Between worlds: Tarifa

Tarifa.

A couple of times this week my friend, an older Italian guy, asked me out of the blue:

-'How do you get to the other side?' and
-'How do you go to the other world when there is giant wall before you and you can't go around it?'

I lift an eyebrow and give him questions as answers. Some of a philosophical nature:

-'What if I don't even want to get to the other side?'
-'What's will I find there?

Some of a more practical nature.

-'Are there airplanes?'.

He sighs.'The holandesa and her questions', he says out loud, and waits till I play along...which I don't. So finally he says:

-'You make a hole.'

I nod, but I still don't know if I'd want to get to the other side. Or what we are talking about for that matter.

This friend, El Nonno, played Maria Jimenez and Sabina the whole week, and I met many people, as usual, some I might see again, most probably not. I had lunch with them, laughed and talked. When alone, I read books. I had found two random books, The Book of Lost Things, a fantasy book by a John Conolly, and Sputnik Sweetheart, by Murakami.

While I was finishing the second one, I realized that they were both about other worlds, about the world of Dreams (which is somewhere between Poetry and Non-existence) and the world of the Real. About crossing the line.

The fantasy book (a genre I generally don't pick) was about an unhappy little boy who found an escape to his tedious life, an entrance to a magic wood. There his nightmares and dreams came alive and his strength was tested in a long journey to the palace of the King. It was quite captivating. Finally he finds his way back home. It seems as everything is still the same, but he sees his life in a new light. He is happier, because he changed.

In Sputnik Sweetheart the characters live on the border between Reality and Dream, looking for a house with a light on, a shelter.

Being taken in, and being held.

I read:
-"The answer is dreams. Dreaming on and on. Entering the world of dreams and never coming out. Living in dreams for the rest of time...In dreams you don't need to make any distinctions between things. Not at all. Boundaries don't exist. So in dreams there are hardly ever collisions. Even if there are, they don't hurt. Reality is different. Reality bites. Reality, reality."

But you can't stay for ever on the other side. There is a wall and a price to be paid. It turns out that the true collision is between dream and reality. Maybe the wall is there for a reason. In going through it over and over again, you lose little items. The end of a memory, a sense of time. And you end up in millions of pieces, scattered like stars seen from an orbiting rocket.

Upon coming home to Madrid, I felt that way, confused. When traveling, the different worlds make less sense. Where was my home? Where should I go next?
'It's hard to tell the difference between sea and sky, between voyager and sea. Between reality and the workings of the heart.' -resounded in my head.

I failed to explain this sensation to a good friend. He said: maybe you should ask yourself why you leave and travel to so many places?

I sighed.

When traveling, did I cross the wall?
Was I always crossing the wall?
Or did I just hit my head over and over again?
Maybe the real question is why one keeps arriving at a wall in the first place.

I thought again about the answer that my friend had given me. A hole. You make a hole. Like a secret entrance that's always there, but you know how to find, and you can choose when to come and go.

Traveling and Dreaming weaken the wall, make it crumble, create holes between worlds through which the air can flow and take parts of phrases, answers to questions, from one world to another. Creating a hazy confusing border.
But it's not enough.

They don't make the wall disappear. To make that happen, thát is the real journey. After which everything is the same, but you'll see it in a new light. You will have changed. It's learning to live in the universe that is called the present. To be fully present wherever you are. It requires an acceptance of your surroundings and the cultivation of your inner world.
As Murakami conluded:

"...most important thing about life is that people let themselves be absorbed into things. As long as you do that there won't be any problems. It's like when you're in the forest, you become a seamless part of it. When you're in the rain, you're a part of the rain. When you're in the morning, you're a seamless part of the morning. When you're with me, then, you're a seamless part of me."

And, my god, it is a long, long journey.