Forumi Horizont (http://www.forumihorizont.com/index.php3)
- Gjuha Spanjolle (http://www.forumihorizont.com/forumdisplay.php3?forumid=178)
-- darke (http://www.forumihorizont.com/showthread.php3?threadid=6026)

For Lori and Darke

Perhaps it is the name of the city: Vitoria- Victory. Perhaps it is the feeling that I haev grown too used to comfort and have lost my ability to improvise in crisis situations. Perhaps it is the enthusiasm of the people who are, at this moment, trying to restore a cathedral built many centuries ago and who, in order to draw atthention to their efforts, have invited a few writers to give talks. or perhaps it is the old saying of the conquistadors of the Americas : " It is not life that matters, but the journey".
So I keep on journeying. After many long, tense hourse I reach Vitoria.
.........
I walk through the skeleton of the cathedral , studying the restoration work curently being carried our: this time the architects guarantee that they have found the perfect solution. Everywhere there are metal suppors, scaffolding, grand theories about what to do next and some criticism about what was done in the past.

And suddenly, in the middle of the central nave, I realise something very important: the cathedral is me, it is all of us. We are all growing and changing shape, we notice certain weaknesses that need to be corrected, we don't always choose the best solution, but we carry on regardless, trying to remain upright and decent, in order to honour not to the walls or the doors or the windows, but to the empty space inside, the space where we worship and venerate what is dearest and most important to us.

YEs we are all cathedrals, there is no doubt about it, but what lies in the empty space of my inner cathedral?
Esther, The Zahir. She fills everything. She is the only reason I am alive. I look around, I prepare myself for the talk I am to give, and I understand why I braved the snow, the traffic jams and the ice on roads: in order to be reminded that every day I need to rebuild myself and to accept for the first time in my entire existence- that I love another human being more than I love myself.
..........
For a week I walk by the Seine each morning and when I get back, I lock myself in my study. As if I were listening to a voice of an angel, I write a book, or rather, a letter, a long letter to the woman of my dreams, to the woman I love and will always love. This book might one day reach her hands and even if it doesn't I am now a man at peace with his spirit. I no longer wrestle with my wounded pride, I no longer look for Esther on every corner, in every bar and cinema, at every supper, I no longer look for her in Marie or in the newspapers.

On the contrary. I am pleased that she exists. She has shown me that I am capable of a love, of which I myself knew nothing, and this leaves me in a state of grace.
I accept the Zahir, and will let it lead me into a state of either holiness or madness!

---------------------------------
fragment from Paolo Coelho's The ZAHIR. Hope you liked it.

Besos para las dos.