Once Upon a Time a Boy

Life, as a comment on something else that we don't reach out, and that is there, within reach of the leap we don't take.

Life, a ballet on a historical theme, a story about a lived fact, a lived fact about a real fact.

Life, photograph of the number, possession in darkness (woman, monster?), life, pimp of death, splendid deck of cards, tarot of forgotten rules which arthritic hands demote to a sad game of solitaire."                         Julio Cortázar, in Hopscotch.

The more I move back in my memories, the less I can find a single moment in which the water level was a single point above or below the median line of my patellae. I can see it in my short, motionless pauses in walking, when these small undulations cease around me. Such an unchangeable line poses a weird enigma because I've been much smaller before, having grown a lot till reaching my present height. So, I have to deduce there is only one explanation to this, namely, water level has risen exactly at the same rate as my growth. At least it must have been so for a long, long time before my it has stopped. Despite this, nothing seems to assure me I won't ever restart growing.
This last thought reveals a confession, that is, I keep having hopes on another kind of existence. If growth once has stopped -- something that happened at the same time as my desire for other beings, other bodies, burst out -- it's proved that some change happens in this world. Perhaps a time will come when I'll be able to free my legs from these icy waters and their perpetual level.
I dare take the events in my above daydream as actually possible in some time to come.
Once upon a time a boy touched by a perennial water level at the middle line of his both patellae. Such bored him a lot, thus soon he began imagining -- in his never-ending journey -- the possible existence of some place in which waters could be lower or at least a bit warmer. He could hardly endure that mild but endless pain brought on to his bones by such a gelid fluid. A never ceasing cold did hurt him from feet up to knees.
As nothing changed in that world of his -- he, himself, being the only possibility of tiny shifts within horizon's lines -- some thoughts that often disrupted his mind seemed vague and illusory, such as: 'I will be free from this boring ocean, someday. I will also reach some kind of dry ground, without any liquid coating'.
He decided to encourage such daydreaming as soon hair sprang on his chest, on his face, upon his whole body.
Considering those changes and the stop on water level rise, there stayed no more doubts on the possibility of unexpected facts within that endless blue. Nevertheless, years kept on passing and except for the waves of desire, which periodically hit him; nothing got different on that circular horizon. Not even the colors.
Under his feet never anything different from an icy and very hard sand could be touched, a sand compact enough to prevent him from trying to pierce it with his toes. He would just lacerate them, in spite of being just sand. Consequently, his feet were too fragile and sensitive, always semi-frozen.
I get excited when becoming aware of the fact that transformations are indeed possible in my existence, not only on my body, but also on these waters and---why not -- in that horizon's line too.
My eyes are blue. Equally blue is also the sky above this very shallow blue ocean. I can barely see my body's colors, being aware, however, that my tongue is reddish. For walking with long strides, the longest I'm able to, I can't but hardly see pink tones on my body. This unchangeable, monotonic color makes me a prisoner of an overwhelming boredom.
How has it been possible for him to realize himself as a prisoner? How was his imagination able to conceive a notion of a prison, if he could hardly be certain even of the existence of his own body, or of that hard ground, neither of such so a well-marked water level, or of that always blue sky on which there were no clouds, no heavenly body? Uninterruptedly he was living under daylight, despite there was no sun.
Obviously, this is the right question here: from where has come such an idea of freedom to my mind? In spite of not having any guess about it at all, I've always craved for freedom. At no moment did I stop walking with long strides, and this remembrance comes back to times in which I wasn't still aware of being so absolutely alone, neither of my growing.
It is but now so clear more and more often these fancies are taking possession of my mind. I almost believe that whether I go back far enough in my memories, an image of a being much similar to me will be found in Suddenly, a self-reproach came as a kind of voice warning him not to keep on dreaming so often. Despite walking such long strides, the longest he was able to, daydreams always came back and back again... He was becoming sure of someday touching a warm and tight human body. By then hotter waters would surround him too, and he would be at last able to swim, or perhaps who knows an island would appear to arrive at!
To each one of these exclamations corresponded nuances of his excitement as male, which culminated often not only with a hallucination with a female, but also with fancies about so many imaginary beings as Stars, Night, Sun, Sunset, Moon, Islands, Earth, Trees, Free Knees, Warm Feet.
I've been living on my fantastic beings, not fearing anymore whether they might delay my marching pace. Always stopping during ejaculation, staying immobile for some minutes, I become sleepy without ever sleeping.
He didn't know why consciousness never got actually off after orgasm. Perhaps the sudden sight of such a white fluid coming out from his body was enough to push him immediately to those desperate long strides. Since white was a new, not-blue color, mutations must really be possible.
My own outline, reflected on this water, shows me as a pretty and brawny male. This, however, isn't enough to calm down my fancies, serving only to strengthen them. I'd be happy if I could plunge into a concrete life with my fictitious beings, notwithstanding the truth being they come to me only in daydreams. Nothing changes on this sea neither on that sky.
No doubt I must have been created at some point in time, having had a kind of contact with other beings so human as myself. Oh, look at this: I've already given them a name and a predicate! We are human beings! We, who belong to this category of fictitious beings.
Where were they? How long would it take for him to meet them? Did they live with that water up to their knees, too?
Oh yes! There had to be men and women so much as Terra Firma, Islands, Continents, Sun, Moon, Stars, Night, Noon, Afternoon, Sunset, Sunrise!
During each new flight into this universe of illusions, which was always getting bigger, he was becoming more and more overwhelmed by daydreams, thus forgetting anything else. Until the moment of his orgasm with its those mighty, white jets. Everything was then proving his great need of a fancied world to appease his desires. For being able to see the white color coming again and again, thereafter soon retaking his long strides.
I am getting loose so often from own control, that much sooner my fantastic beings are coming back.
But I've never really closed my eyes, just blinking.
Something about my origin comes to my memories suddenly: I was born on Terra Firma and became lost while my parents were making love. It seems easy to understand how a little boy can get lost before arriving at a shallow ocean never reached by the sun nor the moon.
He kept on creating fancied beings, in growing number, so filling his everyday life more and more with them, passionately! Possessed by such a passion, he did forget all self-reproaches, so multiplying situations, people, islands, encounters, dates, lovers, children.
Once he could even imagine all of those beings living on a great, enormous sphere, even many times bigger than this huge blue horizon. In such a world, there were oceans, but people could live far away from them. Men and Women did live on a dry ground, with plenty of brown, and green among other colors. Because love was endless, they were constantly generating boys and girls.
All of a sudden, the white jet deliciously comes from within my body once more, and thus I must again walk at long strides. Well, long strides, I'll never arrive anywhere this way! Only when fancying may I reach some 'places' which deserve this name. Were it not for my muscles activity I couldn't even be sure of my own motion.
Yes, through his daydreams he became able to reach not seen landscapes, at least for a while forgetting his patellae’s middle line, that nonsensical, torturing level that deeply hurt his whole existence. Diving in dreams again to finally become one among many, he could then meet friends, fall in love with gorgeous women. He did try to make this kind of existence as concrete, actual and the only one. But for failing after each one among so many brief pauses triggered by fantasies, he felt forced again to walk with long strides. Yes, because even then hopes didn't leave him.
At this moment, I live in a large community, surrounded by lovers and children. I try to seek the ultimate senses of the wonderful human life, a search that explains my interest in philosophy, literature, psychology, (madness, delusions, dreams, realities), so much as in what people today insist on calling 'the empirical sciences' but in my opinion should remain being called 'natural philosophy'.
To my children I tell stories and stories every night, something that makes me very happy. They will never know anything about the shallow ocean without waves, whose waters eternally touch me only to the knees. No, they will never hear anything about it.
In the midst of this last fancied ecstasy, he was definitely submerged in the so-named "real" kind of world. Nonetheless in some moments he still found himself trying to hurry up on the frozen sea, looking around the limitless circle in search for someone or for a single islet.
I love humans all, and in this world of ours - with so many things needing to better, since here change is possible, and everybody is transient. We may die, because the future will go on with our children, and the future generations.
As for the level of water for such a long time scratching my knees, I do not care whether someday I'll be able to forget it.
However, he remained constrained never to forget his standing position, because a tiny fall would be enough to put him out of the human universe in which, at last, he has succeeded, this time even without interruption, in remaining.
There are moments, by side of women and children, in which I feel inclined to write. I'm not sure what inspires me, nor about the origin of this strong drive to tell people stories of several kinds.
Would it be a way of trying to fix myself on this pleasant kind of reality forever? A way of making myself absolutely sure that I will never leave human conviviality but through death? Was it still a result of the fatal dread of feeling again this water so cold up to my knees?
Could it be no more than a same huge fear of losing the needed muscle strength to remain in balance and then, after waking up, freed miraculously from a frozen drowning meet again that endless blue he has just written about?
Since his definitive dive to living in the human world, he must but remain forever alert, upright, inflexible and immobile, without even a moment of inattention, in this shallow boring ocean.