h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

In 1968 I left home to never return and after roaming Spain, I most of te time lived my live in the streets in Rotterdam (Holland). Searching for what I couldn’t find at home and calming my soul with sex, (soft)drugs and psychedelic popmusic. My black dog Astra was my best comrade and a long period we both lived and slept in an old Van. I was rather happy, although that way of live proved more and more not to be a solid alternative for what we call as children our home.

So after a few of those extremely intense and almost exhausting years, even mý life began to slow down and in those afterdays, a fifteen year old blond girl met me on the street. I'll call her here Melanie.
She told me she lived with her parents and was still at school. For me it would have been the same if she had said that she lived on the moon and was on a holiday at planet earth.
She was young with a strong spirit, vivid eyes, blond hair and was clearly interested in me and therefore I in her. This was a girl from another world who joined me on the street and so we walked around and talked about ourself and life as it can be lived. The sex, the drugs and alcohol, God, parents, the psychedelic culture, materialism. And almost by itself we met each other every week on the street (because I did not have a home at that moment) and walked around the city and talked and talked. We fell in love with each other without giving it a name. She intrigued me, because of the contrast with me and my way of life. For me she was a personification of life, hope and energy .
But I never expressed that. We had no sex with each other.

After having met each other for about thirty times, I suddenly left Rotterdam and almost disappeared for her and other friends. Almost a year later I got a letter from her and she told me that she had an accident with her scooter and was in the hospital.If I would like you to come and visit her, she wrote.
And so I did and after that I never met her again.

Till thirty years later....

We met the last time in 1971 and in 2000 I wrote her a letter.
I had put an ad in a national newspaper and a few days later a familymember of her called me and gave me the telephonenumber of her parents.

Yes, he did remember me from my visit in the hospital; Are you the man that visited my doughter when she was in hospital?; he said.
After a hesitation I replied;"Yes, that's me".
Anyhow, we made a deal, that I could write her a letter which I had send to him and he would give it to her and so it went.

I will translate here the letter that I wrote to Melanie, after thirty years of silence. (But forgive me my poor English.)





Hello Melanie, Jan. 2000,Amsterdam.



As many words this letter contain, as many reasons can be thought up nót to do what I am doing now.
And as few pages this letter contains, as few reasons can there be just to do the opposite; writing you after thirty years.
I feel like a surgeon who cuts open his own history and actually searches for somebody from a distant past and who "connects his destiny to it"; for this moment.

Alfredo, is my name. It must have been 1971 that I got to know you in Rotterdam. It was in the end of my stay in that city and more and more I lived elsewhere in Holland. Sometimes you came all the way to visit me.
In the phonecall I had today with your father he asked me, if I was the boy who once visited you when you were in hospital. Damned, yes. You had written me that you had broken a legg and asked if i’d come and visit you there. Your father was there and your brother and they both were sent out of your room by the nurse. They were outside your room and so I could visit you.
That such memories can rise in our minds after thirty years.

Melanie, if you blow very hard against the dust that lays over your memories, could you get ányting clear again?
You’ll read my letter a bit easier.....

How is it possible , you might ask, that you returned after thirty years in my mind and emotions?
Well, the last few years I have been writing a lot of stories and lyrics and the last half year I have been writing about my years in Rotterdam. I do feel the possibility now, because it has passed nostalgia long time ago.
In my writing I mix fantasy and reality, but I did that just as well in the time I got to know you. Part of our existence, isn't it?
The final trigger why you returned in my mind, was a painting I saw in the Mauritshouse in The Hague : The girl with the pearl, by the 17th century painter Vermeer (also known as the girl with the turban).
Suddenly I thought; ah, that blond girl in Rotterdam.......and little by little the memories came back in my mind, even your name and second name. But the fact, that I finally stept óut of my written stories, the fiction and memories, in search of the living Melanie, came because of this;
I live here in Amsterdam, on my own, along a beatifull small canal, just outside the historical center and two hundred metres from here there is an Italian iceroom . One evening I bought there some ice and enjoied it outside, along the water.
At the other side I saw a man of my age, walking with rounded shoulders, searching for remains of cigarettes on the street. After he had found four of them he finally sat down on a bench and created his own cigarette from alle these left overs.
Suddenly I knew it, unmistakable; he was an old friend from the time I lived in Rotterdam. We once lived in the same building for a while.

The blond girl from Rotterdam ( symbol of life) and the former housemember searching cigarettes on the street (symbol of death) suddenly came very close to each other.
Because of that experience I felt the impuls ánd courage to trace your existence and to write you. I suddenly felt the urge to do it.
You got it?

I do remeber you, Melanie, as a young blond girl, with eyes clear as the light of life and still very young (what many men like to cofuse with serene) and surely very kind; a warm soul so to speak. It surely impressed me even more, because of the contrast between our worlds; the girl of Vermeer who still lived with her parents and went to school, that meets a boy who left home to never return and I indeed never did.
I was moved, although my own history taught me not to speak out about it.


And what can I say about the years after.
After..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................etc. etc.


Finaly I would like to go back to the reason of my writing to you, which is the real content of this letter.
Last saturday I phoned your parents and spoke with your father. In the beginning your father had a protective way of reacting; why would you like to be in contact with Melanie?
I told him how it came up to me to write you and that instead of writing a story or poëm, in this case I would like to do it all different and meet the person in real, daily life.
This letter is for me a kind of physical poëm.
Finally your father said; oh, in such a way. I get it.
All togheter we talked for about ten minutes.
We made an agreement, that I would mail my letter for you to his adress and that he would pass it on to you.


Thanks, Melanie, that you wanted to read all of this and I want to say goodby to you with a specific memory in mind.
Your father brought that memory alive by his question; are you the one, who visited Melanie in hospital after she had that accident?After a short hesitation I replied; yes, that is me.

I remember you, Melanie, in your bed in hospital and myself standing next to you. After fifteen minutes I had to leave and we kissed goodby.
While I walked out of your room, you suddenly said; Alfredo,I am very glad you came. I turned my head, looked beside you, swallowed and replied ;yes, oké, so long hey and so I returned to the wild world.
Now I want to say to you; I am very glad, Melanie, that you ever roamed across my life.
I wish you well.



Alfredo, January , 2002.




P.S.

After a few weeks I received a letter from Melanie and she told me, that she was very surpised that I had written her. But she had not forgotten me, because I was special to her and she is not that kind of person that gives that out of hand easily.
She described in short terms her life after Rotterdam. That she is married for al long time, has kids and works as a teacher and her husband as a surgeon.
With the invitation; we could meet and have a dinner in town, she finished her letter.

For almost two years after that,we had hardly any correspondence and I did not feel any hurry at all. For me, my letter was the most important, but I did realize very well, I had started something that involved twó people now and not one.

Finally, in Jan. 2002 we met.
I bought a big bouquet of very special flowers, no paper or what so ever, and a CD with a painting on the cover by Vermeer; indeed, the Girl with the pearl.
Rather nervous I rang the bell of her home and there she was; Melanie.

It is impossible for me to really describe in another language what all crossed my mind, what all happened. Impossible.

But she lives close to a nice park with very old treas and water. So we went for a walk and her two dogs followed us. We shared some memories and described our lives.
But I also described and expressed thoughts and feelings that were unknown to me then, or that I suppressed in those days and now I could share it with her. And she too came up with her own questions and confrontations and I admitted I once behaved very wrong and while saying that, she put her hand on her chest and replied; now I can let go of it.
And she wanted to know why I never really answered her love for me and without any hasitation I described my feelings and behaviour and where that all came from and suddenly she said; now it is all finished, for me.

We returned to her home, drank some tea and around seven I left home. Very tired, but satisfied I came home and that evening I recieved a mail from her (the beginning of many) in which she expressed her great satisfaction. I will not describe it here.

But my own feelings about this meeting I will describe here.

What a victory over the limits of our youth.
What a victory over the limits of our childlife.
What a victory over time; we will surely die and not so very long from now. But we expressed the unspoken, hidden thoughts and feelings which seem to make history inexorable.
As mature people we overcame all of that and celebrated life as it is nów.
We conquered the inexorabillity of life.
We made our own painting of love.

I am glad I am alive

Alfredo, october 2002 , Amsterdam

What a lovely story Alfredo, thank you so much for posting it!


kelli

Thanks Kelly for your reaction.

I'm working véry hard to place a readable version, cause whatever I put on the site, it is placed with lines from Amsterdam to Alaska.
Even this reaction will be unreadable for the same reason.
It frustrates me very much, because writing this "report" at H2G2 could feel like a great relieve to me. As if it is even one step further than the content of the story itself. Making it publicly; like an anchor in the sea of experiences.


Greatings from Amsterdam, Alfredo