TIME FOR LEAVING
And now the time for departure approaches. In ten days I’ll leave everything I know behind; my home, my people, my world, and I’ll set off towards the open sea, albeit on land and riding a bicycle. Like the sailor uncertain at sea I’ll be challenged by the ebb and flow of waves as they wash over me, carrying me towards my destiny. Already I’m longing for home knowing that hundreds of journeys, stories and foreign lands await me. I had to share this once-in-a-lifetime feeling with my oldest and dearest friends so you know my deeper emotions.
Despite my previous distant travel to the Land of the Rising Sun, I’ve never left home before knowing I’ll go as far as I am about to go. The Far East seemed then to be at the end of the earth but now I’m going much much further and for longer. The distance feels almost infinite, my only certainty will be each stage of the way and every turn of the pedals.
I suppose I don’t really have to go. There is nothing to prevent me from backing out, retreating and forgetting it all. Nothing except for my determination, which made me mark one day in the calendar and now forces me to respect it. Although there is a way back, it is as if there isn’t… I have to go because I made it so.
Am I crazy? I’m no more crazy than these turbulent times in which we live. It is all an illusion … and let me try to live it happy so that she does not go and then I ask ”Why did I let it go?”. But I’d rather let Julieta Venegas and Marisa Monte, with their wonderful voices, say it for me:
