Nocturnal Tale

 

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“As you are here and now, you are unique. 

You are never the same. You will never be the same.
What you are now, you have never or have never been before.
You will never be later.”
(Svami Prajnanapada)


I come back at night when all sounds were far away.
A bell rang from the temple.
The smell of the incense was so intense it made me forget the smell of my own skin. I didn't know how I got there, it was as if I had always lived within these high walls.
The monks' voices did not stop for a moment.
It wasn't outside my room but inside my veins, bones, blood.
Beating my body from the inside like the knocker of the bell.
I didn't understand a single word, but I think that wasn't what was important, but that sound, that low, vibrant dominant tone that made the ground tremble under my feet.


Why was I in that temple room, and what country was it?
I walked towards my house and I found myself in this dark room, lit only by a candle, in whose halo the smoke of five incense dances.
Cold but at the same time warm orange, as if the shade of light could partially warm.
No bed, just a square wooden footboard with a thin orange pillow. Four small rough and short ropes on the sides of the pillow.
A high window from which it is impossible to see anything, too close to the ceiling, and too dark at night outside.


Karpura-gauram Karunna-Avataaram...


The last thing I remember is that I was not physically well, I felt weak and with stomach pains.
Lately I have been thinking, more and more intensely, that a shadow is growing inside me with shapes pressing on my internal organs.
Even his voice, at first only faint, now comes close to my mouth, and speaks in a language I don't understand, but I know he says vulgar, aggressive words.
More and more often I am surprised to be a wrapper for its coarseness and arrogance.
He came back from the most remote past, mine. What I now thought I had forgotten.
It is mocking how crisis situations external to us can become the engine of internal transformations, of the soul, which have nothing to do with what happens outside.
It's like when you move the sand with your foot, in the sea, without seeing what is happening, with a hint of fear that a poisonous fish, a shard of glass or a shell could hurt the palm of your foot.



Now I'm sitting on the orange pillow, my face in front of the peeling wall. With the long shadows of the incense dancing in front of me.
Legs crossed. Heavy breathing.
The voices from outside, in unison, very slow, always articulate the same words, to the sound of the bell.
I follow them and write, I write myself sitting close my eyes and inspire incense.
This doesn't make any sense.
I who write, who I am?
The one who came home from the afternoon walk or the one sitting in the temple, on a night in an unknown country?
Or that clumsy mumbling that spews out disaffection inside me?


Samsaara-Saaram...


I feel the eyelids get heavy, close slowly.
My breath warms my face as it hits the wall ever closer.
Even the steps on the way home become heavy, as if the knees were made of glass, with the intestines writhing in and around there is nobody.
By now we are all in our homes, afraid, suspicious, looking out of the windows hoping that the next victim is those outside our walls and not inside.
Even a smile sprays poison.


I'll go back to my room, maybe.
I lie on the bed, tired of a thousand years.
The epidemic is all around us, sickness and death.
I have spent my entire existence fighting to keep it away and now it impregnates every fiber, it is in the trees, in the clouds, in the asphalt.


It's like a black shadow that stirs within us, vomits poison, enjoys our fear, licks our tears.


So I close my eyes, I listen to words that I don't understand but that make sense.
Because the sense is very different from the meaning.
The meaning is intellectual, the sense is carnal.


The bell already rings inside of me. While the incenses are now gray ash at the foot of the candle.
The disease is within me before it has yet penetrated.
That's why I can sing it outside... On the wall.
Now my body is standing behind me sitting on the platform. I stroke my own head with my right hand.
While the voices outside are now part of the bricks, of the candlelight, of the four cords of the pillow.
It was never our fault for the violence, for the scars, for the hours lying on the doctors' beds, with the white T-shirt up at the neck, looking at the lonely white ceilings in large squares, while the cold stethoscope leapt on our chest.
This is not how we will die.
Even the demon that gurgles unknown words in our guts will not come out.


Nobody can understand.
Neither do we.
I hug myself from behind, kneeling behind me.
The candle light is about to go away.


Sahitam Namaami...


I whisper in my ear: it's time to go home.
When all of this is over we will return to this high orange walled temple.
Our time has not yet come.
We blow on the flame, close the door.
Here are the yellow leaves on the road near the front door.
It's almost four in the afternoon.
I barely walked thirty minutes but it seems like a month has passed.


I can't forget that mantra.
The gray ash of the incense is near my bed, on the red carpet.
My mother calls me for tea.


Nobody can understand.
I just know that I don't want to suffer anymore.
I'm tired of pushing down whoever wants to go out and destroy everything.


Very soon I will be looking for that temple.

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• Life is Dream 
• An Ancient Love Story 

Italian version