I once traveled to Italy. I was in Naples, Rome and Venice. But I didn't go to Florence specifically. Although it was the one I wanted to see the most. I needed the story I'm about to tell you first.
You will know that one has no age. That age, time, is a psychological matter in the evolution of being and that even physical time is not even valid as a reference to compare two people or oneself. And that, therefore, one, physically and psychologically, fluctuates one's age in time or time fluctuates in one's age.
So, don't attribute what I'm going to tell you now to the Ginés who apparently or conventionally goes through 63 years. The one you somehow have in front of your noses. Don't even move it to a specific age before or after, because physical and psychological matters don't go so smoothly: they are like stews. The lentil pulls the salt, the onion the oil and so on, mixing different tempos and temperatures, the stew comes out. Well, the mind seems the same.
The same happens with space. We all know that there are psychological spaces that take us out of the common world and transport us through other nearby and distant spaces according to the "wings" of each one. Even in measurable, tangible physical space, we know that, for example, things sometimes being in the same place are further or closer, or the house or the island is bigger or smaller.
We all know that creation is mental, that it is true that someone hit the hammer in the distance but that that, physically and psychologically, where it happens is in the mind. It is worth that there are waves and eardrums and all that, but the effects, the stories, the consequences, etc. of that sound is a personal process of each one. Even the sound itself. Taking the example to an extreme, the same sound can cause the joy of someone and the anger of another, or the same two effects in the same person. Let's say it's not the same if you were waiting for the carpenter than if you just put the child to sleep. All these nonsense are to tell you something about mom and that no one takes it as an event that can be transferred to the lives of others. Their beliefs, criteria, reasons, etc., etc.
I had been in full dismay for a few days because I had not received any signal from her. And I knew that 'the Trip' was not easy. But that it should have already concluded. And I was only waiting for a simple sign, a... I've arrived, honey. Well, today it happened. Mom arrived. And all my worlds and my times were illuminated.
She had died in a space time of her choice; I remind you that I am talking about myself. She had died in this time in which La Graciosa is recognized as an inhabited island at the same time that it ceases to be a natural park. At the same time. Moving 'the battle' over humanization and colonization to Alegranza. Her island, physical and metaphysical.
So mom passed away on the day Alexander von Humboldt was born. These days a tribute is being paid or prepared for his arrival in Chinijo as the first point of contact with the wild of his fabulous trip. Connect the dots. And she passed away on the day Dante Alighieri did. You know, 'The Divine Comedy'. Hell, purgatory and paradise. Humboldt's things and the three volumes of 'The Divine Comedy' are like treasures in my library with dedications and as very, very special gifts. From a long time ago. Waiting.
But my mother and I have a world of our own and part of the family that connects things from the very ancient islanders with the Egyptians. And, above all, a mummification scene that I am not going to tell here that unites us in space time. Well, she died on the day that Jean Françoise Champollion managed to read the word Ramses on the Rosetta Stone. And a whole civilization unfolded before the eyes of another.
My mother's name was Trinidad and she always laughed a lot at another string of names that she had added. And she had a personality for each of them that, in addition, multiplied by two because of her Gemini condition. If there was a human being in the world whom she adored and admired, it was another with many names; I hope one day I get the signal that they are chatting in some bar in some Florence, city of Dante, and where Jean Françoise Champollion and he spent a time of their lives, he is don Antonio Ángel Custodio Sergio Alejandro María de los Dolores Reina de los Mártires de la Santísima Trinidad y de Todos los Santos.
I don't know if my mother knew that he, like her, was also Trinidad. And multi name. And you will tell me, well, if you communicate with her, ask her, and I answer that you don't talk to the dead. What are you talking about. He is don Antonio Gala. And life is very strange. And I am like the Trinity, son, father and grandfather. Ginés, Manuel and Bonifacio. Very different things. Very different observatories. And I am also Gemini. That's why we understood each other and we continue to understand each other, because we knew that we are not one and that each of them varies with time. And the combinations are almost infinite.
But that all of them, including her and me, are one. So I don't have anyone "out there" to talk to. I don't know if I explained myself. The day after tomorrow, November 1, is the day of all the dead. The day of the living is today. Florence exists and at the same time it is a dream.
By Ginés Díaz