Dark grey can also be nice: An Easter tale.

 

Dark grey can also be nice: An Easter tale.

Manuel Ángel Santana Turégano, April 2022

 

Not everything that happens happens for a reason, but everything that survives survives for a reason (N. Taleb).

 

Once you put your thoughts and feelings into words, once you write them, and other people read them, they are no longer yours. Or at least not yours alone. Even less if you express them in a language which is not yours. Though, really, who can claim “this is (or is not) my language? Nobody owns any language. Maybe my gift is that sometimes I can express my thoughts and feelings in ways that resonate with other people. Sometimes they feel connected, perhaps even inspired or uplifted. Maybe that is the justification of my life. There is a short tale by Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentinian writer, called “Deutsches Requiem”. I first read it in my adolescence, it now seems ages ago. Written as an autobiography, it tells the story of a high ranking Nazi official, the night before his death, after being condemned at the Nuremberg trials. At a certain point the author tells the story of a Hebrew poet, David Jerusalem, who celebrated life joyfully in every little detail, and whom he killed at a concentration camp, and makes a little detour to talk about how an apparently unimportant Jewish moneylender inspired Shakespeare’s Shylock, one of the main characters in The merchant of Venice. Without him knowing, that was the justification of his life. It’s strange how life goes: some people live their life quietly, thinking they are doing nothing special and yet they might be inspiring some of the greatest works of art of all times. Other people think they are living such an important life and yet their story will add nothing to history.

 

When I first read that tale, ages ago, abortion had recently been legalized in Spain. Catholic education was compulsory at school under Franco’s regime, until 1978, and well into the 1980s it was still the common thing to do. I do recall being told this story, allegedly based on the life of Ludwig van Beethoven: imagine a child is going to be born in a family with an abusive father. Imagine that child will, in due time, develop a severe psychiatric condition, will become deaf and will never be loved. Do you think that case would justify an abortion? And when people said “maybe” they told them: well, then maybe Beethoven would not have been born, the “Immortal Beloved” letter would have never been written, and we would all probably feel like orphans if we were to be deprived of Beethoven’s contribution to music. What does it take for a life to be worth living it? My late childhood and adolescence was a tough one. Yes, I know they say it is difficult for everybody, that every family has its ups and down. But as Tolstoy said in Anna Karenina "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." I think I was ten years old when my mother broke her leg. She then suffered breast cancer, and after the chemotherapy and all the treatment she got depressed. And ever since she has been on benzodiazepines. They say people should not take them for more than a few months. My mother has been addicted to them for four decades. Yes, I know almost twenty years before the Rolling Stones had already dedicated a song, “Little Mother’s help” to valium, so I guess my story is also other people’s story. But the story of my late childhood and adolescence was that: my sisters and I, by my mother’s bed, begging her to get up, and her crying and saying she only wanted to die. If you are an adolescent you can’t help wondering what is wrong with your family, what is wrong with your mother, or if it is just you, that you are such a terrible son that you are making your mother feel so miserable.

Eventually, with a little mother’s help, my mother survived (she’s still alive) her depression. My sisters and I survived our adolescence. But more than twenty years ago, my perfect catholic family broke apart. We discovered my father had a mistress. He denied it, got in debt, and for a while, until the divorce arrangement, my mother had financial difficult times. It was a nightmare: my father hosted his mistress in the house I had been living up until them, in the very same room I had been working on my PhD.  I do recall it was by that time that I saw a Brazilian film, Central do Brazil: tenho saudade do meu pai, tenho saudade de tudo. So when I saw and ad at the newspaper “Learn Portuguese through Brazilian music and literature” I did not hesitate a second to register. A few years ago I had already read something from Fernando Pessoa, the Portuguese poet, whose first works where in English, and for whom a single life was not enough, and hence he invented heteronyms. Yes, maybe a language isn’t enough, and that is why I am writing this in a language which is not my own (as if anybody could ever have his or her own language). I had such a wonderful time whilst learning Portuguese! Our teacher told us to write a composition under the very suggestive tittle of “Só se pode ser feliz diminuindo” (You can only be happy by diminishing).  I was having such a bad time, and yet I could go there, forget was had happened before, what might happen afterwards and just laugh and be happy. I wrote that composition, and some time later I got to know it had been inspiring for some people. 

Eventually I finished my PhD, I got to work at a University, my nephew was born, then my nice. I guess we could never make it to Tolstoy’s idea of a boring happy family, but I tried my best to have some sort  of normal relationship with my father. I guess I never quite succeeded. Four months ago, before Christmas, my father’s behavior became even stranger than ever, even though it had never been too normal. I had been thinking for some years that he had some kind of personality disorder, probably some kind of narcissistic personality, but after visiting a neurologist the diagnosis was that, no matter which previous conditions he had, he is currently suffering dementia, almost certainly Alzheimer’s disease. After more than twenty years I went back to what was once my home, and my sisters and I discovered very unpleasant truths. Not only he had spent more than half a million euros in his mistress, 27 years his younger; he had borrowed to invest in cryptocurrencies, and had probably rented a room (maybe, my former room) to a prostitute. How else could you explain the box of 150 condoms we found? My mother has recently been having issues with her depression again. Do you know those self- help phrases like “you have not come to this world to fulfill anybody’s wishes, but to thrive? Well, tell that to my mom. When I talked to her the other day she was quite clear: until she starts feeling ok, I should walk her every morning and evening, talk to her. Can you imagine something closer to the idea of “You are responsible of my happiness”? I have been trying for almost four decades to make my mother feel “mostly” happy, to no avail. So, next time you find one of those self-help gurus that say “you should not feel the responsible for the happiness of others” you tell me. I can tell you it is truth you cannot make others feel happy. But I can also tell you that it is quite difficult to avoid feeling, at least a little bit, that you are responsible of other people’s happiness if that is what you have always been told.

 

*******

 

So, here we go again. After winter comes spring, after COVID comes post COVID, after Lent comes the Holy Week and then Easter. Spanish culture is quite strange: you would expect Christians to celebrate resurrection, not death, Easter, and not the Holy Week. And yet, it seems to be deeply ingrained in our culture, the culture in which I grew up, that the celebration of dead (Holy Friday) should be much more important that the celebration of life (Easter Sunday). At my place, the good old ladies seem to compete with each other in order to see who suffers more. I guess they have understood, from what almost illiterate priests have told them, that “suffering is God’s will”, that those who suffer here more will merit Heaven. I know jealousy is a sin, but as the Pet Shop Boys sang in my adolescence, when I lookback upon my life, it’s always with a sense of shame. I wish things could be different, but the truth is that I feel jealous of many people. I feel jelous of the people who say “I know that know, with Alzheimer’s disease, my parents are difficult to bear, but I am happy to give them back a little bit of what they gave me”. That is not what I feel, I do not feel that my parents are a pain in the ass right know, I feel they have always been quite difficult to bear. And I have to use another language to be able to put the thoughts and feelings into words. I have come to a point in my life where I have to take care of my elders, it seems even more because I have no sons. My mother told me the other day: that it how life goes: when you are a child your parents take care of you, and then comes a phase in which the children should take care of the parents. I couldn’t help thinking to myself: “I have the feeling that I have been taking care of my mother since I was a child, so there’s nothing new in that”.

What’s the point of me saying all this? No, it is not just venting. In the fast-paced world we live in it seems there is no place for nuances. But the truth is that between black and white there are fifty (or more) shades of grey. No, I am not saying that my life has been all black. But it is important to differentiate between, at least, white, light grey, dark grey and black. And, nevertheless, it is important to say that even dark grey can be nice. Even though my father and my mother have always been quite different they have something in common: they taught me the perfect recipe for being unhappy. It goes like this: first, set unrealistic expectations for your life, for any life. Then, take the impossibility to achieve your expectations as a perfect reason to be unhappy, the perfect excuse to postpone it: I could be happy if only… Then, feel entitled to a special treatment: life owes you so much. Finally, once you feel unhappy, try to make everyone around you unhappy: if they can be happy even when you’re so unhappy becaus of all you are going through, that only shows how little they love you, and therefore, how right you are to feel unloved and unhappy. 

Eppuor si muove. I do not really know why, but I do certainly love live. I am not sure I can say my parents taught me to love life, but I am not my parents, and I do certainly love life. Even a dark grey life can be a nice life. When I look back upon my life it’s always with a sense of bewilderment. Back when I was an adolescent I thought that my family was perfect, that my life was perfect, but the fact is that things turned out to be quite imperfect. But here we go again: twenty years ago I wrote that is only by diminishing that you can be happy: no matter what happened before, no matter what might happen later, you are here now, you can laugh, you can have fun, you can be happy. That is why I feel deeply grateful. Not only to my parents, who gave me my life, but also to all the people who have taught me how to love it. Because it is one thing to have a life, yet it is another thing to learn how to love it. Because, after all, I am still a boy, a shy boy, sad of eyes, who has traveled very far over land and sea, to learn that the greatest thing to learn is to love and be loved in return. Or, as Vechioni said in Italian, quoting Pessoa in Portuguese, quello che conta è scribbere, anche se si fa ridere....