Mental Pictures

Credit: wingsforshtuka.deviantart.com

Do you ever feel like life is just one picture after another stuck on a wall? Like every worthwhile moment can be resumed in one picture that goes into the photoalbum of your memory? And that's what we end up with at the end. A series of pictures that have made us laugh, cry, scream or want to hide under the covers of our bed for the rest of the week. Words, unless repeated ad nauseum, seem to fade, but images stubornly stick to the confines of our mind, constantly reminding us of our experiences, of who we are, of what brought us here.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about marriage and what makes people stay together an entire lifetime. Is there such a love? Looking around me at all the broken couples, looking at my parents and how their marriage is holding just by a thread that they carefully protect by ignoring the complete lack of love between them, I sometimes despair. And then I take the bus and I see in such an ordinary setting an exotic flower that entrances me and whether I want it or not, it leaves me with a smile on my face. Two people well in their 80’s sit down across from me. His legs are so thin and white and stained with spots that one wonders how they can still support his body’s weight. She is just as frail and I can’t help noticing her long scrawny fingers slightly shaking. He takes her hands into his and kisses her temples with a look of pure adoration in his eyes. I feel like I shouldn’t be looking, like this moment is theirs to savour and that I’m somehow trespassing on some special ritual. But I can’t take my eyes off them and for that small instant, for that moment, I can breathe again. I hear my grandfather’s voice again: “Bunicuta, tu ma mai iubesti?”, and the gentle, sweet tone he uses to formulate those words. Maybe there is hope.