The dive

Sleep, don’t


Nightmares overdue. They came. At last.

“Breathe! Breathe!”

Not everything can be controlled by brain power.

“No, no… don’t! Look! I’m breathing…”

But as I fall asleep, I seem to stop breathing. I’m tired, I want to sleep, but if I do, I stop breathing, and if I stop breathing the alarm goes off and they’ll put those two swords down my throat again…

“Breathe Nic, for god sake, don’t sleep, breathe…”

In my sleep, spiritual connections are built with the deepest me and with some distant places, where I’ve been to, but never been to. Where I existed once, but never was. Empty spaces, bright lights, dark places, noise and silence.

And now, everything flows smoothly through my links. Everything is clearer and scarier at the same time. Everyone’s around me, but I never felt so lonely before. It’s all about staying alive, but I’m not afraid of dying, I’m afraid of living.

Of air and fire


“Can you tell me the story of your adoption, daddy?”


She asks. Of course, I can. I always can. It’s the only story I really know.

“Sure, so…”


But then she asks for the things I don’t know, “why did your mum leave you?”

Innocent questions, deserve respectful answers. It took 40 years, but at last I found a vessel to navigate through my void. I can sense she wonders. There’s a missing piece of information. The one I don’t have myself, the one I cannot narrate to her, the one I have to live without. She wonders because that’s all one can do. Documents tell a cold story, but we both love the romance. So, my story becomes the romance with the happy ending.

“I don’t know, but so many things happened so that we could be together today. So many things that’s hard to believe it’s all coincidence. I don’t know who painted this picture, but I think we ought to be grateful. I am. You make it all worth it.”


All questions evaporate when a little girl hugs her dad.

It burns inside me, and it hurts. Outside of me life flows without a glitch, unaware of what’s happening inside. She’s the air that keeps my fire alive, even if I fall asleep, even when miracles stop happening. I get out of my cocoon, raise my awareness and I am not afraid of living anymore.

Stories


Impact day. “Do you remember anything of that day?” To date people ask me about it and I give the same official answer to everyone: I only remember images.

Fact is, the question is incorrect. Because I can’t remember anything, as one would remember things. I know and can still feel what happened that day. One thing is engraved in me more than anything else: the desperate hug that kept me in this world.

Months later, when I could finally walk and drive again, I went to visit him and during a dinner filled with decent amounts of alcohol, I wanted to re-enact that hug. Simplicity is the key to the some of the biggest gestures in life. That’s the image I didn’t see, but the one I could feel and will remember forever. Powerful images with dates on them.

My little girl always wants to be the one telling my story to her friends when someone asks about my scars. I always joke a little bit about it, it was a shark, a crocodile, you name it, but she always gets serious and proud about it, shuts me up and starts talking. And when she gets to the hug bit, she always says, “and the rock broke a couple of ribs to my dad’s friend too, he’s been very strong you know? Can you imagine holding him up with two broken ribs?”

Biochemistry thrown out of the window by powerful words spelt with the voice of a little girl who likes the romance with the happy ending.

Love is a matter of hugs.
Inhale. Fire.
Exhale. Air.

Far, far away…


The more I know about myself, the more difficult it is to not be me. Awareness is out-of-fashion these days.

Sometimes I feel like I’m still gasping for air. Like I’m diving in search for the fifth dimension, my focus is on that little girl that’s calling me dad. It’d be so much easier not to know how easy it is to let go. Of everything.

Nightmares overdue. They came. At last.
All of them, all at once.

But they’re finally turning into dreams, because that’s their real nature, they’re the story I didn’t want to hear, the one I’m learning to love, the only one that’s teaching me to live and love living.

Those eyes. They’re the door to that fifth dimension. The light sparkling from souls that have experienced great loss and pain, vibrates like energy that’s invisible to most.

We don’t like gazing, we don’t like looking, we don’t like talking. We navigate the world trying to be invisible. But sometimes we find those eyes and when this happens, we just feel and sense one another, we cry with no tears and experience pure joy.

They were lights vibrating in heaven. They could stop time unaware of space. They were pure and they were innocent. One day the wind whispered a secret to one of them and she shone brighter than a star, warmer than the sun. Her name was love and carried a message. You are my mum and I owe you my life. [Grenoble, 30th July 2015]

Surviving math


On July 27th 2015 I woke up in a new world feeling very unwelcomed.

For 8 weeks I was stuck in bed in hospital first and at my family’s home later, the ghost of disability watching over me with a grin. Known story. Then one day…

One day I got help from the most unlikely, yet likely, person: my mother.

She’s a retired world-class logician and mathematician, sweet and sour, playing the mother act and recently enjoying the grandmother one. Praised from the planet’s top brains from the planet’s top universities, she travelled the world working her passion and gift, sharing knowledge, old and new, pushing humanity forward. She’s always been my best nerd-mate, the only one capable of, or crazy enough to, spending days in a museum or archaeological site, ‘till feet and legs fall apart, or sitting through concerts, opera, anything, never having enough, when everyone around is sleeping and bored. Or even talking immense intellectual bullshit for hours being sober to no avail; it wouldn’t be intellectual if it were useful and it had a point, right? We meet nowhere and everywhere, we’re so different, but are always able to agree to disagree and laugh it off.

So, one day I was very low and she came up with her “love theory”. At first, I thought, “mother of god… what the hell is she going to tell me now…”

“What do you know about it, mum, you’re like the antichrist of human feelings, come on…”

But then, for once, I let her lecturing me. At the end of the day, I was powerless and in pain, lying flat in my bed, she couldn’t possibly make it any worse. So, she started…

“I’ve come to the conclusion there are only three types of love: parent-to-child, child-to-parent and partner-to-partner”

Coming from the set theory overlord in the Solar System, I thought, “there you go… I’m in for the ride...”

Disclaimer: gross generalisation follows. Without further ado…

Parent-to-child love. This is only about giving and it’s the easiest and purest. Parents will always love their children, whatever happens, and I must say I agree. It’s all and only about giving. That’s why it’s easy. In fact, I don’t think I care much whether my little one loves me back. I’ll always love her anyway, I can’t imagine stop loving her, I really can’t. Should be reassuring for kids, right? Yet, it isn’t, which leads us to the next type.

Child-to-parent love. This is mostly about receiving and it’s a bitch. Children love and care about their parents, but above all they need to feel loved, and there is nothing parents can do to reassure them. Nothing. Children will always question the love they receive from their parents. It’s never enough, it’s never right, it’s never true. Why? It doesn’t matter. These two types together should balance a perfect equation. But we’re human beings, not numbers. And that’s why parents and children always play the most beautiful love story, drama and romance at once.

Last, but not least: partner-to-partner love. “It’s a constant struggle, a fight, a never-ending negotiation” It’s very much about acceptance. The ugliest type. And while she kept on talking, I stopped listening and thought about it. My mother, I realise, accepted a lot of things. And more importantly made my father, not the world’s most accommodating person, accepting a lot too. I witnessed the fights, the arguments, I witnessed the battles, the struggle, the diplomacy, or lack thereof. I witnessed all of it. Math applied. They both believed in a shared, common greater good and accepted and paid the true cost of it. Can only bow to that.

“Are you done now?”
“Yes”
“Thanks, you’re dismissed…”
“You’ll never change…”
“Tell me about it…”
“If you need anything I’m in the other room”
“Yeah, if you could cater for a couple of working limbs that’d be great…”

The most awkward and unromantic conversation ever had me thinking. A lot. Of course, I can’t fully agree, that’s as per contractual terms with my mother, we can’t agree on anything or the universe will implode.

And yet… for a start I like the idea that my love for my little one will keep flowing forever, no matter what, stronger than time itself, able to travel infinite spaces. I feel it that way. But there is more than meets the eye. Because I’m the parent I never had, I’m the child I never was.

“I am not this body
Nor this realm of senses
I am not this face
These eyes, these hands
[…]
I’ve let go of the burden
[…]
I am just this soul”
[Aathma, “Many of one”]

I learned to build myself and the space around me by means of rational bricks that hold me up and protect me. I must rely on my rational constructs. They’re my foundations, I don’t have anything else.

Next. My father passed away 10 years ago. Last time I saw him I was coming home from London for the Xmas break. He was the only one waiting for me, with his smile and genuine happiness for the one day he could be with his family altogether, his pride and joy. My mother probably busy writing theorems that couldn’t wait and my brother uninterested of my arrival as usual. But my dad was there looking through the glass door and waiting for me smiling, keen to hug me and that’s exactly the first thing we did.

One month later: the phone call that changed everything.

We were so different though, almost too different, and I always challenged him on every field, in every possible way. I’m no easy person, dangerous Gemini. But I learned how much a parent can love his children absorbing the immense unconditional love I received from him and that’s the biggest gift and heritage I have from my dad, I know it will carry me forever and everywhere. I sense it, I dream it, I live it, I miss it. I miss him.

As for the rest… highest esteem goes to those who battled and survived me, because I’m barely surviving myself. Sorry.

So, mother was spot on in many ways. I can feel entropy collapsing. It's the Big Crunch coming. Damn it. Brace yourself…