In Search of Lego Land
Fictionalized Memoir — A Short Story
This story is part myth, part dream. Names may or may not have been changed. It does not matter since memory is faint. The story has been passed to me by a previous self. The documentation associated with it, is dubious at least. Brownish papers and pictograms. But they tell me, the story is worthy.
It was the time before the hormones. Before the time I was able to intuit women and what I presumed was their supernatural-like force, with the enigma they hide in their bellies, the places a man can only access with a kiss. Right before the earthquake. I was still playing with my Lego blocks, building worlds, oblivious to the exodus from childhood.
It was the time when childhood began to disappear from underneath my feet. As I became more aware of my parents’ bickering, I felt it was the end of my ideal fantasy of a happy household. The warmth of home was now gone. I was maybe eleven years old. Where would I find a place to rest my soul?
The Legos were the memories of the friends we didn’t have. Or did we?
A mixture of our alter egos. Always with Anglo names. We were Argentinian kids with no reason to call our characters Johnny or Tony or Cindy or Daisy. From which television shows did we learn their names?
Many years later now, I wonder if the ones who called themselves Muchas, short for muchachos, meaning guys in Spanish, implying themselves as a group of people, ever truly knew their home, the city of Lego Land.
There was an earthquake. It swallowed the city whole.
Johnny and Cindy, Tony and Daisy, and their kids were the only known survivors.
History tells they used to inhabit Lego Land. But no one ever saw them residing in the city, although the city was always in their heart, the place of origin, where it all began. They were wandering imaginary roads built on a flat rooftop when the earthquake shook the foundation of their world and swallowed their city whole.
After the earthquake, it seemed as if they had only witnessed the city as a fragment of their imagination. As memories of intersections depicted in maps or catalogs, where everything was portrayed the way things were supposed to be and exist.
We would drive our Legos on the adventures where our parents couldn’t take us but where my sister and I were unable to resist going.
We would build vehicles for our guys and their families. Or at least this is how I remember it now.
It was the time before the earthquake of adolescence. Before the time I would fall in love with Marianne, my sister’s best friend. Unrequited love.
The search for Lego Land was in itself an adventure. Every few days, after camping among blocks that had no meaning, they built cars, trucks, or airplanes to take their own and look for the place they called home. The Muchas had meaning. Even though they were blocks, just like the other blocks, they had a history and identity.
Johnny was a helicopter pilot when he met Cindy, who was an ambulance nurse. Tony and Daisy were an adventurous couple, always in their all-wheel-drive vehicle even before the city disappeared. Their children were in appearance simple. Two 4x4 square blocks stuck together containing within them the possibility of infinite combinations.
They built, only for the creation to crumble to pieces at the end of the day. They were always searching for a home that seemed out of grasp impossible to find.
Why does Marianne holds such a mystical place in my mind, I will never know.
Why unearth the truth or lies that are better buried underground?
But life is full of earthquakes. Cities that get swallowed and buried underground for reasons unknown.
Friendships that disappear. Friends with children our age, whose addresses didn’t change, but are now too far away for a weekend visit. Maybe my parents were just tired from the long work week.
Is the destroyer a builder, is the dreamer awake? Do we need to destroy to create, or as the paradigm shifts, new opportunities surge to a new reality to arise.
It seemed as if the destiny played constant pranks on Johnny, Cindy, Tony, Daisy, and their kids. With each new build, there was hope only to be soon destroyed. Nevertheless, they could do nothing but to keep on searching and building.
At some point, the Muchas noted there was strength in simplicity. Their models seemed to be more enduring and easy to rebuild if destroyed.
How do you look for what you never really knew when all you have are old pictures, a hint of your heart, and an impossible promise that may never come to be fulfilled? Like a bad prophecy failing to warn the one who hears it.
The legend states the earthquake found the Muchas high on an aerial tramway that had been specially commissioned only to be later destroyed.
Other sources state and assure they were driving, and this is the reason why they survived with their vehicles and their children.
Other sources state they were going on vacation towards a Christmas tree full of presents and promises of happiness.
They keep on forever searching for a city they never found. Many accounts had been written about their adventures and whereabouts. Some accounts include encounters with Mark and Mike and with Doc driving his ambulance. They were as well, always traveling, in search of Lego Land.
They roamed their world in search of a home that was now long gone. Some accounts state they found some ruins. A skyscraper, some say. Some city plates, others state.
New cities were built, but they never seemed to reach the magnificence that Lego Land City held in their collective imagination. Nevertheless, they rose.
I am not a seismologist as to know what the cause is for the swallowing of cities and friendships that seemed to have a solid footing only moments before.
Teenagehood was my first attempt at creating a path to find what I once had. Or to recreate what I thought I once had.
Memories are such fragile material. Sometimes even well-documented endeavors get lost in time.
Adolescence killed the child in me. Maybe the idea of the home was now also gone.
Tragedy struck, and people died while the Muchas were searching for Lego Land. The stories here intermingle and it is hard to know who dies and who survives. But we know there is no such thing as absolute death and the heroes resurrect to keep on searching once again.
The earthquake swallowed the city whole as it would be a friendship or a childhood. The survivors, Johnny and Cindy, Tony and Daisy, and their kids kept on looking for the place that once was home.
Regardless of the tone the narrator may employ, it was for them an adventure. Distrust the accounts describing as a tragedy their story.
The earthquake swallowed the city whole so they could all look for it, and meet new people and find other friends in the survivors who were still searching for Lego Land City. A city that was always waiting to be built in the confines of their collective imagination.
In High School, my sister met Marianne, and I no longer cared about playing with Legos or finding Lego Land.
The city stayed lost in the catacombs of my subconsciousness. However, I kept on searching.
Was Lego Land in the promise of a kiss? In the dream of a train rushing down mountains were two lovers will finally meet, one night among many?
New adventures would be lived in the minds of other children. In the intersection between past and future, new opportunities hide, like seeds waiting for rain. Our lives the fertile soil.
©Pablo Pereyra 2020. Thank you for reading.