngster while being an adult, or as a "young adult" at a time when usually there is no further motivation than the expectation to reach the end of our lives. This inner strength, the energy that lived within him, was the only flame that fuelled his desire to continue to build for him and for others, the ones he elected to make part of his life.
When he fell asleep, he immersed in dreams which were remembered in its entirety while waking up. It was like going in and out of different worlds, of separate dimensions, nevertheless making part of a "whole" that we ignore and at the same time reaffirms the existence of an existential continuity that we all wish it would exist.
That summer evening, Miguel fell asleep thinking about his days of childhood and dating from more than half a century. Before falling asleep, when he closed his eyes, images of his past and his present run into his mind in a random order as it happens in those final moments of our lives where some claim to have relived scenes of their most distant past until the present day in a few seconds or minutes.
Perhaps because it was an exceptionally warm night, it made him remember his moments of childhood where after dinner he went to the backyard trying to catch fireflies, put them in a jar, take them home and later on, stay awake and watch them during the night. It was like a chandelier where they were present to his eyes as multiple and tiny lights, like stars in a clear sky that filled the top of that jar, the world in miniature that made him dream while still awake.
Later and still in his infancy, he remembered falling asleep with a small pocket radio that his grandfather had given him and which he used to put under his pillow. That way, the sound was better quality than coming directly from that little radio. The sound seemed amplified, and he felt as if he was immersed in that musical world that was transmitted via radio waves. He used to tune into Radio Caroline and so he knew all the musical hits of that time. Those were small moments of happiness that Miguel could never forget.
At that time, the summer nights were warmer and apparently longer, mostly in a child's world. As children, our eyes and perceptions capture everything in a different way and in proportion to our height and the way we adapt to the environment that surrounds us. Everything looks big and infinite and therefore everything has a different meaning. Later, this scale of assignment of values and meanings will be changing according to our age and the circumstances around us, though contributing to the progress or decline of our ideals and values, finally, of our "children's dreams". He used to call it "dreams lost in time".
It was with these images of his childhood that Miguel fell asleep again while reliving a few moments spent in the company of his dearest relatives. At that time, Miguel was entrusted to the care of his surrogate mother and his paternal grandparents. Alexandra was his second mother, the one who spent time with him and had to put up with all his whims and impertinence. In fact, Miguel had always considered Alexandra as his real mother, until the moment when at an early age, he witnessed her death. At that time the doctors came to the house of their patients and hospital resources were usually seen as the last choice. This context has contributed to the demise of the most beloved being of Miguel's first nine years of existence.
When he woke up the next morning, he recalled those images, those memories where were present his surrogate mother and his paternal grandfather Rudolfo, who was his mentor and that also replaced his father in a certain way. In his first years, Miguel had been raised and educated away from the care and nurturing of his parents, which did not prevent that his training was directed to all that was positive and constructive. Since that age and as a compensation, he was fortunate for the presence and support of others who brought him the needed love and care to overcome this major shortcoming of his life. Miguel found himself sharing the lives of his grandparents, dwelling on the property of the German Consul in Portugal and it was under the influence of this environment that the first years of his life passed and shaped his future.
He got up slowly leaving behind the "dream world" that had been part of that summer evening and went straight to the room where there was an old photo album. Its pages were about to come away with age and moreover were quite heavy because they were made on a thick card. This picture album whose cover was a dark green, dated back more than sixty years and contained photographs that represented a whole period of family history, images of his past life in the company of their loved ones.
Upon his departure back to Portugal, his mother had left this album he had saved together with other collections of photos he owned. This album brought him the memories of an ancient and recent past. It was through this picture album that Miguel began to relive and write about events related to his life, the return to the roots that translated everything he could represent as a person nowadays.