The silence of the eloquent -
By Paula Robles Nettel
In the quest to understand the greatest silent eloquent ( God ) I have learned to listen to my fellow human beings.
During the last ten years I have been in an involuntary but what I see now as a necessary journey. Along the way, I have met 6 extraordinary human beings, all at one point or another have been prisoners in the silence of their own eloquence, unable to come back to the real world. This is one of those stories:
In the quest to understand the greatest silent eloquent ( God ) I have learned to listen to my fellow human beings.
During the last ten years I have been in an involuntary but what I see now as a necessary journey. Along the way, I have met 6 extraordinary human beings, all at one point or another have been prisoners in the silence of their own eloquence, unable to come back to the real world. This is one of those stories:
It is no secret that I like to collect pieces of life with my mobile
phone, and so I found myself with all these footage of you and our time
together as friends. I met you on twitter in the early autumn 2011 during a
time that both of us were struggling with life, in a dark period of our lives
we found each other.
I must admit that I was about to erase you from my twitter lists, as you tweeted so much about food, but some
other times there was something so intriguing about you, your controversial
opinions and at times a genuine and moving eloquence. Then you made that infamous confession that
earned you public condemnation and insults while others supported your honesty.
For me, your honesty at that crucial time was touching and overwhelming, I wanted to understand why? I wanted to erase
the scars imposed to my heart by understanding why. I was
expecting an answer in which we women, are categorized as horrible monsters who
drive men to the edge of betrayal; instead, you spoke of loneliness, a hard and
suffocating loneliness, the crazy attempt to search for belonging in a society and
in a world that secludes those who are different. And I could relate to that, a
lack of forum when one is fully equipped with a voice, a mind and a heart, is
the invisible prison of today’s existence.
It was not difficult to see, form the beginning anyone could recognize you
were hurting and lonely. I decided after careful consideration to take a chance
to get to know you and open up our lives to you, and you accepted my invitation
to spend Christmas with us in 2011. Everyone wanted to meet my eccentric friend
from Oslo who had spent Christmas alone for so many years. I skeptically granted you the rights of my kitchen and the menu of Christmas, and up to date everyone speaks about the
fantastic meal you made for us. It was impossible not to feel the magic during
that Christmas, to do something for someone as simple as to open one’s life,
and how was I to know you were going to be such an amazing gift to my life.
Life next to you has never been boring. Your company has suited me so
well while I carried a wounded heart around for so many years. Little by little,
I have learned so much about you and from you. That things are not just things,
they just need the mercy of someone’s heart while they wait to become
alive when you decode them with a creative list of adjectives, that describe
them and take them to a world in which they become magical. Every place
had a description, a comparison, a reference and so many times the
annoying notification of the obvious; regardless, you warmed my heart and made
me learn to appreciate the now, the moment, taking me away from the painful
past and rescuing me from the hunting uncertainty of the future.
We had the chance to explore our cities over and over again, finding
the poetry that emanates from life and you, better yet, you allowed me to be a
poet until I smiled again and I could no longer write my sadness, because I had
more happy days than sad ones, and happiness has never granted me the ability
to express myself extensively; it is perhaps the trait of happiness to only be conjugated in the present form and
it is impossible to write about her with the fidelity that longing and sorrow
grants us.
You sent me into a new world, you handed me a golden key into a world
that has made feel so proud to live in this country. You took me into the
most amazing tour I have ever had in Norway,
in Vår Frelsers Gravlund, in that cemetery, that had a strong meaning to
my past, you erased the pain associated with it and gave it a new meaning by
planting a seed in my heart every time you stopped in front each grave,
bringing them alive just for me, with all their stories, I got to know better
those grand Norwegian souls, thinkers, artist, painters, poets, politicians, activists,
bohemians, idealist. From Wergeland, Bjørnsen, Ibsen, Hambro, Sverdrup, Krogh etc. you re-ignited something
inside of my mind and my soul..
It has meant a lot for me that you have read out loud to us, to me it
was always a delight, and the words that you have given me, each letter, poem and reference, all of that is saved as the biggest treasure a man has ever
given me. You have brought me closer to a place I could start to feel normal
again and more at home in Norway, things got a broader meaning based on
the many things you are so fond of, about your country and the world. I stopped
being an orphan with no land, you gave me the possibility to have a
more comfortable place in this society; I have now a piece of invisible land, I
am building a home for my soul, cementing it with a more stimulated mind
and I will furnish it with the beauty of all the objects I know now how to see
with different eyes, allowing me to enter each day through the front door of
the now; all this, will carry me during the remaining years of my life well
protected against boredom and a meaningless existence, and in the center of it
all, God will be there, like the compass he has been, directing me to the
source of life, there I will kneel down and will give grace for everyone that
he has allowed me to love in order to love myself more…
There I will always pray for you and those I dearly have loved, who
have now walked away into the peace of the past.
There, I will always be there, close to Him, trying to decipher the silence
of his eloquence.
22.12.12
From Hundvåg -Stavanger, dedicated to everyone who suffers in the silence of
their eloquence, divided in two worlds, in search of a harbour of hope, that
can take them closer to the world of reason.
For you Morten Christensen, over all my greatest friend.
