Saturday, June 4, 2016

Growing up

Sometimes life changes abruptly, I don’t really know why. It switches from one world to another, and the transition is often painful.
I remember childhood as a time when imagination was as important as reality, and where the simplest object could become a source of endless entertainment.

One day in the forest, I found a twisted branch on the ground. But to me this was no ordinary branch: to me, it was a dragon!



I tied a rope around its "neck", and I dragged my new best friend to my hut.


My little friend didn’t take long to found his own extraordinary companion. We were dragon trainers, we were invincible. Our dragons accompanied us everywhere, we would make them crawl through puddles, hissing with bliss because, as my uncle used to say "who says water says snakes" and obviously dragons and snakes are close relatives.


For us kids, the forest was a playground of infinite possibility. We had built a hut that looked more like a pile of branches in which we hold just squatting, but it didn’t matter. In the woods we were Indians, explorers, cavemen!

There was also this big tree, where we used to climb pretending to be monkeys.  Or, on windy days, sailors caught in the storm!

Good memories. Unfortunately all good things come to an end, and children grow up. What a bummer.
I myself realized that I had grown up the day when I saw that little girl on her scooter, neighing like a horse.

Suddenly, I realized that I no longer could ride a scooter pretending with that much conviction that I was riding a unicorn’s back.

From this moment on, the tree in which we had lived all these exciting adventures  appeared to me as the stunted laurel it had always been.
Hanging on a branch, jumping over an obstacle, run around for no reason -and the list goes- were no longer  things I was allowed to do. 
To escape from a reality I couldn’t tolerate, I started to isolated myself. My imagination seeming to have dried up, my crazy adventures in the forest left place to more passive entertainments.

My environment looked hostile, superficial and governed by absurd rules.
Conformism was choking me. The very presence of my fellow humans, looking so dull and judgmental felt unbearable.






As a kid, I had wrongly imagined that adults were reasonable and fair people, and I sadly realized that all the moral rules that I’ve been taught were swept away by the rules of appearance, greed and power. And I strongly doubted my own profitability.

I think I was not bad at being a child, but I turned out to be a terrible teenager and a poor adult. I was desperate. My imagination was still here, somewhere and I had to find a way to express myself.  And suddenly, I had an idea...


And what if this, could be my contribution to the world...

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