THE STORY / LA HISTORIA

Dedicated to Almitra 

"The tragedy of man is not death, but what we let die inside of us while we live." 
Nouman Cousins

Rodrigo Suárez Palacios, July 2025

I like Diogenes’s "the Cynic” story, in which one day when Corinth, the city where he lived, was being invaded, he saw everyone rushing to and fro, trying to secure the walls, put out fires, or care for the wounded. Meanwhile he pushed an oil barrel in which he lived up and down a hill. In the midst of the chaos and commotion, someone stopped to ask him what was he doing. He replied that, seeing everyone in such a hurry and overwhelmed, it seemed improper to sit back and do nothing.

I believe there's also a hectic world out there now, bustling; ambitious and contradictory, indifferent to us, but one to which almost everyone aspires to be part of. And in the meantime, I've been carrying my heart, my guitar and words up and down. And I have done it so that if someone stops to ask me, I can say that I am not a cynic. And that there is another world and other battles to be won. This is the story of the play and the songs I've written. A story of my own story.

I was about 10 or 11 years old when one day at school, I cut out a small rectangle of white paper, pierced onto a pencil like a sail, and sailed it like a ship. At that moment, my teacher came over me and told me I would be a poet. I don't know what was going through my head at the time, but the idea of being a poet left a mark on me. Now that I think about it, maybe I hadn't noticed that metaphor I had materially constructed. Even so, I decided to believe in that perhaps favorable omen.

I can say the same that that ship sailed that day or that someone else made me believe that I was both a ship and sailor.

My life began in Ithaka. I knew paradise early on; the place I would always want to return to. Like Troy, my strange war began with a kidnapping, in which I didn't know which evil king stole beauty and joy.

When I speak of Ithaka, I speak of my childhood which is the story of my grandfather, his world, and all those who inhabited it with me… in that lost paradise.

Some time ago, I wrote that the story of the first death, which was mine, would not die with me; it was his. And it's the story of the first time my grandmother came to my house after my grandfather had died. And my story was something like "The Last Supper of My Childhood." I remember that that night as the bread was being served, that and I longed for it to be taken from me. It was not that I was not hungry, but my grandfather was usually the first to serve himself. He stole the bread from us like a child's game, a harkening back to war times, or an orphanage; I can not tell.

And well, that night with him gone, the bread remained on the table. And I wrote (I told myself) that that bread would be, from then on, an never ending morsel in my memory.

Of that death, and the "death" of my childhood, I wrote: The Last Supper.

Ithaka would be nothing without Odysseus; 10 years of war, and 10 years of returning home. Kavafis wrote: “Always carry Ithaka in your mind, arriving there is your destiny, but don't rush it.” Odysseus used to say to himself, “Be patient, heart of mine.” And as well as I believed to be a poet, I believed I was him. And I believed I would return. Then, naturally, I began to wonder where I was supposed to return to. And I believe that this very question, and not the arrival, is the beginning of the return. Odysseus

To escape the Cyclops, Odysseus introduces himself as "Nobody." So, when the Cyclops calls out to other Cyclopes for help because Odysseus has injured his eye, the other monsters, upon hearing that "Nobody" has hurt him, fail to come to his aid. And thus, I decided to be "Nobody," thinking it was the easiest path to take. Over time, one learns that one is not "Nobody" out of humility or virtue, but almost always out of cowardice and shame. Strangely, the world often finds it more convenient for us to be just that. And we take it at its word. At least, I did. The Cyclops

A song of and for a man, or a ship stranded like a tree in an absent sea. A “Nobody” in the middle of Nowhere.

I took the idea from some Sufi poet who said that God was an infinite sea. And I wrote, “…there is a sea without shores, a buried sea, waiting for your steps to adorn itself with light.”

It is a song of longing for an infinite and deep sea. And above all, the anxious desire of some mystical and redeeming creature, who with its footprints and its presence, will reveal it. And not only that; but who will bring it back and allow it. And with that, bring me back. Me from the depths, so that I may shine and find a way again. Sophia.

Of that unknown and barren tree I wrote:

Trees are akin to men. On the outside, they protect themselves, the same way, and on the inside, they nourish their hidden face through which, sublimating, life flows.

In their silence, they keep to themselves and for themselves the blood of the earth, the songs of the birds that they pretend not to hear. Papyruses and scribes write within themselves and for themselves, libraries of the earth. Memories of drought, fire, and blood.

I became a carpenter to go and look at the fallen trees. With something of a coroner, with something like a compassionate morbidity. I became a poet to carry vestiges, flesh and bone of the tall and sturdy binders of the earth. To carry fragments of the entire earth, like Atlas.

And still, motionless and defeated, my eyes and my hands became my subtle roots. And they came to me, dissolved in the earth, the words dragged along. Life is an ink that writes upon my guts. The Tree

Once, an image of those ancient cartographers who sailed near the shore, charting the geography of its coasts, came to my mind. And I imagined an island with settlers who were building structures and scenes along its edges. Where there were beaches of fine sand and calm waters, they raised geography of reefs and storms. Where there were reefs and storms, they showed fine sand and calm waters. And so, faithful and candid, the draftsman sketched worlds. In this double pantomime, both sides pretended; one their reality, the other their perception. Perhaps some worlds can be so remote and alien that, one day, someone looking at the trace of that faithful lie will speak, in front of a small circle of people, with tremendous solemnity, and succinctly, of a world that never was, and of which, there was never a witness. The Lighthouse

I don't know if it was by choice that that first death was also mine. I don't know if I realized then that, in my cunning, I impregnated the horse and let it in. And I made Ithaka my Troy and my tomb. I know that from that bread, and that "Last Supper," I created hunger and poison when I believed there would never again be anything as beautiful as that. And that I would never be the same as then. And it was that resolve was the perfidious horse to whom I opened the gates. If I had been Cassandra, I would have said something like, take care that nostalgia enters your interior as sensitivity, sadness as a banner, and "brains" as a wall. The Siege

One day it occurred to me to wonder what it would have been like for Jesus to rise from the dead completely amnesiac.

I imagined him uncovering his shroud, feeling stabbing wounds. Back to life, cloistered and wounded. I imagined him reuniting with men who called him master, and who, quoting creeds and doctrines, wished to be masters of the master, prophets of the prophet. Memories... crosses. A new life reduced to the past and omens.

Being men, they also spoke of his wounds, and he said: "that to remember them was to open wounds, and that he would never hear the terrible voices of those deep inflicted mouths." "Like the rust of steel is the blood that dries in my wounds. And like those, words rust."

And with this truly reborn and new man, I wrote the opinion and verdict of the people and his disciples; "If you are not the man you have been, you are not the man you ought to be." And thus with this weighty condemnation, they wanted to return him to the cross and the tomb.

It's difficult to say whether what I lost is who I was, or whether this was the path I had to walk. The sea in which I had to sail and run aground. And from who I was and am, to who I always was and ceased to be. The Courage to Be

I traveled through submerged seas, hidden faces. Deserts, storms, Cyclops. I saw that lapidary mob that needs to be what it knows, and we were. I saw glory and punishment. I got to know paradises and, above all, the wastelands of the world and my own; wishing never to return, I wrote: Ithaka (burn the boats).

From time to time, a strange species of bird appears wandering through the desert and resting its feet on a dry, fruitless tree, singing with love and faith because it has seen in it something only the bird can see. And so, I decided to sing back to it. Almitra

And one and the other will sing so much that the tree will extend its roots deep; and after some time, it will bloom without withholding or hiding a single flower so that all may see its exuberance and its promise. And it will be a throne, and sustenance, and the seed of a world to come. Knock Knock

There is a Sufi poem that says "I was a hidden treasure, and I loved to be known." I always knew, but I preferred to doubt that there was a treasure within me. Because it seemed easier to "die" and bury myself than to face the challenge of bringing forth and in full light what I truly am. No matter how little or much it may be, it is everything to me. And the reason for being here.

Just as Heraclitus said that the river is never the same, and neither are we; I believe we are because this river thirsted for us. And we are, because it longs to be different after us. Mustafa

That bird that alighted on a nearly lifeless tree, hiding in some remote wilderness, has a face and a name. And it truly wanted to stay, and I really let it go. Not only that; I chased it away. The only thing left now is to never let me go again. Because nothing and no one will be able to give me what I can't give myself. And because this is my own home, my own victory. Echoes of Rain

The only death that was mine was my own, and the only life I can take back is my own. The only place I can return to is to myself.

And I find myself thinking again of that Island and that cartographer. This simulation of knowing and being known. “Know yourself” is the summit of the world’s truth, of our world. But to know oneself is not to recognize oneself, nor to accept oneself; nor to be. The task of life is not only knowledge, but also acceptance and action.

“I saw you, I met you, and I put you aside. For who am I to be such a thing? Who am I to live what I truly am?”

If I ever wrote that the story of that first death would not die with me, I can say now that it has not; I have told it. I spoke of its death, and of mine. The task from now on is not to dwell on and exalt death, but life. May nothing else ever die within me while I live.

For the courage to try, and the compassion towards me and all of us who fail. That's why I have written and I sing. Nie Dam Sie

...beneath the bark, behind stage sets, and with one foot in the sand, emerging from the grave, once again, we are what we were before we were mere memories.

“That who looks outside dreams, who looks inside awakens”. Carl Jung