GARDENS OF ELEUSIS

“People stay sane by blocking off, by limiting themselves”.
(Doris Lessing)

Sometimes a simple phrase such as this brings about a moment of clarity, a small awakening, perhaps joyful in nature, or maybe sad. But that is what we de: we stay sane by blocking off, by limiting ourselves. This is a good thing, and a bad one, together. Inescapably bound together. We stop doing, we stop thinking, we even stop feeling the things that put our sanity at risk. Not all of us of course, but those who had a glimpse of madness, those who saw its bright shattering light and were still capable of looking the other way. I know I did, I recognize the how and the when, more or less, and so did Harry Ohm: he consciously closed the doors of perception, so to speak, after a good long peek outside, after a stroll through the gardens of Eleusis.
There is so much I don’t know about the education of Harry Ohm.
Sometimes I feel these diaries are the futile attempt to stave off madness, and boredom, to create the illusion of meaning to a life that is, like all others, meaningless, to give form to the formless. They are the self-inflicted psychotherapy I never had before because I never needed (to be honest I never even contemplated it, ours is not a shrink-going family: it is too expensive, and we don’t see the point of paying someone to listen to our rantings: we have friends and family and late-night kitchen-table sessions for exactly the same purpose). Diaries, journals, are a place to open your mind, to bear your soul, honestly. But what if there is nothing much to say? Is it the moment of putting a stop to them? Does soul-bearing ever end? I don’t think so. Life after all is a process, and identity is always in the making, and there might be phases or stages, but certainly not conclusions. Only death is conclusive, but then it is life no more: death is not the conclusion of life, it is its absence. We change, feelings change, surroundings change, people change, and we adapt. What is love? Maybe I had an answer to that question ten years ago. I certainly don’t have one now. Take Ella for example: do I love her? Does she love me? Am I capable of love? I know I love my friends, my brother, but this is supposed to be a love of a different quality, a different density. But a heart is a living thing and it can take only so much beating. Is it love? Yeah, I think so, but it is not the same love; love is a feeling, a thought, an emotion, a projection of desire. And love, too, changes. It is an expression of who we are and I am different. I don’t depend on “love” as I did before; this makes me stronger, and, paradoxically, more fit for love.
I listen to myself saying all this and I sound callous, insensitive, arid, but that, I am sure, comes with growing up; our self simply holds on to many more things, or, if we are truly enlightened, to nothing at all.
So why do people stay together?

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Camino desde el ghat principal hasta la oficina central de correos, atravesando las maravillosas entrañas de la ciudad antigua, callejones y pasadizos obscuros e interminables, llenos de vida. Una ciudad tan medieval como, digamos, Florencia en el 1200. En la oficina central me enfrenté con buen humor a la burocracia india, a las fotocopias de mi pasaporte y las demandas negadas de bakshish, y recuperé el paquete de once kilos que nos mandamos a nosotros mismos desde Rishikesh, y que contenía sobretodo libros, ropa, y el trenecito de madera que le compré a Bernardo.
El regreso lo hice en cycle-rickshaw, por las infernales calles de la ciudad moderna, un cóctel explosivo de tráfico, ruido, contaminación, basura y sus etcéteras (o sea la India urbana moderna),y en eso se me fue la mañana.
Las lluvias se han ido finalmente, y si bien los días son secos y soleados, por las noches el frío y la humedad cubren la ciudad, en especial a orillas del río.