Reconstruction

"It is possible to have faith in humanity, not in terms of a new species, but in a new manner to organize humanness in another type of civilization. A construction of thinking about life and not survival based on greed and the malaise of someone. It is possible, in optimism, to create an identity (or identities) by thinking about where we can go and what we can share without forgetting that painful past. Yes, because building something without learning, even thinking about reconstruction, is impossible. He had taken a certain liking to the coffee before lunch. It was one of his tastes acquired before his release or, as he said, his reconstruction. But in reality, the named reconstructions are new erections. That supposed reinvention was, in the end, a rebellious emancipation in the face of a series of decisions left to others and at hazard. He loved seeing the young lovers walking through the streets in front of the three-order fountain. Twenty years before, he didn't notice it, his rebuilding was a comeback, and now it was about freedom, not power. Of life, not of survival. Although that last part had always been in it. 

The uncomfortable past has those facts in which humans kill themselves without thinking much. Others who send to kill each other have thought about it to maintain their privileges. When they start to believe, the slaughter stops, and not because there is a god or belief that condemns them to hell or paradise, but because, as living comprehending the value of life and the possibility of happiness when the freedom is apprehended.   It is not a matter of sensations or feelings,  of supposed divinities or philosophies. It is a simple life sense, ordinary human intellect: life is more than survival and the individual possibility to enhance the presence and the influence for good. But the good is well-being. After lunch, he liked to walk, and get lost, even if it was raining through those old streets of downtown. In solitude, he wanted to see the merchants who had already earned used to seeing him walk. Sometimes, he would exchange a word with them. It didn't cause curiosity; they, too, had decided to be free, which was one of the best cities. As old as a novel, with all the tragedies, one or another beautiful story, and the construction of human hope. Remembered and unknown by many with a name that only those who have ever reached it, between mountains, could value and shudder with. It was not only him but also the place selected to be. And it took me twenty years and several women to recognize it.

Sometimes, however, human actions kill the possibility of the common good. Actually is more often than occasionally, and the frustration usually kills any hope. One problem of knowledge is to be realistic rather than optimistic. Hence, there is the possibility of smiling to counteract any disappointment and find in the minority what can be significant. Pettiness should not be so easily justified and awarded. Nor fall into the game of endless revenge just for being right. Keeping calm and in continuous reason amid fanatism is the best to build. He discovered the Jerez in Cadiz, and after an afternoon and night on Saturday between the art, the walk, and a real conversation with a beautiful woman without the desire to penetrate her, that sweet taste and solitude under a soft rain were the best for a Saturday in May. Somehow the memories of all the places he had lived reached him; from America to Europe, from the Caribbean to the Mediterranean Sea, and from the Andes to the Alps. There was no nostalgia. Nostalgia accompanies him when he does not see how to escape, even as a prisoner of that fate. But now, he would only have to savor the Jerez and enjoy the silence.

It is important to believe in that new construction in which life prevails and the common sense and the virtues are acknowledged and respected. The value (not the price) of human principles of fraternity and empathy. Learning is remembering and turning the page. Viewing is not erasing a past and denying everything left because building that human identity is necessary to know. It is not in the past. It is learning it. He wouldn't sleep yet. A week ago, he was in the Caribbean, and in two more, he would be in the desert of Nevada. A few weeks ago, he slept between the breasts of a marvelous woman, and today he would sleep between his own pillows, free, at peace, and with love for him and for him more remarkable than usual. It wasn't loneliness. It was freedom. It was not selfishness nor narcissism. It was the possibility of loving oneself and being able to love another, sometimes, without the fear of being left with nothing like yesterday. His reconstruction has been fabulous."