A BOOK IN MY HANDS THE WRECK THAT REMAINS FROM THE SHIPWRECK OF THAT ENGLISH LOVE. IT WAS ROMEO AND JULIET, IT KEEPS THE NAME OF THE OWNER AND SOME NOTES IN THE MARGIN VERY CAREFULLY OR SUZANNE MARIE HUGH I ALWAY LOVE YOU, I WAS LUCKY ENOUGH TO LOVE THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN IN ENGLAND AND WITH THE BEST HEART. THANK YOU FOR THIS GIFT, LORD, WHICH I DID NOT KNOW HOW TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF, SINCE I WASTED LOVE AND NOW AS AN OLD MAN I REGRET IT. SHAKESPEARE IS NOW ETERNAL AND READING HIS WORKS IS MY CURRENT CONSOLATION

ROMEO AND JULIET

Love is a mire, be rough with it. Lovers are often liars

We don't know if it's true, but the truth is that physical love has to do with the dirt of nature. It's a sticky mess. We are created between the conjunction of semen and vaginal fluids and we come into the world between blood and shit.

I read in English in a book by my beloved Suzanne Hugh. It was one of the wrecks I kept from the shipwreck of our love. When our house in Edenthorpe was destroyed, I drove to Spain in the mini loaded with my guitar, some of my clothes and my few books.

I came crying all the way, nearly a thousand kilometers on the infamous French motorways. Au volant La vue c´´ est la vie, a sign put up to discourage racers from going so fast. The speed was madness.

But that was a flight forward and I am comforted by the knowledge that my love is now a beautiful old English woman with white hair and a perky smile with that sense of humor that I have missed all my life.

The zenith of Shakespeare's words. There was no one like Suzanne Hugh, now Suzanne Parra. I was not up to the level of that love.

When I opened the pages of this drama after fifty-two years, the Swan of Avon in its verses brought me the perfume of those pearly lips that I kissed.

England made me. I will die with the memory of those days. The happiest time. It could not be. And I say with the bard of Stratford upon Avon:

─ Go, go, girl, seek happy nights and happy days.

Excellent Shakespeare when he puts in Romeo's mouth:

─ I have a heart of lead, Marcuchio. But I will ask Cupid to lend me his wings tonight… Love is a tender thing… but it stings like a nettle.

I could not return the book. My love, I do not know where he lives, the number of his street or the place in the sun that guides her steps

It is one of the wrecks of my marriage when that love that we believed to be eternal went to the bottom of the ocean. We had the fates on our side but what remains is something mystical, sensual, spiritual. Nothing carnal.

I was bad. O my God it is the morning. After the years, almost half a century, I am ashamed, but Shakespeare's book remains unblemished in my hands. An evocation of that youthful passion that is indelible to me.

At the beginning of the play the choirs sing what will be the end of the tragedy of two lovers belonging to two families of Verona that have been in conflict for centuries. But with their death they will bring peace to the city. The play, with Shakespeare's exquisite linguistic ease, promises to be a comedy of cape and sword that will become a tragicomedy of tyranny.

Death wins and the characters fight against time and destiny. Marcucho's swords are raised.

Montagues and Capulets at each other's throats and the governess pouring out maternal advice on her daughter, little Juliet. You beat men... but where is Romeo? asks the prince after calming the complainants.

The first thing that a reader of our days notices in Shakespeare's dramas is the vivacity and loquacity of an oral society. The word is vigorous and elegant in the Elizabethan era.

The protagonist enters the scene and in his dialogue with his cousin Benvolio he mentions certain love troubles that have him kidnapped. Then he says:

─ Love is smoke forged from sighs and glances.

Benvolio asks him:

─ Tell me frankly who it is that you love.

─ A woman, cousin. She is chaste like Diana.

Benvolio asks for her name, but he refuses to give it to him.

Capulet wants Juliet, who is fourteen years old, to be married to Count Paris, who invites the entire city of Verona to a party that same night.

Lady Capulet tells him this personally in the midst of a brilliant speech by the nurse who remembers the day she weaned her by placing a branch of absinthe on her areola, fourteen years ago in the month of August Lammastide, according to the old English calendar that counted by quarters: Christmass, Lent. Lammastide, Michaelmass.

With great delicacy the heroine refuses the request but agrees to go to the great party. The great ball of Prince Paris. Life is a great masked ball.

To be continued