my piedra

Sometimes I search for words that would evoke a melancholy tone to my days. I search for words to roll over my tongue again and again till I commit to memory every niche of the piece-until it's effect on me wears out and I grow tired of it. I do not know why I do this, maybe It's the summer heat that compels me, maybe it's just the way I am.

Paulo Coehlo gave me one such tone- a gift of grief and closure.

I would like to share with you this masterpiece of his. It is, well, let's just say, a snippet of brilliance - it's the only part of the book that I enjoyed. I do not know why this part grew out to be so different from the rest of the work. All I know is that it is the first chapter of the book and it is beautiful to the tongue.

"By the river Piedra I sat down and wept. There is a legend that everything that falls into the waters of this river--leaves, insects, the feathers of birds--is transformed into the rocks that make the riverbed. If only I could tear out my heart and hurl it into the current, then my pain and longing would be over, and I could finally forget.

By the River Piedra I sat down and wept. The winter air chills the tears on my cheeks, and my tears fall into the cold waters that course past me. Somewhere, this river joins another, then another, until--far from my heart and sight--all of them merge with the sea.

May my tears run just as far, that my love might never know that one day I cried for her. May my tears run just as far, that I might forget the River Piedra, the monastery, the church in the Pyrenees, the mists, and the paths we walked together.

I shall forget the roads, the mountains, and the fields of my dreams--the dreams that will never come true.

I remember my "magic moment"--that instant when a "yes" or a "no" can change one's life forever. It seems so long ago now. It is hard to believe that it was only last week that I had found my love once again, and then lost her.

I am writing this story on the bank of the River Piedra. My hands are freezing, my legs are numb, and every minute I want to stop.

"Seek to live. Remembrance is for the old," she said.

Perhaps love makes us old before our time--or young, if youth has passed. But how can I not recall those moments? That is why I write--to try to turn sadness into longing, solitude into remembrance. So that when I finish telling myself the story, I can toss it into the Piedra. That's what the woman who has given me shelter told me to do. Only then--in the words of one of the saints--will the water extinguish what the flames have written.

All love stories are the same."