novels4u.com

For You, who awaken curiosity in me by not giving up questioning!

There is probably something that I have left unmentioned until now and that apparently didn’t seem worth mentioning, but this time it is. As you already know, I spent the night in Udine. And as I have found on many other occasions, it is not a bad thing to let fate or chance – whatever you want to call it – take you by the hand and guide you. So I let myself be guided and stopped at a small guesthouse that was in the middle of a hilly landscape just outside of Udine. “Here,” I thought, “I’ll spend the night here.” I couldn’t have told you why here. This rather modest house seemed warm and inviting to me. The guesthouse was run by an older lady whose eyes seemed gentle and kind, clarified by the experiences of a long life spanning several decades. Here, I had the impression that I wasn’t just a guest here, I was really welcomed here.

At breakfast it happened that I got to chatting with the lady of the house. I told her about my journey, from day one until that morning. “You have come a lot further than you perhaps even understand, a lot further than many people get on their life journey,” she stated succinctly as my story ended and now, for the first time, I allowed myself to spend these few days in my life After reviewing her head, I had to admit that she was right.

We spend so much time trying to get ahead professionally or financially or socially that we no longer have time for the things that make us grow and mature as people. And as if she could read my thoughts, she continued.

“I have probably spent my entire life, which now spans over seven decades, here in this house, with all the freedom and independence that is possible for a human being. During these many years, especially through retirement, I have been lucky enough to meet a wide variety of people. Many of them were probably lost again quite soon, others, a few, but I took a lot with me, and just one of them captivated and shaped my entire life.

At this point at the latest she had brought me into her story, which sounded so clear and factual and yet promised to communicate it herself. “I would like to know more about it,” I asked her, and she didn’t take long to ask.

“I was a very young thing then, quite naive and inexperienced, as my late father used to say, but I knew how to be open to life and everything that came my way, open and full of curiosity. So it happened that on a beautiful, sunny May day I was sitting on the lawn behind the house and weaving baskets. At that moment a young man, the same age as it later turned out, came across this same meadow. He came straight towards me, but unlike me, not only did he not notice the flourishing life around him, but he seemed to be deeply lost in distant thoughts, so deep and lasting that he overlooked my baskets standing there in the grass and tripping over it. Only this fall brought him back to reality. I helped him up and made him sit next to me.

‘Where are you?’ I ask him bluntly. ‘Here I am,’ he replied succinctly. ‘Yes,’ I replied, laughing, ‘physically, maybe, but your thoughts are very far away, so you’re not there.’ ‘You’re right,’ he admitted, really looking at me for the first time. The first thing I noticed about him were his warm, blue eyes, blue like the most beautiful spring sky over Tuscany, and it was probably his eyes and his lostness that captivated me for him at that moment and made me turn to him. ‘I’m far away, even though I don’t want to leave here,’ he continued.

He then told me that he was an architect and that he had now received a commission that he had actually always dreamed of, but that it would take him far away from his homeland, to a country whose name I have forgotten and which had nothing to do with it thing, away from here, into a foreign country, and probably for a very, very long time. He could make his luck, realize himself and his dreams, but he was afraid to leave, afraid of leaving everything behind, and if he were to come back after a long time, he would ultimately have lost his home due to his long absence. These were the thoughts that bothered him and didn’t allow him to calm down. I listened to his story and then said:

‘Whoever carries you in his heart will not lose you, and whoever loses you has not carried you in his heart.’

He then remained silent for some time, but I sensed that he was slowly coming back. ‘It’s like your baskets,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘These willow branches, when they lie around like that and don’t interact with each other, are nothing more than a few willow branches lying around, but when you weave them together with your skillful fingers, they’re like this they form a whole, a vessel that we can load and that holds the load by distributing it. This is how it should be with people. Those who are connected share the burden.’

How right he was. ‘I thank you. I will go, and now that I have spoken to you, I will go with a light heart,’ and he had already stood up and had probably already taken a few steps away from me when he obviously thought about it again came back to me: ‘Will you be there when I come back?’ he asked. ‘Yes, I’ll be there,’ I replied, and I was there because he had touched my heart like no one before and no one since. He was gone for ten years, and after there was this strange war in between, I didn’t hear from him for many years, not a letter, not a telegram, nothing. But I heard him inside me. The people around me, even those who were actually very close to me, thought that I should stop waiting, that he wouldn’t come back anyway, and above all, why should they focus on this one, small encounter. He had probably made his luck and wouldn’t even think about me anymore. But I knew better because I heard him inside me, heard whether he was okay or not, but above all that he would keep his promise and come back. And he actually came back. We found each other and stayed together, but our happiness together only lasted ten years, then he died. Ten years of waiting versus ten years of happiness – that wasn’t unfair, and who knows how many people don’t get to experience something like that, such a close connection, and the way it was then, I still am today.

And now to you, girl: I told you all this because I feel that you are open to the wonders of life, but above all because I notice that you are wavering. There is someone in your life who has touched your heart, but you are in danger of being buried by fear and insecurity.”

She was right. I was well on my way to depriving myself of the best things in my life. “When you have finished your journey,” she added, “then come back.” “Yes, I will,” I replied thoughtfully. I will do it when I finish my journey, no matter where it ultimately ends. Openness and curiosity, that is what I promise you, what I can promise you, for you and your being.

I drove on to Portobuffalé, settled in and discovered this picturesque little town for myself. Curiosity drove me. What might have been hidden behind this pillar, behind this corner? My journey had become a real voyage of discovery and I enjoyed these discoveries like a child.

Openness and curiosity – what else is hidden inside you that I haven’t discovered yet? What would you tell me about what you experienced these days?

Yes, I had been scared and small up until now, but now I had stood up, made myself big and wide, and was looking forward to you in a way that I had never looked forward to you before, in a way that didn’t mean anything not that you pick me up somewhere, lost and abandoned, but in a way that really enables you to arrive with me. I no longer want to ask when or where, and certainly not if at all, no, it would be at some point, somewhere, because you, you had touched my heart, had grabbed me deep down and brought me to you. This experience is insurmountable and inescapable. You burned your name into me and opened my eyes, for you and therefore for the world, because where people work together, they can carry the burden together and it will be easy for them.

I roamed the streets until evening fell, until night fell and a starry sky loomed above me. Just as just a few days ago I thought I was lost within myself, everything was lost, I had regained myself so that everything was possible, including your return to me.

This story, which happened to me casually, happened because I was curious and open, didn’t leave me alone because it had given me courage. I was able to experience that it is possible to give gifts without any ifs and buts, that it is right to perceive the voice within you, to let it sound and to accept it. It is possible, even love.

I send a greeting to the stars and hope that it reaches you, that it finds its way to you, just as I hope that you find its way to me.

I would spend this one night in Portofuffalè and tomorrow I would be in Venice. Another day without you, and yet connected with the feeling that I have rarely felt so close to you, another night without you, to know that I am still held by you. It’s good as it is.

From the one whose curiosity you are.

Click for the ninth letter here.