This moving business...

This moving business is very heavy indeed… and I do not mean the 3+ cases that I came back from London with…  I mean the whole world of realizations and breakthroughs and further questions that cluster your head as soon as you step on “old world” soil…

Ok, wait, I can hear you saying, “Are you coming or going from London?  Isn’t the Old World Europe?  Didn’t you just arrive BACK in Mexico??” (and so on you will question me) (the answer to those questions is Yes) (the answer to the rest of the questions that are being and will be asked from now on is I don’t know).

What questions...: Why did you come back? Why didn’t you get a job? Why didn’t you get married there? And so forth and so on till culminating in What are you going to do next?  Well, I already answered all of those: I don’t know...

I tried my best and still did not succeed; I gave all my energy to it and was still broken by politics... One thing I know for certain: It was not because of me, so I feel at peace; I feel sure that the next step is just to keep trying... I just have to decide on to keep trying WHAT this time.

Another thing I know for sure is that moving back to my parents’ house was pretty much a stroke of genius: yes, I touched “old world” soil (my own world, mind you, not the modern geo-political world’s) and everything just flowed back to me, my whole growth process racing before my eyes, and I had not even finished saying hello to my family yet.  My whole childhood and the reasons why I became a writer in the first place (nostalgia consists for me today on seeing the trailers for Saving Mr Banks, which hasn’t been shown here in Mexico yet, or on tasting a mazapán that I found on my sister’s kitchen countertop, or in finding a drawing of my Pentacle characters from when I was still in high school).  To me, everything is connected now: all the stories that made me become me, as I sat in my parents’ living room and watched London unfold out from inside the screen and reach into my six-year-old mind; all the little things that make Mexico be Mexico, magical and earthy at the same time, as it can be with a candy made of peanuts or the artisan clay floors of my parents’ new home; and most of all, all the stories that grew with me as I realized WHO  I wanted to be in my life...

In my adult life, I should say...  but given that I have the worst Peter Pan syndrome ever seen in a living, breathing person, I’ll just say this: I am STILL finding out who I want to be in my life...  and it feels great!  Yes, scary as hell (and no, I still don’t want to grow up, even now, but I have learned to accept that part of my psyche as a gearing wheel of the highest importance, because it is the one that makes me who I am down at the base of everything... ).  All of that is exactly what I found now, as I walked into my old room and the artist’s OCD clicked inside and I organized EVERYTHING in just five days, building in my old space a new track for the energy to flow more freely and fulfilling.  Now, I had organized everything when I first moved to that house (what was it...? 5 years ago?  No idea), and then again when I left for Newcastle, so most of the things were already organized, but not only did a bag of donation clothes that I’d left in the garage a year and a half ago make its way mysteriously back into my closet, but I also found a great deal of thingys here and there that did not have any more function or place in my life, so I cleared, re-cleared, and re-arranged in a bit of a frenzy and a very serene state of mind...

Hence...  moving back to my parents’ house, WAS a stroke of genius!  There were a lot of stories waiting to be put back in place, and there is still a lot of energy waiting to be sent to do my bidding...  all of those stories and energies were stuck in drawers along with hundreds of items that I had already forgotten I had, or collected between the books of the bookcases, those that had been misplaced on a shelf where they did not really belong (some shelves remained the same, some had minor changes, others surprised me with what they told me belonged in them).  But what gave me the most peace, was that I found my hopes and dreams stored in my room still, untouched by time and age and failure; they’re still there, still bright and soft and fluffy...  they’re still full of a child’s laughter and a student’s made-up characters, they’re still blushing pink with the threads of first love and heartbreak, turning blue in the deep thought of Kant and Unamuno, grabbing silver swords and a dagger or two to fight off the inner demons, and shinning gold and pearl and green and turquoise as they travel to those wondrous destinations which I always return to and to those which I haven’t yet reached.

Those are the hopes and dreams that bring a tear to my eye as I take the coach to Monterrey, with my iPod and my music ringing in my ears as I read flopped down on my seat...  all those songs that have been with me since my memories started, defining all of those “moment” moments, joined by those new ones that even as I bid farewell to London mean to me just as much as the oldest ones, and mixed together in my head as a witty soundtrack of my life... songs that range from Enigma’s Child in Us to Gary Barlow’s Let Me Go, passing through U2’s Beautiful Day and Neil Hannon’s Song For Ten... and with a very strange and rather surprising touch of Avril Lavinge that I found on the mix of the bus music... (not that I have anything against her, I quite like Alice, though the movie drove me mad).  All those songs that make me remember every one of the amazing people that have crossed my path, and moments and places I’ve been, all those songs that make me feel thankful that my life has turned out this way even though things are slightly dark at this particular moment... All those lyrics and voices and notes that make Cassandra and Thalía and Ana come alive, that make Julia and Andrew and Diego join them and push them, through love and friendship and a little bit of craziness, into their rightful paths...  and Sevilla sings again, like she did when I first thought of her, and Athos comes over for a few seconds one more time (just to say hi, cos he knows how insanely busy I am at the moment, but he brings with him all the inspiration he always does), and Federico sadly doesn’t show his face this time, because in my packing and running and coming and going he has started to hear pigeons again...  and so many characters are changing and morphing and evolving within my lines, as Bastian comes back from a funny, unplanned sabbatical, and Mina White takes charge for a second time, and Samuel changes name yet once again even though his face remains the same...  Ambar sits across from me, as she gets ready for another beginning, this time outside in real life instead of inside my mind, but she and I will sit later at another table and talk again about Pentacle and the new path it has taken...  and to finalize my parade of mixed-up characters, the blond boy appears in a sudden burst of memory and tells me that they will always wait and cheer for me from within the shadows.

And now I take a deep breath, and I lift my head, and even though I am not in my room at the moment, but in a chain coffee house in Monterrey with my sister as we both prepare for the next step in our lives, I don’t see anything else but the new order that I created since the moment I moved, and the unexpected pathway that was opened because of it... a pathway that is still dark in my eyes, misty, rather than murky, still far from dawn rather than lacking of light, scary and unknown as it is, but oh my god oh my god oh my god, a pathway that is so, so welcome at this point in my life...!

Cheers to all!

Sandra Tena ≈ Writer, dreamer, healer, lover

For my literary works, please visit http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sandra-Tena/e/B00NWBFY6E/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0