The question is to put the mind to summer. There is no use lying in a hammock under the fig tree if your head is dedicated to looking for a better job or arguing with a relative. If the mind jumps like a frog, the rental of the hammock is a useless expense. In those, a friend explains to me a very cheap, creative visualization technique. It is about building an imaginary house, to enter it when you feel anguish or stress.
My friend’s CI is on the coast of AlmerÃa. She built it with her eyes closed, a bargain. You enter through a glass spiral staircase (it turned out that way, you don’t know why), the rooms are spacious and bright and in the living room they have put a large window, facing the sea, to see reddish sunsets that widen the heart. She has access to a private cove. My friend emphasizes that she has taken a small cove (it can be as big as she wants) so as not to monopolize the cost.
His mental home seems idyllic, despite the fact that he got confused with the measurements of the kitchen and had to put the washing machine in the hallway. She must be careful during the construction of a CI, since, apparently, there is no going back. By some norm of the psycho-enterprise, reforms are not allowed. If you get a twisted bedroom and the bed doesn’t fit, you put up with it. Imagination cannot be in everything.
I tell my friend that in the bedroom of my CI there would be a bathtub of spring water and a grand piano, at the foot of the huge bed. But she worries me about the prohibition to make reforms and I don’t decide to build it. I know that inside me there is an architect full of doubts, who could trap me in a labyrinthine and dangerous CI. Who also assures me that my house will not be filled with ghosts; false memories, psychomoths, parasites, cloudy fears?
I see myself running through narrow corridors and I tell my friend that she better invite me to hers. She looks at me doubtfully: she doesn’t know if she can take people to a CI. It is a place of seclusion (he has come to call it “my sanctuary”), it is not about having parties. I tell her we can pick ourselves up together. “I don’t see it clearly,” he mutters, “I have to consult it.” I’m not asking who, imagination is very personal.
That night, in bed, when I close my eyes, I visualize the glass spiral staircase. An irrepressible temptation leads me to slide down those translucent steps. Barefoot, I enter this alien CI. There is a silence that takes your breath away. An excess of natural light that dazzles. In the bedroom, the bed is unmade. I lie down for a while and I get hungry. Looking for the kitchen, I bump into the washing machine in the hallway and gasp. Some red shrimp heads rest on a plate, my friend does not pay attention to luxuries. I wonder if she hasn’t done the dishes because she had to run for something. I whisper her name, to no avail. I doubt whether to suck a shrimp head or not. I sit on the sofa, in front of the window, and steal the vision of a spectacular red sunset. And I’m still here.
