From the balcony of my house I can see the badius of some low houses in the centre of Badalona and that makes me feel lucky. In one of the badius there is an almond tree – which is currently in bloom, as it should be – and a huge magnolia that in June will bring us the intense and sweet aroma of its flowers. It is a small oasis of silence and calm in the middle of a noisy and often dizzying city. Behind the windows, I contemplate the white cloud of almond blossoms in silence and leave behind the streams of people going to the metro, the heavy traffic of the buses and the distant murmur of the motorway.
Although we live near the sea, I do not have the privilege of seeing it from home, and I have complained at times. If I look away, I only see roofs and terraces and antennas and, at sunset, reddish and changing skies that make me end the day in a better mood.
And now, for a few weeks now, I see that just beyond the courtyard with the almond tree and the magnolia, beyond a house with a garden and a swimming pool – in summer we hear the screams and the splashing – something is being built. In this area, it is very common to renovate old houses with ground floors, but, from the structure I see from home, I think this one will be higher. I have been looking at it for days, worried, because it keeps growing and growing and I don't know when it will stop.
I won't be very close to it, so my private oasis won't be very different, but the horizon will be modified, a façade is being built that will interrupt the long look and we will have less of a sense of depth.
And suddenly I thought that this is a fairly exact metaphor for what we feel when we are sick or losing faculties: someone has modified the usual landscape, to which our eyes had become accustomed, without asking our permission. It is a transformation that alters our daily life, probably our body or our thoughts, a transformation, therefore, intimate, that occurs without us having seen it coming and, of course, without having asked for it.
The father of a friend of mine, who is ninety-six years old, is practically blind. It is a serious disability, which greatly limits his life and, among other things, has made him give up the habit of reading. Fortunately, he, like so many other people, has found great comfort in audiobooks and devotes a good amount of time to them every afternoon.
My friend told me, between stupefaction and tenderness, that among the various literary genres available on the audiobook service, her father chooses romantic novels. "They have fewer characters and their plots are simple," the man argues.
I only wish to grow old with this serenity, knowing how to seek simplicity everywhere: in reading, in the landscapes, in conversations. And to lose the prejudices and the shames and the obsessions. To have time to understand that life is a circular journey, which takes us very far and very high and very fast, to end up returning home to simplify everything. And to know how to adapt to the changes that modify my landscape.
