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by Casilda Sánchez Varela (Author)
Un delicado y poderoso viaje al corazón mismo de la soledad.
Poco después de su separación, Casilda Sánchez Varela se marcha sola de viaje. No sabe aún cómo sostener su nueva vida: la custodia compartida, los cuartos vacíos, los interminables domingos de silencio. Cree que alejarse un tiempo le dará fuerzas para aprender a lidiar con todo eso. La primera noche de camino a Asia, sobrevolando el océano, algo sucede. Una especie de corriente luminosa atraviesa el dolor que lleva meses acompañándola. La misma realidad que la estaba asfixiando se convierte, por un instante, en resplandor. Un ímpetu de libertad. Desconcertada por ese contraste, decide observar la soledad. Interrogarla. Comprenderla. Hacerla suya.
Shortly after her separation, Casilda Sánchez Varela sets off on a solo trip. She doesn't yet know how to cope with her new life: joint custody, empty rooms, endless Sundays of silence. She believes that getting away for a while will give her the strength to learn how to deal with all of it. On the first night en route to Asia, flying over the ocean, something happens. A kind of luminous current pierces the pain that has been with her for months. The very reality that was suffocating her turns, for an instant, into radiance. An élan of freedom. Bewildered by this contrast, she decides to observe loneliness. To question it. To understand it. To make it her own. Six years later, with her life now rebuilt, she returns to Asia to make sense of the past. At an Ayurveda center, surrounded by people who have also arrived there alone, she charts an intimate map of contemporary loneliness: a couple who have stopped loving each other, a woman who staked her worth on beauty and suddenly discovers invisibility, a lost teenager, a fascinating elderly woman navigating old age with the support of her cane. Through these stories and her own, she unfolds a powerful and poetic reflection on heartbreak, fear, emptiness, silence, the need for a new skin, and the search for meaning. In a world growing ever lonelier, perhaps it is not a matter of fleeing, but of learning to live within it, of making it a livable place--even a beautiful one. Because, as Emily Dickinson wrote, I would be much lonelier without my loneliness.
Author Biography
Casilda Sànchez-Varela (Madrid, 1978) es sociÃ3loga y màster en Periodismo por la Universidad San Pablo CEU. Durante años trabajÃ3 en la secciÃ3n de cultura de la revista Telva, donde entrevistÃ3 a algunas de las figuras màs relevantes de la escena cultural internacional. Fue coguionista del largometraje La bðsqueda, dedicado a su padre, Paco de LucÃ-a, galardonado con el Goya a la mejor pelÃ-cula documental en 2014. Es vicepresidenta de la FundaciÃ3n Paco de LucÃ-a, desde donde impulsa proyectos culturales vinculados al flamenco y a la creaciÃ3n artÃ-stica. Vive en Madrid y es madre de cuatro hijos: Casilda, Alejandro, Juan y Curro.
