[h1]Red Room[/h1]
At times, coincidences feel real: we all possess our red room.
I am in a room—say, the hospital where Anxo had ended up—and I find a door. I open it. It resembles a stage, draped in a red curtain. Pleated, as if something wished to reveal the truth to me; as if it were contracting. The floor, too, is of red and white lines. Zigzagged, broken, folded.
Within—or in the midst—is a television set, switched off. Sometimes, there is one of those toy rocking horses. It feels strange to behold. Then the television flickers to life when I insert a VHS tape—showing Anxo speaking to me with a false, strange, exaggerated, glassy tenderness. The brand of the television is NISU: in Galicia, it means Ni Su padre lo conoce. This tape of my father, Anxo, feels as if I do not know him; I know not who he is, nor what he has done. This room speaks more truth than it appears to.
The folded curtains feel like dwelling inside a forbidden passion; it is a dream in which a rocking horse remains in motion.
This is a dream, whispering truth. This red room: it reveals to me who Anxo is—an angel who was mine, only to become a fallen angel. Then, I vomit violently; I feel the gaze of many cameras watching me, exposing me. They see my skin. The gaze feels like a touch. Again I vomit, once more—until I expel everything that remains within me. The camera interrupts my life; while I was growing up, the fallen one still suppressed my soul.
I knew what Anxo had done—I am not certain whether to continue calling him ‘father’—the day he became the protagonist of his own films: he became the monster. But instead of terrifying for the sake of entertainment, he did so out of perversion. That which is the monster—a seed of evil within the soul—had now grown within the fallen angel. Those mechanical eyes have stripped something from me. Mother did not speak much of them. She evaded. She grew angry. Should I blame her, when she sought to protect me? Is it better to speak the truth when intimacy is folded, stretched, or broken? Her silence was her remedy; yet this red room, where the toy rocks, that toy is nothing more than a milestone of a bitter memory, hidden deep.
The room does not breathe.
The air is thick, listening.
Stillness presses against the walls
while the camera drifts over my skin
as though searching for a bruise.
I retch something bitter.
Tears fall—slow, distorted—
as if they belong to someone else.
I had received a VHS tape. Anxo was there. I glided upon the film: the illuminated fragment over a dense darkness. It marked a path. I glided upon it to reach the cellars of my memories—hospital and home, traumas and experiences. There it was: a creature fashioned from celluloid; it sees me, and wishes to ensnare me. The camera seeks to enclose me, to take me within its frames. I now know what occurs here. Just as I feel enclosed within my house, unable to move forward, remembering this; even feeling enormous guilt—complicit—it is necessary to emerge from here: by knowing the red rooms, there is a first step: to know who I am in the dejection of trauma.
Red room. Corridors bending in on themselves.
A strip of film watches—voyeur, unblinking—
its eyelid made of celluloid and dust.
The air smells of light, sharp and electrical.
The darkness stinks—damp, intimate—
like something left too long behind the walls.
How to emerge from here? Can I exist with my trauma, despite living through confused memories in an entity of mine that trembles? It was necessary to see things once more as they truly are; and not grant them a rewriting nor an editing of meaning for the things that grew during my childhood. This dress is merely that: a pink dress, nothing more. I put it on. Giving it no meaning. The sensation of loathing comes. I resist.
In various rooms—such as the corridor of forbidden red, danger and alert—I see the creature of celluloid, the Observer, when I wish to pick up my teddy bear. This bear is something that lacks rewriting and editing; it cannot be filmed. I embrace it. And we remain there, looking: I feel rediscovered upon seeing that I have not lost everything. It is sitting there: waiting for me, seeking an embrace, just as it is for me. It is what I had forgotten, buried—I had forgotten that even the rocking horse exists for stories, for enjoyment, for losing oneself in innocence.
Thus now, I recover the true sense of things: it is a dress, nothing more. It is no longer a distracting object, a pardon, a fixation of imposed attention. Who am I within the trauma? Or rather, I am, and I sustain myself by recovering that which kept me exposed and defenceless.
Now, to rid myself of guilt, of every trace of loathing, I take up the camera once more: the Super 8 film camera. Portable; discreet, voyeuristic; yet with the recovery of meaning, it allows me to see things as they truly are. I can rewind to mend and bear witness, reclaiming the time lost upon my rocking horse and my teddy bear.
I am the filmmaker of my reality; I must put a stop to the celluloid monster: strip his strength from me by stunning him, by recording what was recorded and showing him what he has done—showing him the truth. It is to bring light to the darkness—truth to the fallen one. The spotlights do the rest. I continue recording, or rather, un-recording, to grant authentic and original meaning to the interior of my life and everything that formed a part of me.
I knew what my mother did: upon knowing the monster that was Anxo. She had left clues within me. Even the blow she dealt him—it left him in a coma. I understood her. It was not her fault. That sensation of guilt can consume us: to be responsible when there is no moment of responsibility. Thus: everything began to rewind—not to repeat what occurred—but to grant true meaning to that which was concealed with perversion, monstrosity, and helplessness.
Anxo was a filmmaker—he used the camera as an extension of his malice, disguised as perversion, humiliation, depravity, bribery; perhaps even a desire to improve his films. In the end, he transformed into what he portrayed in his films.
He created the image of what he falsely was—or is, within my depths.
Yet the camera helped me to emerge, to cease vomiting, to leave this place and the house.
I refuse to be his extension: I crawl on all fours, I move in stealth, I re-signify all things: I embrace my teddy bear.
Recovering all my fragments, my lost time, I am now capable of forgiving them both and leaving my prison—my red room—to move forward.
