I’m not from here

If I look at you with Gypsy eyes, it’s only because I’ve existed for so long.
I’m an outcast, never have been accepted. I travel through peoples minds a stranger.
From my father Adam’s loins, from my mother Eve’s belly, I’ve been carried on his shoulders and fed from her breast, and the thousands of people I’ve loved and have loved me, are etched in birthmarks all over my body. As foreign as I seem, you long for that familiar part of me. I’m the baby in the casket perpetually passed on.

The Cicadas cry are the reference of familiarity, their noise inside remains the same, locked for centuries they wail the same wail, leave me Gretel’s bread crumbs, remind me how to find my way back and how to go forward again. Tracks for time travel.

Guidance for unravel.

With my rucksack filled with hope, pockets overflowing with contentment, and hands outstretched to help, I’ll take my rest with you for a day, a week or a month, but no longer than forty days.

You need to trace the earth with your fingertips and brush it on your face, find your own Gretel crumbs.

Find your own scent, familiarise yourself with the moss of forests, they are the best keepers of secrets.

Challenge yourself not by climbing great mountains or fighting lengthy battles but by foregoing a meal or seven. By acknowledging a belly full of gratitude in hunger is better than defecation of satiation.

Leave the people of discontent for the contentment of your own silence. If you can’t be quiet, practise until you’re numb.

If I look at you without eyes, it is because they have been stolen from this world.
They belong to the other world even though I have been here for seven thousand years and I will remain for seven thousand more.

-W.E.

Picture credit: Judith Oppenheimer – Gypsy Eyes – Portrait in Black and White