The river of the fragrant flowers. Lucas Abrek

      the river of the fragrant flowers

      lucas abrek

      Although life may involve pain of all possible kinds, somewhere there is a river with flowers who spread their fragrance after the most terrible storms. Death is out there, and it’s not the most important thing.

      © Lucas Abrek, 2020

      www.lucasabrek.com

      ISBN-13: 978-958-48-9347-5

      Original title: El río de las flores con fragancia

      Translated from the Spanish: Simon David Betts

      Proofreader for Spanish: Víctor J. Sanz

      Design and layout: Mariana Eguaras

      Cover images: PxHere

      June 2020

      Bogotá, Colombia

      All rights reserved

       1. looking back

       2. with tree

       3. in a dark, cold place with some young people

       4. what I understood afterwards

       5. I discover that time passes

       6. a return to end this story

      To my wife and children, without whom there is no inspiration for me.

      To my parents.

      To Trinita, Esther, Saúl y Jesús.

      To the friends of my youth, many of whom, thank God, I am still in touch with.

      To all those who believed in me, whom I do not name, but I bear in my heart.

1. looking back

      It all began when I accepted that one day I was going to die. I felt at peace. Perhaps that is why, once again, I was enveloped by a fragrance of red flowers, which could only come from a place I got to know when those flowers were no longer there.

      Time passed and I knew it was time to write, with a certainty which came to me like an eagle that perches slowly on the edge of a cliff on a sunny day, and looks into the past. I had to recount how one can be a child forever, although I can only say it is something which is discovered according to each one’s path, and that reaching the river of the fragrant flowers depends upon it. So I was to encounter once more those poor young people lost in a cold cave in who knows where, and the years and dreams of Aldemar. Although I had never forgotten them, neither had I tried to recall them with sufficient strength drawn from the memory of Tree.

      I could remember. To remember is to be grateful for the beautiful things in our lives. The bad things are meditated on without making compromises, and without letting them poison the heart. Then they are left behind, although at times this may seem at first like struggling for a while through turbulent waters.

      Today, when I can boast of memories of the brief youthful years, and the longer mature ones, I also smile as I calmly meditate on certain events that I only came to understand much later, and which caused me justified pain and even brought me to tears when I had them before me, as occurred that day. And all this because I was still no more than a child... Could it be that being a child is bad, considering that understanding those events, or simply accepting them, is linked to what one calls «growing up» or «life» when one is older, after having been indoctrinated by adults as to what one should think about childhood or the passage of time? The truth is no. It is beautiful not to understand the world of adults, who no longer understand the world of children, and to live immersed in the most innocent experiences, until age and existence take hold of one. Yet innocence can never be our only nourishment. It is a shame one takes so long to realize these things, and that often no one advises us about them!

      But I was with Tree.

      As I write these lines, I recall with melancholy clarity the hours that cause me to say what I say. I meditate on my childhood, not on my first school years, but on an earlier time, when I had not yet had contact with my first human teacher. That sounds strange: that an adult like me should suddenly want to go so far back in his existence. However, I am sure that I will be understood as soon as some of the pages that follow have been read; even more so if the whole book is read. If the person who reads this is a child in the true sense, he will not have prejudices, and together we’ll be able to talk with Tree.

      Tree, my first teacher, whose memory persists in ever new ways.

      Years later I realized that the day of our final parting had to come. Of course, reviewing our life at a distance is a great help in reaching acceptance. Some may say that I have indeed matured, to which I must reply: «isn’t maturing the same as seeing certain aspects of our life from a distance?» Let each one of us decide. The truth is that deep down I didn’t think that was to be the day.