Fear

La Voz de Galicia – January 27, 2023 →

Today, back from a walk in the mountain facing the sea, back from one of those indescribable sunsets that leave me speechless each day, I began to take note of ideas. They came all together, quite suddenly, after a few days (or months) of feeling empty. The title of the novel that I have not yet started to write, its structure, the first line…everything appeared like a lightning bolt while Xan drove back to that temporary home we inhabit when I work in California. In writing them with such joy, I became excited, thrilled…but then, just as suddenly, fear (absurd and irrational) appeared and saddened everything. We arrived home, and I began to write, not the novel, because I gather that it is not yet ready to be written, but this column. I wanted to reflect on that feeling, because I don’t understand it. But sometimes (though not always), when one faces one’s fears, the only thing one achieves is feeling more overwhelmed or paralyzed…

And it is now when I would try to give an emotional turn to this column, to end it with a luminous paragraph. When I would tell you that at the same moment that fear arrived it also departed, and that it left me in peace. But fear is free, and comes to stay whenever it wants. And during these times of conflict and uncertainty, it becomes more difficult to stop thinking about particular fears. And then I remember that song by Caetano Veloso that rescued me so many times, Sou seu sabiá (I am Your Thrush), the one about the bird that sings, «Você pode estar tristíssimo no seu quarto, que eu sempre terei meu jeito de consolar» (You may be very sad in your room, and I will always have my way of comforting you). And I remember that tomorrow Xan will take me again to see the colors of the sunset, and for a second, that image of indescribable beauty, was capable of frightening fear away, allowing me to write…