Stepping into Solitude
He wrests my gaze from a row of vibrance with his damaged spine; his damaged cover seems to lonely declare how long he has accompanied me. He gazes coldly at the surrounding new, pristine books, then silently fades into the darkness alone.
I can no longer recall when he came to my side, yet I have toured this colorful world again and again: the boundaries of the swamp that the gypsies had never seen; that strand of hair sleeping in the reliquary for a hundred years; that skyscraper made of ice blocks, cold to the touch—when could it ever be realized from a dream? The intimacy between brothers that gradually vanishes with age; how the music flowing from the pianola turns sisters against each other, only to bring weariness once attained. I cast aside my pen, wishing to melt into these thin pages, then fly past the noisy exclamations under the eaves on the flying carpet of the first priest from a century ago. I wish to stroke that giant block of ice which refracts light before the man shackled like a beast; I wish to wait for him to come before me with a trembling heart in a bathroom covered by yellow butterflies and fallen leaves, filled with scorpions.
My former rebellion seems written into the pages as if observed closely by the author standing beside me, as if the loneliness I experienced before, the loneliness of growing up, was a performance following the script he wrote. Like that girl, I played the piano described only in ideals, displaying my excellence and stunning talent before others, yet in every minute and second of life, I never took a step away from the grandmother who represented shelter and protected me. Yet on a night that could not be more ordinary, in order to destroy, I destroyed all the honor I had gained. Surrounded by scorpions and spiders, my unsheltered, trembling naked body welcomed the destiny already killed by a hunting rifle. Although, in the novel, after her only surviving infant was sent away in a basket on the water, she was sent to a convent like a graveyard to tragically end her tragic and lonely life, I was awakened by this story, quickly breaking away from my own rebellion and smiling bitterly at my own growth from within it.
My fervor was taught to me by José Arcadio Buendía. To successfully implement the sunlight tactics that were like ravings, he was willing to travel thousands of miles to the capital that was impossible to reach at the time! When I sank into the swamp of unsolvable mathematical problems, he guided me forward with an absolute optimism that filled heaven and earth. My calmness is the gloom of Old Mel; with his hat like a black raven, he etched a deep memory in my heart.
I once secretly enjoyed this quiet morning, seemingly outside of time and devoid of people, alone in my seat with my beloved book more than ten minutes before six o’clock, until the space of the classroom that belonged only to me was deprived by the clamor of people gradually arriving. I embraced him, overcoming the nervousness in my heart as I passed through the coming and going crowds, as if protected by him and undiscovered by anyone. I have made many, many excerpts for One Hundred Years of Solitude, those sentences that seem to resonate deeply with my soul, that lonely wandering of the undead in the rain, that swamp extending to the other side of the world, making me linger.
Time presses heavily upon my body. Stepping into solitude, and the end of solitude is naturally growth. Aureliano believed the function of money was merely a tool to plate keys with gold. He could hardly resonate with any possible function of money, using everything instead for the alchemy he truly loved, just as I use electronic devices to find problems to improve myself rather than indulging in meaningless information streams or deeply despised games. Or the fifth-generation Aureliano, who locked himself in that ancient room forgotten by people due to the passage of too much time, where only sunlight came as a guest, devoting his energy to studying parchment scrolls, forgetting food and sleep, just as I cannot control my passion for immersing myself in problems in the deep of night. And Melquiades’ eager kindness in repairing the automatic piano—that kindness like an innocent child disregarding reality and attempting to use his ancient wisdom to do all he could—moved me so.
Most famous is the Colonel who won renown in war, even if most people talk more enthusiastically about the countless assassinations he survived, or the exquisite little gold fish made by hand and sold after the war that people yearned to possess. He represents isolation and ambition, bearing two names, but his first time seriously looking at and remembering his aging mother’s appearance is the most unforgettable achievement he attained. That mother with a mouthful of rotting teeth, a head full of white hair, and a look of panic in her eyes—yet when he sought a matching image from his deepest and most distant memories, he found he no longer possessed any warm memories. For a long time, I dared not look directly into anyone’s eyes, only dodgingly resting my gaze on others’ lapels in panic, as if I were looking at him. However, I am also lucky enough to face a mother who has not yet aged, to be able to embellish the room with the flight and warbling of white doves on a late-rising morning as fresh as in the book. Many years later, I will surely recall that beautiful morning, with the youth of the rising sun twinkling in my mother’s eyes.
Even if the family condemned to one hundred years of solitude will not have a second opportunity to appear on earth, is life truly destined from the start? Even if death had already attacked as a shadow in the Colonel’s childhood, were the victories he achieved time and again not mentioned by people time and again a century later? When the pages are closed, countless yellow butterflies flutter in my mind once more; when the Colonel turns his past experiences into lines of verse and rhymes; when he sees his family in the corridor of begonias as if resurrected from distant memories, his solitude has quietly shattered into individual yellow butterflies. When stepping into solitude, we will encounter thousands of different sorrows, but eventually, we shall not be trapped by the mist.
From a certain essay contest