The silence of the eloquent -

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:

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.  

The silence of the eloquent from Paula Robles Nettel on Vimeo.

Forever

Many times I’ve wondered if one day my name was going to take full ownership of my life; I've wondered if my name would become a definition of all that God had intended for me, and suddenly in a moment in time all the gifts, talents and lessons of my life would finally collide in one single moment, making me Paula Forever. 

That crucial moment I presume has been happening during my last three years of life. Like the drop of water that carves the stone, so I been made, painfully slowly, yet profoundly acknowledged by the Universe as special and unique; like all children of God; just waiting for the eyes of the soul to develop in the fertile womb of time, to finally acknowledge the idea that there is more to our lives, than what we intend to define based on the worldly dictionary of our realities.  And so, I understood, after tears and smiles of painful and happy years; God expected something more of me, of my life and the imposed expectations that up to now had defined me.

I had the hope to reach one day the place of simple happiness that for so long my ideals had been seeking, but the more I lived the more I realized, that my life script although written by the same great hand that creates all life, for some reason, had been decided that my life needed to be written seldom in prose, and more than often in complicated yet beautiful and meaningful verses.

I am far to know what my call is, nor I claim to know the answers to all the questions of my existence; however,  I have claimed the right to my humble imperfect humanity and have finally acknowledge the beauty within me and over me;  being blessed with wonderful gifts that make me special, yet never fully recognized by the soul, I so much sheltered in my heart as one of the ultimate validations of my human existence . The simple dream of love that for many builds in instants of grace had become the hardest yet rewarding challenge of my life.

How little I was to know, that God had intended a long journey, in which he needed me still to give and share my simple gifts and talents with others, before I could put myself again in the road in search of my companion of life, and even when the road did open itself again to my stubborn and selfish vision, I hadn’t realized that he simply had mended the wounds so I could continue walking in the desert of my life, where I get to be simply and in gratitude Paula forever....