The sedentary traveler
The sedentary traveler does not remember when or how he stopped traveling. A bad day, it happened. Maps fell from the calendar, planes and routes with the same ease with which, suddenly, winter is coming.
The kilometers traveled, the lives lived through other lives, lasted for months, even years, Fiction. The sedentary traveler found it difficult to recognize himself as such, as a Dorian Gray permanently fleeing from the mirror. So as not to succumb to that diagnosis, I savored the words that have dirt on their soles, I enjoyed those lyrics of hair tousled by the road wind, of the names that were lost in remote places…
I was traveling without traveling. On the pages of a book, writing those stories that were fading in the memory log, listening to the travels of others like the murmur of those waves that never wet our feet, without completely resigning to do without the vertigo of an empty suitcase.
The sedentary traveler found it difficult to recognize himself as such, like a Dorian Gray permanently fleeing the mirror
Even, sporadically, that momentum was reborn in him that ended up sliding his index finger across a map, a kind of passing fever that returned him to the aisles of bookstores where he cursed every time the shelves were rearranged, forcing you to reinvent your bibliographic routines. And, nevertheless, I was coming home with a few books under my arm, with the undisguised smile of someone who is about to start something big.
Waiting for that great trip that never came, looked out at any displacement, however insignificant it was, with the illusion of who is about to bend the Cape Horn. He didn't always manage to stay the course and, often, it was nostalgia that ruled the helm.
Just in time, when melancholy darkened his look of regrets, He used to shake off fatalism and recover that pending dawn, that tavern where he left some beer to drink, the friend you promised to visit or that road where you had to turn around and to which you insisted on returning.
Sporadically, that momentum was reborn in him that ended up sliding his index finger across a map
The sedentary traveler has a cardboard box full of pending trips, of carefully crafted itineraries, of disordered maps that he no longer dares to unfold, it is not going to be that they spread their spell. Occasionally, he opens it carefully to make sure no dreams have escaped from there, that it is already known that one thing is to be unable to fulfill them and quite another to renounce them.
Reinventing yourself in the placidity of domestic sedentary lifestyle, the disused nomad distracts objectives so as not to be forced to fulfill any. The same thing fantasizes about approaching to see the Northern Lights in Iceland that conspires to get lost in the deep Amazon. A war out of time, a raging storm or the umpteenth epidemic almost always usually, fortunately for his self love, cross your path at the last minute.
Or not.
Without a bunch of excuses to come between him and his longings, it was much more difficult for the sedentary traveler to assume that it was. It was not so much about giving up traveling as learning to give up traveling. And in that lesson that he never wanted to pass, he lavished himself like a rebellious student, at times irate, who persisted in continuing to believe that, if you leave the house and start walking, you can end up going around the world.
It was not so much about giving up traveling as learning to give up traveling
Deep inside, that wind that shakes the stranger was still blowing; the sun shone that accompanies the lonely traveler; the conversations of the people on the road were mixed; It was getting dark over that unknown city in which to try to meet…
Somehow, and despite the increasingly prolix catalog of resignations, I still had a few grams of curiosity and the undeniable desire to leave. He still enjoyed imagining himself away, searching in unknown horizons that he found it increasingly difficult to imagine. He refused to bury, in sum, his traveling soul.
That was the engine that kept him on guard on starless nights, when I heard the meekness of her breathing, between resigned and patient, without stopping to wonder for a single day if he would hear his steps away from him and his sedentary shadow again.
Deep inside, the wind that shakes the stranger was still blowing and the sun shining that accompanies the lonely traveler
He didn't wait another minute. This time he did not pass without looking at the library full of travels and world maps, a poison without antidote for the sedentary traveler. He stopped in front of one of his favorite authors, a great sedentary. And read Kafka: «I do not lose hope of one day sitting in the armchairs of very remote countries, to contemplate sugar cane fields or Mohammedan cemeteries through the office windows».
Such a discovery left him thoughtful for a few seconds. Immediately after, a shiver of excitement ran down his spine.
So even the most recalcitrant sedentary kept alive the desire to leave!!
Reacted right away. As if he had suddenly assumed his irremediable condition of sedentary traveler and rebelled with all his might against that diagnosis, He opened the cardboard box overflowing with maps and travel notes and breathed in that aroma of distant horizons with the greed of a pilgrim diving into the waters of an oasis.
He opened the cardboard box overflowing with maps and travel notes and breathed in that scent of distant horizons
Still, as hypnotized by the succession of landscapes and corners that he thought forgotten, just let time pass, while as cities breathed, mountains and endless rivers was shedding, I was perfectly aware, of that fatalism that had ended up enclosing his curiosity within four walls. The traveler's life sentence.
Or not.
No time to waste, planned the umpteenth trip. But this time she knew her dream wouldn't end up covered in dust, like so many times. He bought the plane tickets online so as not to give discouragement any chance. I could already hear the roar of the engines, those unique seconds in which, finally, you have the certainty that everything is ahead.
He waved the flag of his nonconformity in the wind with the hubbub of a great victory. The sedentary traveler who didn't know he was had just spit on fate, laughing in the jaws of the beast. African sunrises were drawn around him, dives in the Mediterranean, the blinding light of Tibet, the hubbub of strange voices, the horizons where the world ends…
The sedentary traveler who didn't know he was had just spit on fate, laughing in the jaws of the beast
And he couldn't suppress a thunderous laugh, as if suddenly the guillotine that hung over his neck had jammed and the executioner, resigned, he would have crossed his arms.
There was no room for surrender. Not even for memory. The sedentary traveler still did not remember when or how he stopped traveling. A bad day, it happened.
Or not.
Comments (4)
Mayte T
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Stunning text from the first paragraph to the last. You are a true magician of words Ricardo!! This text almost makes me cry!!!!!
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Ricardo Coarasa
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The magic of words resides in both who writes them and who reads them. Thank you very much Mayte. Bs
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shouting
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That good, I loved!!! … at times totally identified, to my regret (and yours!!).
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Prodigal brother
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Beautiful words written from far away ....
Great start to a novel, I would like to continue feeling how the adventure continues to be able to contemplate Mohammedan cemeteries from my window…
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