The art of losing
How many times have I lost among the sofa cushions a set of keys, the TV remote control, a rubber band, coins, marbles...?
Recently, looking in every possible corner of the house for my cell phone (lost, absent-minded, for the umpteenth time), I smiled remembering Elizabeth Bishop's poem in the book "Rare Flowers"... and surprisingly my grandmother's voice came to me.
I stopped in my tracks. The cross between the poet and my grandmother worked an alchemy that transported me to her sofa in her house in Barcelona, while I was looking for my toys (lost, absent-minded, for the umpteenth time) she recited:
It is not difficult to master the art of losing:
so many things seem full of the purpose of being lost,
that their loss is no disaster.
To lose something every day. Accept to be stunned by the loss
of the keys of the door, of the wasted hour.
It is not difficult to master the art of losing...
That's why everything that my eye's journey through the pages of my new book showed me was so familiar! My blood had been there before-my grandmother was a Bishop fan!
With a jolt I went for the box of books rescued years ago from her library. There she had treasured what had been her bedside books. I was convinced that this was where I would find her.
I opened the box and browsed through the titles: Woolf, Dickens, García Márquez... as I caressed the spines small images of my grandmother reading them hit me with the freshness of sea waves. It was among those memories and that fragrance of paper pages that I found it. Geography III by Elizabeth Bishop. There it was, as if waiting for me.
I took the copy and traced with my fingers the drawing on the cover. It seemed as if that globe and that astrolabe wanted to whisper something to me. Slowly I opened the cover, which was happily groaning from disuse, and browsed through its pages until I found it: One Art. One Art. I breathed in and read it aloud; my grandmother more present than ever. I smiled and hugged the book.
Only when I opened my eyes again did I realize that something had fallen from between the pages. Two things were lying on the floor and when I saw them I felt a premonition that I was in front of something important.
I picked them up very carefully, fearing that they might break. One leaf, crumpled and run over by the passage of time, was added to a small snapshot photograph showing a bridge crossing some hills. At the bottom, in my grandmother's unmistakable handwriting, it read: "Brazil, 1951". Could it be...?
As if tied by an invisible thread, as if attracted by the strongest of magnets, I understood where my destiny was crying out for me to go. Petrópolis was waiting for me.
