We had the experience but missed the meaning
And approach to the meaning restores the experience
In a different form, beyond any meaning
We can assign to happiness . . .
The past experience revived in the meaning
Is not the experience of one life only
But of many generations - not forgetting
Something that is probably quite ineffable...
Thus, here are some of my own Moments of Happiness:
When I was a child, I won a great sum of money to spend in material for arts and crafts at a contest themed around the local Virgin Mary, the Virgen de Lidón or Verge de Lledó. I had made a little sculpture of her in white air-dry clay, inlaid with painted lentils and rice grains for jewels, the crown and the frame painted with gold! El Cau, the institute where I was raised, still keeps my Virgin as a trophy (a memento from one of their most gifted students, the first one to enter university), while I cherish and treasure the well-assorted 36-colour set of pencils that is the only one of those won treasures I have not completely worn out.
It was 2007, the Linnaeus tricentennial, and I was 15. Lost in Gothenburg Bothanical Gardens like a fairytale maiden lost in the woods and walking up a slope, I had strayed away from dad, so I tried to explore the area as well as find dad at the entrance pond. It was an unusually sunny and hot day for Gothenburg in summer. Suddenly, I found myself in a clearing full of tansy and rosemary and lavender, surrounded by pines and mastic or lentiscus bushes. A cloudless day sky, warm summer air, Mediterranean flora... It was just like my secret hideout on top of the hill at Hole 15 of the La Coma golf course (AKA Club de Campo del Mediterráneo). So I thought: "This isn't Sweden anymore! I have been somehow teleported back to Spain!" Walking downhill once more and through the woods once more, I realised that I had stayed in Sweden, in Gothenburg Botanical Gardens, all along, for the woods became darker than in Spain and I wound up by the entrance pond with dad once more. Then, he gave me a present in the gift shop: I've still got the khaki T-shirt with the Latin inscription AMOR UNIT PLANTAS, the years 1707-2007, and Linnaeus's signature against a bright green spiralling tendril.
The springtime I wrote (and illustrated part of) Zodiaka: it was 2009, the International Year of Astronomy. Both my Nans and Gramps were still alive and in perfect health, and no laptop could be found on the Spanish ones' desk table. One idle day in my Easter holidays, I was suddenly inspired to write a twelve-canto series or cycle of poems about the Western zodiac as a set of archetypes and a circle of life. The cantos, not named after the signs but Romanly numbered (Canto I, II, III, IV, and so on to Canto XII), were quickly written by hand, in the manner of the Middle Ages (I had not discovered the cloud yet), left-handed, with a blue ballpoint pen on six A4 sheets, one canto right after the other. It was a brainstorm of the highest voltage ever.
The poems were read aloud by mum, Nan, Gramp, and close friends of the Spanish family, to much acclaim, before I brought it to school to be read by my Art teacher and older sister figure, one of my few friends during those stormy teens, Patricia García. She was more pleased with the poems than anyone else, and suggested posting them on the cloud and illustrating them to commemorate the International Year of Astronomy (though the poems dealt with the zodiac signs not as constellations, but as archetypes). My initial proposal for Aquarius was at least a little baroque (in my own ligne claire-animesque style, a cupbearer of ambiguous gender, with steampunk mechanical wings and a third eye, pouring out from the vase a rainbow that became stars of bright colours), and thus, trumped by a fellow Aquarian's proposal of a simple, minimalistic vase. Thankfully, there were no Libras at class, so I was given a second chance at designing a symbol for that sign, an air sign as well. I created a more minimalistic design, which was basically the symbol of Venus made with a taijitu and a crossed sheathed sword and scales, the olive wreath of peace in between both symbols. A more simplistic symbol which united balance, justice, peace, and Venus. This symbol was coloured in soft, bright pastels.
Zodiaka: a Metaphysical Epic in Twelve Cantos would be my first digital literary production.
2010-Pia Desideria Year: Turning eighteen is always a big issue, especially if you are the only student at class interested in early modern history, fictional worlds, and highbrow culture. If you have lost your Swedish Gramp, and the three elders left in your family are now fragile when it comes to health. If you have left the institution where you spent your childhood to study among strangers, finding at first but hardships with both the curriculum and the other students. If you fear that becoming an adult will change you for the worse, upon ceasing to be a child. To be honest, I was brooding when I was given the chance to make a project, the one that would become my plastic masterpiece: the Pia Desideria's English translation by Edmund Arwaker, re-illustrated and as source of critical essays.
That was also the year I discovered Voltaire, reading L'Ingénu (The Sincere One) and Micromégas, recommended by my Philosophy teacher and mentor Salvador ere he left for Stockholm on account of his wife's business, and I fell in love with Arouet's rapier wit.
But it was the summer before, that summer of 2009, brooding after my first and most painful flunk at Maths and my leave-taking of El Cau, the teasing I was subject to... and even cursing my own impulsive, sanguine temperament... that I discovered the little Jesuit emblem book on the Net. It would be the first strand of the red string that tied me together to Jean 't Serclaes de Tilly. My initiation into the realm of translation, before university. And it would also haunt me throughout that difficult year.
The new illustrations, which I still keep like legendary treasure, are Tarot-card-like collages in colour, my favourite W.I.T.C.H. character Elyon Portrait replacing the Psyche character in the original black and white etchings. Rebel leader Caleb, with whom I shipped and still ship Elyon, played the role of Sacred Love, and Lord Cedric was Satan, in settings of naive pastel backgrounds that told a story in which the female lead went from all kinds of passive damselling (falling into traps, convalescence, drowning in a storm, exploitation, physical abuse, lightning fire, accusation and prosecution...) to active breaking free of her constraints, seeking her lost love, even growing wings to fly in pursuit of her own happiness.
The first essay dealt with appearances, identity, honesty, and pretending: both today's image culture laced with Peter Pan fantasies and Friar Luis de León's commentary in La Perfecta Casada (The Perfect Wife) on his own translation of Proverbs 31:22 (a present-day source and a seventeenth-century one on the subject) were my guidelines. In those days when Othello and Voltaire's stories haunted me as well, the theme of identity pervaded my thoughts that year. While fashions such as certain reality TV shows, drugs, and Justin Bieber were all around me at school, buzzing in my disturbed ears, I resolved to follow Sting's advice and be myself no matter what they said. I stood strong and firm like a rock in troubled waters. And the essay can be read as a critique of the average teenagers' dependence on fashion, whether in the realm of attire or otherwise (reality TV, drugs, media stars like Justin Bieber...), which I said was just a cover for their insecurities, coupled with my defense of uniqueness.
The second essay was an analysis of fever and related symptoms as symbols of spiritual decadence in the Pia Desideria. My war on Maths and my knowledge of my own besetting sins, which made that subject the only challenging one to me, sparked it.
The third essay dealt with feeling trapped without any escape and wishing to break free by means of suicide, which both the author and the translator of Pia desideria are against. Indeed, I felt trapped myself, haunted by the wise words of Tilly's chaplain and those of the Augustan poet about the soma/sema trope.
The fourth essay sought to contextualize an allusion, in one of the poems, to the English Civil War, both the Charleses Stuart, and the curmudgeon Cromwell who came in between.
The coda of the whole project, an essay whose title ("Nel mezzo del cammin...") was taken from the opening of the Divine Comedy, was once my own reflection on coming of age and on my effort as a translator and literary critic for the first time in my life:
"My flaws (impatience, self-will, impulsiveness, apathy) have not been moderated or eradicated, which makes me still behave like a girl-child, a willful and spoiled Tinker Bell who, just like Peter Pan, wishes to never grow up (something in between a pixie and a she-devil).
The Wendy Darling or Goody-Two-Shoes into which they have resolved to turn me finds herself lost among youngsters who never cease to talk about sex, drugs, and other taboos, which can't be more ironic.
In the middle of this coming-of-age crisis, the resolve to carry on with my project was kindled like a spark in the February cold. I thank you all on the Art Class team for having supported me. [···]
I have spent six months (since autumn 2009) on the making of this project, without giving up, and convinced that I would get something useful out of it at the end of the day."
The whole project received much acclaim for combining my interests in translation, illustration, and early modern history with thorough research and a dash of my own style. I consider it my second masterpiece after Zodiaka.
Angling on a rowboat in Lake Lysevattnet: Though I am a novice with the rod, twice in my teens, during different summers, have I caught impressive trouts, the first time a pure-bred one, the second time a salmon hybrid. The fighting was fierce and I was determined to haul the leviathan on board with all my power, fueled by a resolve unlike any other, terrified of letting go or letting the line snap. And in the end, weary and victorious, came always the same congratulations. The second time, we had also found and gathered the "gold of the woods", as chanterelles are known in Sweden, in abundance.
There was much boasting to friends and relatives on the phone, especially the first time: "Sandra has never fished before in her life... and she's caught a purebred trout, thirty centimetres long, 5 kilos heavy!"
My catch was frozen, then thawed and oven-baked in special occasions in both summers.
Since I am not a member of the Stenungsund Angling club and dad (called Sten) and I share the same initial, the catch (always the greatest of the summer) was registered both summers as made by one S. Dermark. The true meaning of which was our S Secret.
My twentieth birthday, the last day of the first month of 2012. A present that mum had kept intriguing me with for ages. At first supposed to be a Christmas present, then a Wise Men present, then finally opened that evening, as soon as I had officially reached my second decade.
What was it? Bernard Quilliet's biography Christina of Sweden: an Exceptional King, in Spanish. The book that guided me towards university and made me rediscover the Thirty Years' War. Christina Vasa, from that day on, has been my guiding star.
June 2012. What can I say about that month of that year? I was twenty summers, two decades! Many of my wishes came true! When I strained myself as hard as I could in the final and decisive Maths test... It was all or nothing, and, remembering the famous Kipling poem about coming of age:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss...
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss...
Before that, I had to take my leave of high school. Inviting both my parents to the graduation ceremony, and thus bringing them together, sitting on adjacent chairs (another of my wishes: reuniting my parents at least for an hour!), before all of my classmates and teachers, I gave the speech of my life.
Sign errors, bullying, my strained relationship with my less cultured peers: Winston Churchill may as well have mentioned those obstacles during that epic address. I have never suffered from stage fright, and I was looking at most of my loved ones (parents, classmates, teachers, headmistress), whose eyes were fixed on me. Still I remember everyone wore his or her holiday best, and I, in a sleeveless cobalt blue satin gown and matching flower parure, was the star of the graduation. I still keep that dress as a memento of such an eventful evening. (After the soirée, I talked to my dreaded deputy headmistress and Maths teacher, an iron lady, tête-à-tête, and asked her if she had ever committed sign errors in her youth. She said yes!)
Then came the entrance test for James I University (Universitat Jaume I). Latin: the usual Gallic Wars battle account. Julius Caesar in his own language holds no secrets for me. Art History: The Creation of Adam. I mentioned the emphasis on muscles and Michelangelo the sculptor commissioned to paint for Pope Julius II, as well as the brain theory (Michelangelo drew God as the brainstem in a cross-section of a human brain) and the Nokia logo in my analysis.
Was I admitted? Not only that, but a local newspaper published, that summer, a list of the highest scoring students in the province, and my name was one of those! Ere I left for Sweden in late June, I visited my old institute El Cau to hand over some old childhood books and break the news. They received me like a heroine: I was the first inmate and pupil of El Cau to enter any university!
How a few words helped me forge a friendship: At the end of my first year at James I University (Universitat Jaume I), in 2013, one hot sunny day out in the agora, a certain lecturer of mine who was surprised by my translating skills came close to me. It was then that María Calzada and I started discussing everything she wanted to discuss with me.
The point came to the word "lieutenant", which I pronounce /leftenant/, and she recognized my pronunciation as British or RP. We discussed other pronunciations of the same word (US /lutenant/ and French /lyötnang/), and thus, we went over from "lieutenant" to "shibboleth", a word María did not know at all. Time for me to explain: "It's the Hebrew word for 'stream'. And it also refers to a word which is pronounced in different ways depending on the dialect, like /leftenant/ or /potayto/. Didn't you know? Now the dialect of the Ephraimites had as much of the /sh/ sound in "she" as Spanish has got. So they said /sibboleth/. The Gileadites, enemies of these Ephraimites, place themselves at a ford, across some rapids, and they stop every person who crosses. 'Friend or foe?' And then, regardless of the reply, they ask: 'What are you crossing?' So it's an enemy if they say /sibboleth/, and an ally if it's /shibboleth/. They could thus tell the difference."
From "lieutenant" and "shibboleth" that day onwards, during these three years... we have realised we are kindred spirits!
Unbirthday party: Last year (2014) in June, having failed my first subject at university, I was utterly crushed. Like... having lost everything I cared for. Fortunately, María Calzada was there to invite me to Cajun-style spare ribs and a first-class ice cream dessert, as I bought a magazine on religious history just because my old friend Jean 't Serclaes appeared in the chapter on religious wars. Our conversation went from Game of Thrones (Varys and Littlefinger, and the "Chaos is a ladder" speech) to how I can tell Judas Iscariot in pictures of the Last Supper because he is always the odd one out. We drank to each other and my mood quickly changed from brooding to the usual sunny one. Since María said we were celebrating my 4 grade in Terminology, I felt that it was ironic, like an unbirthday party of sorts. Yet I soon forgot my worries about the hated grade, in good company and by a well-set table. At the end of our unbirthday party, I returned home with a pint of mint leaves and chocolate ice, the religious history magazine, and a far lighter heart than before.
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