Magnetism of the double M somewhere called Ilha dos Frades

by Lucía Barra Asenjo (Spain)

Making a local connection Brazil

Although it may seem like a fiction, everything I am about to tell you actually happened (or so I believe). I am writing this from an office on the other side of the planet and the memories seem diffuse. Luckily, words have the power not to allow memory to forget some essential parts of the memories. This is the story of how the earth, life and an all too innocent young girl met one January with the sand between her fingers, the healing power of the "Bahian" sun and a magical moon (almost as much as its people). I believe that the story of my passage through this land of ancestral customs, spiritual beliefs and an almost mystical union with nature, would be meaningless if I did not tell you about Mowgly and Miguel, the double M. I would need a whole book to tell you about them. But I learned that to understand what is important, sometimes infinite words are not necessary. The day I met Mowgly, I asked myself, "Why is your name Mowgly? Oh, naive me... Why do we always wonder why things happen? Why, why, why. Mowgly is Mowgly, and that is all. Mowgly is not a man, Mowgly is a soul. "I don't have a body, I don't have a soul. I am a soul", he told me on that haunted island called Ilha dos Frades. I still have those words engraved in my memory. I think that thanks to the fire he made in that lost world where impossible things happened. Sometimes I do not trust my ability to remember the moments or my mental pictures of the places where I landed without meaning to. However, from those words of Mowgly I am one hundred percent sure. They say that free and wild souls are in danger of extinction. But that when they meet, they simply have a magnetic need to be united. That is how destiny took me two days (and two infinite nights) to that lost island. There, I witnessed the energy of the double M, the energy of Mowgli and Miguel, his faithful adventure partner. Who could have told me, constrained by my worldly comforts, that I would live for two days amidst the madness of these two souls? The reminder inserted in my head tells me that it was only two days (although now it seems like a sigh to me). I walked behind them for hours, following the trail of the moon, the howling of Mowgly and the peace of Miguel. Almost without meaning to, I became the lucky spectator of an almost unreal story. How beautiful it was to see, in the distance of my still feet accustomed to the asphalt, two wild wolves going nowhere. Barefoot, light, lonely. Oh, but what a life these wolves had inside them…! Yes. I am still sitting in my office typing into a plastic box and I can not remember all the parts of this story. However, the feeling of freedom that two wild souls shared with me, is a tattoo on the head, on the body and undoubtedly on the soul. My boots are too tight. I feel that the light from this screen is blinding me. The photocopier keeps spitting out sheets of paper and more sheets of paper. Did this story really happen? Is it true that I escaped from all this for a thousandth of a second from the history of time and met my "wild self"? Did I walk without shoes and eat with my hands? Did that mango fall from a lost tree as if nature invited us to be accomplices to her secrets? Did I see endless sunrises and sunsets mixed with sea water and love? Is that Mowgly real? Did I dance barefoot in the crowd and howl like a wolf at the full moon? Oh, the moon...! I think it was all your fault. Your fault and the fault of the people you decide to give a little piece of your shine to every night...