We return to the parks and to low-consumption existence
Small social ecosystems live in the parks. Here, people take refuge from hostility, in secret, in a way almost imperceptible to people who –like me– are passing through. They keep silent, as if they did not want to be discovered in their immense, passive, free peace
PalmaWe are at the park. At the Estacions park in Palma, where small social ecosystems coexist with each other. Now, from where I wait for my bus departure time, I can observe one. It is the ecosystem of the people sitting around the multiple and enormous planters in charge of generating shade. Inside each one, four trees rise, connected by earth and air: their crowns caress and join into a single roof that shelters us all, and the branches tickle each other with lights and shadows, letting the air in. It is a late summer afternoon and since I sat under the shelter of this porch I have stopped huffing, sweating, and swearing. The city seems, for a moment, habitable.
The people around me take refuge from hostility, in secret, in a way almost imperceptible to those who—like me—are just passing through. They keep silent, as if they did not want to be discovered in their immense, passive, low-consumption, free peace. A couple sits, holding hands. Still, they look around, without talking the entire time I have them in front of me. I think they could be doing a meditation exercise, forced to do nothing for a while. But I see no sign of effort on their faces. There is also a family sitting in a circle on multiple chairs: a man, on a folding one, and a woman, in a wheelchair. They have brought a drink in a thermos that they pour into a couple of shared cups. Another girl reads a book lying on the grass on a sarong. In her bag, prepared with water and something to eat, I can see that spending an afternoon alone at the park can be a premeditated plan. Very close to her, behind a tree, a woman is taking a nap. Everyone seems to be saving energy.
A little further on, a middle-aged man plays the bongos to the rhythm of a Caribbean melody, fine and soft. His music and the shade woven by the leaves are now the natural environment in which we all float, tethered and suspended at the same time, as if inside jelly. The man is playing a song that reminds me of the movie Chico and Rita, so I think he might be Cuban. From my raft, I watch him through the bushes. I enjoy contemplating him, calm, following the beats coming from the speakers. Without pretensions, without haste. For no one and for everyone at the same time. He laughs, with his legs open, holding the bongos between them. His chest broad, open; his chin up, generous. I watch him happily, and his gaze meets mine, fleeting. I think he smiled at me, and I lower my head. I feel embarrassed to show a stranger that he has made me happy (but not as much as when they annoy me). What nonsense. I raise my head again and find him right there, with his eyes half-closed and his cheeks happy. He sees me and, now yes, he greets me. I don't know what to do. I am so unaccustomed to spontaneous interactions, without codes, that I need a manual to know what formalism to introduce in this case. In the rush, all I manage to do is laugh and raise my eyebrows, as a sign of greeting.
A place to exist in hiding
I realize that when I arrived I only saw people who—like me—were waiting, as if they couldn't be doing anything else here, in the park. Now that I have broken the spell I see everything more clearly: I see people sitting, people resting, people sharing, people who have found a place to be and do nothing. Perhaps I would never have found it if I hadn't arrived exceptionally early. Perhaps I wouldn't know how to do nothing either if it weren't for the amount of time I dedicate to public transport: arriving there, waiting for it, being trapped in it. This non-time in which life is a formality for a few minutes. A time in which nothing happens, which doesn't advance the plot. Which is summarized as going from point A to point B. It is the moment of others' lives; in which everything has permission to be put on pause. In which my life empties itself to become porous to everything that surrounds me. And how good it is. If it weren't for this, I wouldn't have discovered the well-being that the Parc de les Estacions offers at six in the evening. If it weren't for this, I wouldn't have remembered that we can inhabit parks: take refuge in them, be in them, do nothing. If it weren't for this, I could not have entrusted this secret to you.