POST-IT is a lounge bar in Uppsala where the waitstaff plays the homing pigeon and corresponds anonymous messages from Table to table. I went there once after a tiring lecture.
The waiter hands me a piece of paper after 10 minutes.
“Your smile is but a wall between two gardens”
I was not smiling though. I was just reading some poems I Wrote in 2007, the year of fake ID’s and unsafe sex. I wrote:
“Sorrow is like a precious treasure — I show it only to friends”
You give it back to the waitperson and they put the message in a big birdcage, to be picked and delivered by another co-worker so that we lost track of who is the sender.
“Can we meet each other after 5 years from now?”
The reply was daring and I was up to this game. I wrote back.
“How soon is now?”
The answer was fast.
“Let’s go back to the future. Tonight.
Now I got confused, but a second message was already on my table in the blink of an eye.
“I want to meet the person you want to be in 5 years tonight”
I thought it was a bad joke, but the possibly maybe spoke louder and when I caught myself again, the time and the venue in Stockholm had already been stated.
I was punctually at 8pm on a dark alley in Kungsholmen, when I started asking myself what the hell was I doing. 7 was the number of the building. I was there in the chilly wind of the Swedish late-summer, waiting for something to go wrong.
An old man opens the Door. I am sure he was not in the bar. He was more like a butler, in his 40’s, tux and gown style.
“SIR!!! We have been waiting for you! It’s an honor to have you here”, said the old man, while he was checking my coat and offering me a tulip of champagne.
“Do you know the rules?”, he asked, interrupting my attention to the lights and sounds coming from the big door after the dark entrance hall.
“I have an idea”, I answered. “But not really…”
He handed me a piece of paper with some familiar handwriting.
“If you had the power to go back to the future, what would you want to be? If you went in a time machine, what would you want your life to look like?
This is the party that blends present and future and take you exactly where you want to be in 5 years time – which is NOW. This is the party that could have changed your life.
Tonight, every single action, thought and word is a mirror of the person you are in 2015.
It’s an honor to have you here among us.
Welcome.”
Things were more serious than I could ever imagine. I was feeling curious, but still uncomfortable and scared of opening the door in front of me.
No need to think twice, though. Someone opened the door from the inside and all of a sudden millions of flashes and awe’s came from this big crowded room. I was blinded by the lights & sounds from the future of this crazy memorable party that was just about to start.
[…to be continued…]
