The No Name Diary

I remember that thick square black diary well. Holding it at the top of my street one afternoon in the hot Chinchiná sun. Looking down the road’s steep descent before I made my way down the irregular steps. Numerous hanging wires crisscrossing above me, with grassy moss growing in clumps along them. There I walked, wondering about the notes I’d been taking in that notebook just before. Their ink slightly smudged between the pages:

Was it better just to go?

Not to fall in love?

Is it better to end things before they become too serious?

Then a table with the pros and cons I could think of dividing the page…

That was a conversation one afternoon, looking at the high hills lined with endless rows of coffee trees in front of us. She accepting that I was definitely going to leave. That certainty which I must have arrived at, at some point… Then a time of great lovesickness, an indescribable feeling that I was entirely unable to escape. I moped around for a week, making many more mad notes. Finally a conversation with her mother who had invited me for lunch. A voice of age who said just not to worry, what will be will be.

Those were the times of night rain hammering on the roof. The candlelight flickering off the bare brick walls and us lying together on the floor.

I had to leave after six months, there wasn’t a day left on that visa. I ended up in Tulcan, Ecuador. Walking around a beautiful cemetery with bushes pruned into enormous mythical indigenous figures, wondering what to do next.

Laif was walking with her horse in a deep red canyon. She was brushing her palm across its shoulder in quiet contemplation of the horse’s beauty when the old woman appeared. A kind wizened face with bright eyes and long silver hair, she was wearing a grey robe and came up alongside Laif playfully, mirroring her every step and action. Swinging her arms in harmony, amused, adapting her posture to that of her companion’s. She paused and then made a brief introduction as they walked side by side,

‘Hey’ the old woman almost whispered, inclining her head towards Laif.

‘Hey‘, Laif replied.

‘You going far?’

‘I’m not sure. And you?’

‘Heading over the hill.’

They walked together in silence for a while. Then the woman spoke again;

‘You know there are many questions, but there is also only one question… And many answers, but also just one answer…’

Laif nodded in a friendly way, meeting the woman’s eyes. Then looked down at the woman’s bare feet which were treading artfully over the rocks in their path.

‘And if there is only one answer, it is Kung Fu’, the old woman uttered, and looked expectantly at Laif until she responded.

‘What’s Kung Fu?’

‘Kung Fu is skill’

The old woman suddenly stopped in her tracks and so Laif did too.

´What does it mean to live with skill Laif?

Hearing her name for the first time, Laif was startled.

‘How… How do you know my name…?’

‘Because I just gave it to you!’, the old woman exclaimed, then laughed and picked up the path again. Laif followed.