How to own the world

The other day at a family reunion, a cousin of ours was telling with a great deal of laughter a story about the oldest living member of the family, a wonderfully cheerful 97- year-old who seems always so happy inspite of the fact that he is already in some kind of limbo where he hardly recognizes anybody and cannot remember a thing. Inspite of all that, he is rosy-cheeked and bright-eyed and smiling, enjoying every good thing that comes his way, people watching with interest, eating his favorite foods with great gusto, listening to music with obvious pleasure, beating time and swaying his body, his face alive with pure enjoyment.

The story was that one time a daughter of his took him to the family plantation. Standing on some promontory, he had a wide view of miles of green coconut trees spreading across whole barrios up to the distant blue Mount Banahaw. He stood there for a long time gazing at the panoramic view in a state of near ecstasy. Then he whispered in awed exultation, "You mean all this is mine? This is all mine!"

He looked so ecstatic that nobody had the heart to tell him that what he was looking at was actually a spread composed of several plantations belonging to different people and that even the parcel his family owned belonged jointly to twelve siblings and their children and grandchildren who numbered almost a hundred.

"Not to mention," added our cousin, in great amusement, "hundreds of squatters and tenants who are trying to claim parcels of the land! And, of course, CARP!"

Everybody laughed, of course, with the indulgent affection which all of us have for our dear ancient uncle whom we all regard as some kind of living treasure since he is the oldest living member of the family –a sort of precious antique heirloom to be handled with great care.

I was amused by the story as were all present, but later that evening when I got home I mused to myself –why should the sweet simple old man not think that that breathtaking expanse of land was all his? All the truly beautiful, magnificent things of this world belong to everybody. Anybody who is touched to the very soul by the sheer beauty of any place in the world "owns" that place in an even more special way than a legal owner holding all the documents that attest to his exclusive ownership.

I remembered my castle in Spain –yes, I do have a castle in Spain, the Royal Palace, no less. It came about the first time I went to Spain to do research in the national archives of Madrid. Since I planned to stay a couple of months, I decided it would be more economical to rent a furnished apartment rather than stay in a regular hotel. So I started scanning the newspaper ads and looking at prospective places. The first two days the prospects looked quite dim–figuratively and literally. All the "apartments" being offered were dark, dinky little cubbyholes with collapsible beds, sagging mattresses and shabby furnishings worn from countless previous occupants who had come and gone. Certainly not the kind of place that would inspire any creative thinking.

Then one morning, scanning the "Se Alquila" section, I saw an intriguing ad offering a penthouse overlooking "Los Jardines de los moros"–the gardens of the moors. That description sounded romantic to me and to top it all it was cerca del palacio reál.

I immediately called for a taxi and went to this beckoning place. It was an incredible find. It was not in a fashionable building, quite old, but the apartment offered for rent was really a penthouse with an enormous living room with a couple of huge comfortable sofas, a small well-furnished bedroom and bath and, best of all, a dining alcove with large glass windows from which I could look down and see across the road a large tree-covered park–the gardens of the moors! Directly on the right, through the clear glass windows of what was going to be my breakfast nook, I could see the magnificent steeples of the Royal Palace!

And all this splendor was being offered at a rental that was affordable considering the weak Spanish peseta (at that time, in the early 80s, anybody with a few dollars could be a millionaire in pesetas). I could not believe my luck.

I moved in that very evening– and early the next morning when I went for my first breakfast in my glass surrounded alcove, I had my first sight of "My Castle"–gleaming white through the mist of an end-of-summer rain.

From that moment on, the Royal Palace became "My Castle". Every day as I worked on my papers, I watched it as it changed with every shift of time and of weather–lovely and dew-drenched as it would emerge from the early morning mist; bright and shining at midday, its turrets shooting back gleaming arrows of sunlight; grey and mysterious and somewhat melancholy in the cold twilights of a Spanish autumn; glowing with a magical light on moonlit nights.

I was completely enchanted. Every time friends would come to visit me the first thing I would show them was "My Castle", always magically resplendent in whatever mood it would be in at any time of the day or night.

The Palacio Reàl was listed in every Spanish tourist guidebook and during the day busloads of tourists would come and were allowed to enter certain rooms that were open to the public. Once in a while there would be royal functions and "Don Juan" and "Doña Sophia", the King and Queen of Spain, would come in fairy tale fashion, in a carriage, preceded by the royal guard, resplendent in their black and red uniforms and peaked steel helmets. The gardens were named after the Moorish troops–it was their parade ground.

I would watch all this from my breakfast nook, fascinated by the fairy tale scene. But I liked "My Castle" best when all the crowds had left and the King and Queen had gone back to their more modern, more comfortable lodgings in the outskirts of Madrid. It was when it was almost completely vacant with only a few security guards quietly patrolling the grounds that I would feel that it was "My Castle"–mine alone, all mine!

Many times groups of friends would come to see me and suggest that we go to join the tourists on guided tours of the Palace–but I would just shake my head and say, "You go ahead". They would say, "I guess you have been there so often since you live right next door" and I would say, "No, as a matter of fact I have never been there–I see it only through my windows".

They would always be incredulous and probably figured that I was just being blasé about the whole tourist bit. How could I explain how I felt about "My Castle" –that if I came any closer to it than viewing it through the windows of my breakfast nook, it would lose its magic spell for me. Verbally torn bit by bit into small separate mundane pieces by a tourist guide’s too explicit spiel, it would be reduced to just another tourist spot to cross off in a guidebook and mark "already seen". It would suddenly cease to be mine.

As it was, because I never ever really went near it, that Palace has remained a wondrous fairy tale place for me–my magic castle in Spain. Even now when I think of it, it is mine. All mine!

Because one does not have to actually have legal possession of beautiful places to feel that they are uniquely one’s own. Just as in the child-like bemused eyes of my dear ancient uncle that seemingly endless expanse of green palms and blue mountains was all his and more uniquely his than any legal owners, all the magic places in this world are free for the taking for any one who can gaze on them in enchantment.

In this kind of ownership you do not actually possess a place, instead it possesses you and in this strange paradoxical switching, it becomes yours forever. Thus turned about by some exquisite psychic alchemy, one could own the world!

As for our dear old uncle who inspired all these musings. In his great age he continues to live in a secret purer inner world of his own, blissful and carefree as a small child. Completely clueless as far as the strife and struggles in the normal world around him, he looks at everything and everybody with the amused air of an innocent bystander just on the very verge of delighted discovery.

His joy of living is so evident who could ever say he is not having a happy old age? His devoted daughter, who sees to all his needs and takes him everywhere she goes, says fondly, "He never had it so good." She is already starting preparations for his hundredth birthday celebration. None of us doubt that he will live to enjoy it in his unique manner–just as he does everything else.