There are images that cause deep feelings in me; this is certainly one of them.
This long empty road seems to be waiting for us, waiting for us to walk over it. The banks are empty, waiting for passengers to sit on, either to see the sunset over the horizon of the sea, either to be the temporary refuge of someone with no place to go. On the one side of the road, there is a playground, where we spend much of our childhood, a period from which we still keep memories of our angelic faces. As we go along this road our silhouette becomes smaller and our shadow longer until we eventually disappear at the end of the landscape.
This is what we are and why we are here for: To appear and disappear at the same stage, which is now empty waiting for the printing of our tracks upon many other invisible ones. Along our path we pass by the swings, by the banks and many other stops. However, we won’t be able to remember when we no longer like the swings and slides. We may forget how many times we sat on those banks, with whom we sat, and what we talked about in a usual afternoon of a usual wintertime. Neither we would know how we have arrived to where we believe to be. If we turn our look back we may feel a certain familiarity in those unfamiliar faces, for there are people who step on the footsteps we stepped on.
Along the way, we look forward and backward, we sigh again and again, we stop from time to time and keep walking until we disappear from the scene. We may have taken and left something. We take the answer: this is what I’ve been and what we have come to be. And we leave: our footprints.
Our smile is bitter
if it is not seen by the
eyes that have to see
Our dress is not pretty
enough if not shined before
whom we have dressed for
Our heart is orphan
if it has not found
its true owner yet
Our words are empty
if they are not heard by
the ear that has to hear
Our sweetness hidden,
our femininity asleep,
our soul incomplete
until we meet him
That’s how we women love
We become poets to be loved.
Last Sunday we went to visit the Picasso Museum two friends of mine and I. We felt like tourists walking in the neighborhood of Born. At the museum they treated us as if we were tourists, perhaps Japanese, who are fascinated by the brand Gaudi. Some were surprised to realize that we could even speak Catalan.
This is us, the second generation of Chinese in Barcelona and Spain, a generation that find itself difficult to fit within the framework of a well defined identity. In the eyes of Spanish people, we are still Asians, in the eyes of Chinese who have always lived in China we are by far westernized. Over time we realize that it doesn’t matter if we can’t find a label for ourselves. The more we see the world, the more we realize that identity is something in constant change, something without borders or nationality, because every place we go becomes part of us.
We grew up witnessing the hardships experienced by our parents. We saw them how they built things from zero and struggled to give us a better education. However, we rarely see their integration into the native community nor their will to do it some day. We received a rather traditional education in a liberal society as the western. The conservatism and archaic views of our parents clashed with the environment in which we grew up. The results of generational and cultural gaps are our rebellion manifested in our early teens. When we are still not mature enough we tend to see the world in black and white. We dislike the part, but we reject the whole. Over time, we realize that parents were right in substance; their tedious insistence was for our sake. However, they would never fully understand us, for they did not have to deal with cultural duality. In their eyes we are what they want us to be, at least we pretend sometimes, just to please them or just to avoid unnecessary arguments.
They would never understand those naughty conversations we had on the Japanese erotic paintings -among them there were pictures of Katsushika and those of Picasso himself-. After the museum we went to a small bar, a place frequented by tourists as well, to end our day like a real tourist. I really enjoyed the bar El Sabor, I’m always a fan of small establishments where apart from coziness you receive a closer attention.
The passionately tender scene of two lovers belongs to those stellar moments that any of us would have wished time being stopped and frozen. Passion is ephemeral, something intense at the same time fleeting, like a shooting star that has already disappeared over the horizon when we are still making a wish with closed eyes.
He approaches slowly toward her trying to silence his footsteps that reveal his longing to see her. The footsteps become more noiseless as he gets closer, but he fails to pacify the heartbeats due to the uncontrollable excitement and happiness. He embraces her from the back, holding tightly her thin waist feeling the softness of a woman. With his chin on her shoulder, he whispers in her ear “Happy Valentine’s Day”. “Everyday is February 14th as long as you are by my side,” she answers staring fondly at his blue eyes. “Before I kiss your soft lips, I want to show you my heart.” She unbuttons his coat with her delicate fingers as if she was holding a crystal heart. A beautiful rose appears in front of her eyes. “This is the rose in my heart which is You.” The emotion after hearing those honey words cannot be describable by simple words, but the way how they look at each other says everything about their romance, something that reality tries to kill so many times. In the middle of desire, they kiss each other with all the passion in the world, a long lasting kiss that is not less tender than the legendary kiss of Cupid and Psyche.
It has always been full of enjoyment and pleasure reading Oscar Wilde, whose writing would make you stick to its addictive lines until the end of the story. His words are easily comprehended, simply written with an exquisite elegance and often agreed for carrying messages of wisdom regarding the art of living. He delights us with his refined irony and his daring thoughts, concealed under the skin of subtlety. But, what makes us admire his writing is his remarkable sensitivity of an extraordinary talented writer.
“The soul is born old, but grows young. That’s the comedy of life. The body is born young, but grows old. That’s life’s tragedy.”
“Life is simply a mauvais quart d’heure made up of exquisite moments.”
“Hearts live by being wounded. Pleasure may turn a heart into stone, riches may make it callous, but sorrow cannot break it.”
“Men always want to be a woman’s first love. What we like is to be a man’s last romance.”
“How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly rational being?”
“The history of woman is very different. We have always been the picturesque protests against the mere existence of common sense.”
“How clever you are my dear! You never mean a simple word you say.”
“Ideal man should talk to us as if we were goddesses, and treat us as if we were children. He should always say much more than he means, and always mean much more than he says. He should never run down other pretty women. That would show he had no taste, or make one suspect that he had too much taste.”
“The middle-aged are mortgaged to Life. The old are in life’s lumber-room. But youth is the Lord of life.”
“You rich people in England, you don’t know how you are living. How could you know? You shut out from your society the gentle and the good. You laugh at the simple and the pure. Living on others, and by them, you sneer at self-sacrifice, and if you through bread to the poor, it is merely to keep them quiet for a season.”
“You love the beauty that you can see and touch and handle, the beauty that you can destroy, and do destroy, but of the unseen beauty of a higher life, you know nothing. You have lost life’s secret. … It has blinded its eyes, and stopped its ears. It lies like a leper in purple. It sits like a dead thing smeared with gold. It is all wrong, all wrong.”
“The sick do not ask if the hand that smooths their pillow is pure, nor the dying care if the lips that touch their brow have known the kiss of sin.”
“Weep like a woman for what you could not defend as a man”
King Boabdil in his horse surveyed the Alhambra for the last time
Standing helpless at the Moor’s last sigh, he said goodbye
to his only Kingdom, his last Muslim city, Granada
Tear drops started to fall from his red crying eyes
drops of a sentimental King travelled thousand miles
I wish I were those tear drops of the King Boabdil
going all over the city expressing King’s love and sadness
The whole Granada would be moved by my burst
The green valley would suddenly cease to feel broad
without he riding his horse over its vast green field
The flowers would begin to wither as he goes further
for he being their loyal admirer and protector
The mosques would feel empty without a faithful prayer
The whole city would be in sorrow because of his departure
And Al-Andalus would not be the same Al-Andalus never.
I wish I were a drop in the Mar Mediterraneo
an equally anonymous drop as any other ones
enjoying the freedom and peace of the vast sea
The sun is our caring mother spreading its
sunlight all over us showing our comeliness
to the eyes of our admirers
The moon and the stars are our friends
lighting our way in the middle of the darkness
Lovers come to witness our loyal friendship
and we witness their love and secrets at night
Stars twinkle at them when they look up while
they listen to the musical sounds of our waves
under the reflection of the moonlight
Lonely hearts and souls come to us as well
We keep each others company in this boundless
and sometimes cold and confusing world
Poets and romantics are fond of us
We are the muse of so many beautiful verses
that have been written and a limitless source
of inspiration for so many artists and painters
So many portraits full of affection of us have
been shown to the world. Dali and Gala would
publicize us in the other side of the Atlantic Ocean
We were the bridge for the Greek civilization
We propelled the Roman Empire’s domination
We are sorry for numerous atrocities in history.
Too late for a regular coffee. A decaffeinated coffee accompanied by a croissant would be a better option at this time of the day. I like its milder and sweeter flavor, even the smell is fraught with some sweetness. It’s such a luxury to enjoy this old style 
coffee shop myself alone, where romantic songs coming one after another. The coffee shop La Vella Europa means Old Europe, but the word Vella sounds the same as Bella. It’s situated right in front of the Mediterranean Sea, just separated by the railroad.
Suddenly my mind takes me back to the beginning of the movie Before Sunrise where two young people, excited about life, randomly met each other on a train to the beautiful city of Vienna. A bohemian American boy and a sentimental French girl. Two hearts, two souls crossed each other in a carriage of a train. How random can life be and how beautiful at the same time. Crossing different great European cities by train is one of the most romantic things that one could do in life, a journey that symbolizes life itself. We start in an announced time, leaving a familiar place, with everything we need in our suitcase and with some plans set in mind we head to the destination. One can read, reflect, remember, observe and build one’s hopes up while the train is in motion. One may wonder what might hide behind those faces of strangers, what else may be behind those conversations that one hears without wanting to hear. Many people going up and down; they are just passengers in our life, faces that you see and instantly forget. Constantly changing landscapes; some of them may become live pictures engraved in our memory for a lifetime.
Perhaps you could have an intense romance like the main characters in the movie. Perhaps you are skeptical and think that only happens in this sort of romantic movies. When they both finished watching the s
unrise over the city of Vienna holding each other, it was time to say goodbye and time to take the train that they were supposed to take. The sadness of being separated was written in those sad looks, in that embrace that lasts seconds but leaves one’s heart warm almost an eternity. In those moments, words and promises -which one may laugh at years later for its idealism and innocence- were pronounced. But the bohemian boy returned to Vienna station to relive that special day in his life, in search of past memories. Victims of fate, they would meet each other again years later in The Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris, talking precisely of that ideal love lived in an age fantasy and boldness. The reunions of former lovers are always hard, especially when feelings still remain. But the realism of life gradually imposes on the idealism as time passes by. Our understanding of love matures as we mature. Over time, we learn that love does not mean being with the person we love. A mature love is the one that grows deeper and deeper into silence. A mature love is like coffee decaffeinated: coffee without caffeine, love without lover.
Jia's Coffee House 