Cecilia’s Encounter with A Stranger Self
By: Luis Torres Jr
Tags: Memories, Death, Psychology, Poetry, Love

“Existential Struggle” — Gilbert Loutfi

Part One

I think my mind is deceptive. Can it be trusted?

Cecilia wrote this down in her notebook, slowly. She always wrote slowly. Not because she was challenged in the task of writing in any way, but because the only words she ever wrote were those which were backed by a great deal of thought. For the idea of letting words flow from her mind and on to a sheet of paper in rapid succession and with little reflection made her uneasy; if the subconscious is real, she speculated, it’s impression would surely be left in words written outside of the conscious’ control. A professor in psychology at NYU had convinced her this was a very real possibility. And mentally, she was in no place to see traces of her subconscious in her writing — she feared such a sight might be detrimental to her understanding of who she was. So, she wrote with diligence, making sure not to let that potential stranger within her coordinate any pen strikes.

Curiously, and not necessarily because of her diligence, every sentence she wrote was the most honest and beautiful representation of the things in her mind. She didn’t know this, though. In her ignorance, she would write poems in royal blue ink, only to throw them away later on, thinking they lacked something. It falls short of the ideal of poetry, was the most typical critique she made before tearing out a poem from her notebook and tossing it, frustrated, to the floor.

And yet, if anyone were to have picked up, unraveled, and read the contents of just one of these poems, they would have said she was a poet of the finest degree, no doubt. Only that she could not see it.

This fact didn’t tell of insecurities in her as much as it did of a disjuncture between her head-space — that supposed realm of thoughts, ideas, suspicions, surmises, and so on — and reality. That she could so easily gain a grasp on ideas, even the most abstract of them, was true, and proved favorable for her in academia; but with this came a dull awareness of the immediate, objective world. Indeed, she possessed an understanding of poetry as an idea, but could not recognize its material form when it was in front of her.

Part Two

In the States, Cecilia was considered to be of a small and delicate build, with a short torso and slender arms. But in Guatemala, her height made her an anomaly among the women. On Sundays, she could be seen towering over the crowds of Guatemalan women at the local food markets, with her face decorated in gracious smiles. She herself was only half Guatemalan; the other half, Ecuadorian, thanks to a father she never knew.

Or at least, growing up, Cecilia claimed never to have known him. If asked, she would explain that he disappeared from her life when she was three and half years old. According to her mother, he was a no good drunk who couldn’t take up the responsibility of being a father, so one night he got up from the dining room table and left. Y nunca volvió — he never came back — her mother would end the story. Not surprising, then, that all which would register in Cecilia’s mind when she heard the word “father” were her mother’s blunt recollections of a stranger now gone-away. And nothing more, not even a personal anecdote.

That is until a few days after she wrote the words at the beginning of this story. It was a regular Wednesday when, in an old suitcase that belonged to her mother, she found a photograph that was taken on a family trip to Mexico in the 90’s. Much of the photo’s color had faded out, leaving behind white splotches and faded figures. But in one corner, just enough color remained to bring Cecilia to tears with an image: it was her, sitting in her father’s lap, smiling and watching intently as he showed her how to use a lighter.

She began recalling things she had forgotten of, like the fact that back in those days, her father was friendly with members of a cartel in Yucatán. And that he would pay the cartel visits, always making sure to bring the family. And that he would smile a lot, which made her want to do the same whenever he came around.

So it wasn’t a dream, after all, it dawned on her. She was beginning to recall, for the first time and with considerable intensity, the feelings she once had towards him. An unfamiliar pain started stirring in her stomach, then in her chest, and finally in her throat. Overwhelmed, she reached for her notebook and began to carelessly jot down thoughts until they formed a poem:

A father striking fire before his child’s eyes —

who would ever guess

such trivialities done in happiness

could be nostalgically lamented, given time;

given a photograph;

like a snake crawling out from its own skin,

what was once a distant dream

has become, again, a reality —

my father and my love for him.

As she put her pen to paper to start the fourth stanza, a teardrop slipped from her cheek and on to the page. Her pen’s ballpoint cut through the center of the droplet causing ink to leak uncontrollably from its chamber and to flood the notebook. In an instant, the poem was consumed by the formless and careless liquid.

At a sense of loss, she tried to recreate the poem, but failed — she had written it so fast she couldn’t bring to mind what it was she put down. The last line of the poem, however, she had not forgotten, for it would not stop gnawing at her thoughts. My father and my love for him — her mouth was shut, and no sounds were made, but her tongue took on the shape of each syllable as the line repeated itself in her head.

Is it even possible to love a stranger?, she pondered, when suddenly, a frightful thought seized her: it’s me, not my father, that is the stranger.

Part Three

At the edge of a precipice which extended loftily over El Rio Chixoy in Northwestern Guatemala, Cecilia sat calmly. Below her, indefatigable waters were steadily making their way north; suspended above, the moon, with its face dipped almost completely in darkness.

Cecilia, who was housing near the river to conduct cultural studies research for her graduate program, would come to the precipice regularly to process her thoughts. The beauty of El Chixoy and the aroma of the previous day’s rainfall reminded her of how much she missed Guatemala — it was her first time back since she immigrated to the States at the age of seven.

She recalled her mother’s lectures not to enter El Chixoy’s waters. Its surfaces were inviting but tumultuous currents lay below them. Cecilia was beginning to think she was no different than this ancient river. That the neat and convenient notion of the self she possessed for most of her life was just a veneer for the fragmented, tumultuous person she actually was. That’s why she had been so convinced she never knew her father when, in truth, she had always already known him. The feelings brought on by the photograph and the words of the poem she wrote (perhaps subconsciously) were enough to subvert the belief that he was a stranger. Moreover, they unveiled a stranger within her, a Cecilia that loved her father.

At this point, Cecilia was gaining a gradual awareness of the disjuncture between thought and reality that characterized so much of her life. First, in the way she thought she never knew her father. Then, in her failure to recognize poetry when it was right in front of her. And finally, in every corner of her life, including in her relationship with her mother, and in the way she hated attention, and in her notion of good and of evil, and in her childhood obsession with princesses, and even in her attempts at understanding God. It was in light of these new and dizzying revelations that Cecilia confirmed the inkling she had been harboring since the beginning of this story — that her mind was deceptive and that it could not be trusted. It had deceived her for 20 years, causing her to convincingly arrive at falsehoods about her father.

Cecilia, having lost track of time, saw that the moon was beginning to fall back behind the surrounding mountains. She knew that in the short time she spent under the crescent moon, her understanding of who she was had come to ruin. Much like her poem was lost in a flood of ink, the notion she once had of herself was lost, irrecoverably, in a flood of ambiguity and uncertainty.

As daylight began to break out, she rose from the edge of the precipice and started for home. It was peace and not anguish that prevailed in Cecilia’s heart that morning. For she knew that in losing herself she found her father. And that this was enough to be at peace.