Today’s article was supposed to be about New Zealand. For almost two months, the front page of my blog signaled to the wandering reader that this was “Carried Away Time”: Carrie was losing herself on the road, again, like every year before, during the summer season.
Today is Wednesday. Today is the day I was supposed to get back to normal. Blogging twice a week, catching up with other people’s writing, getting back to work. You know: whatever happens to you, however far you travel, no matter how many fantastic places and people you live, or however long your absence may be — when you’re back home, when you wake up jet-lagged the following morning, your spirit and your body proudly demonstrate their admirable and despicable ability to just go back to normal, to habits, to patterns.
But yesterday night, GMT+1, something beautiful happened. Something that shook my spirit and body and made another travel, a previous travel, emerge, come back to life. I got a comment from Abraham, Venice Beach, Los Angeles that stranger, whom I had met just for a few minutes five years ago, whose aura had impressed me, and about whom I had finally written a story, was getting back to me.
I went through a rollercoaster of contradictory emotions: skepticism, realization, happiness, guilt, elation, excitement, curiosity. I remember you, Abraham. Vividly. I remember your eyes and your hand shaking mine. I thought I had grasped at least a bit of who you were; enough to write an article about “all the rest”: the “you” that I had never got to know.
Yesterday night, all of a sudden, people shared that article. People from Venice. People who know you. Through them, this morning, I glimpsed a bit of “all the rest”: your art, your energy, your daily life, these people. That art, that music… You seem to be infused with it. And yet, I didn’t see any of it five years ago. Of course I didn’t: there I was, a goddam tourist with her goddam camera.