The hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy stipulates that if you carry anything at all with you the most fundamental component should be your towel. You can sit on it, lie under it, use it as a scarf when cold and a toga when you've lost all your clothes. You can soak a corner with essential nutrients for nourishment in emergencies.
The towel is so much more than just a square of liquid-licking loops. It provides moral support.
A traveller who knows where his towel is is a traveller to be reckoned with.
My equivalent of the towel is a bright yellow sarong. Its sunshine folds have nourished me in ways unique to this town of myth and crumbling fortune, excepting perhaps the comforting weight of Israel`s puppy, who is warming himself under my arm. I have a strong protective urge towards him and keep panicking that he is going to die. I don`t know if this is paranoia or foresight, but I pull him closer and he rests his chin on my knee in gentle companionship.
We crouch on the cobbled streets and contemplate.
While the haunting ruins and mind-bleaching vistas are beautiful, I haven´t settled here. My trusty sarong is a poor match for the freezing winds, and under the grey skies it has been one of the only flashes of colour in a town seemingly grown from the rock.
Under a different situation I would embrace this. But my mind feels limp and my body fails me. I miss my boyfriend with a dull ache that is as ever-present as the cold. And I am more sick than I would care to admit. Spit-dripping, retch-inducing, lung-emptying coughs keep me awake all hours. I`m so bored of people telling me to go to the hospital that I might actually just go.
My instinct pushes me on to somewhere greener. Less prohibitively cold.
I decide to leave. Pass a last precious half hour behind Israel`s glinting display of stones and silver jewellery, watching the world go by under a white sun.
One face jolts me with the shock of familiarity. Shaven head, wide mouth, almond slitted eyes and a long, feathered earring. My brain tries to tell me something but I can`t hear through the cacophany of sights vying for the attention of my eyes.
I smile at him but he is gone.
I run for the minibus, to be the first of a series of buses, each of them improving on the last like an automobilic set of Russian dolls.
I have no idea where I`m headed.
Through the tube of a tunnel - the only access to Real - to a scramble for seats on the next. My hula hoop causes amusement and annoyance in equal measure amidst a crowd of hawkers pushing everything one might need for a journey, from fat gorditas to pumpkin seeds to newspapers.
I settle into my seat but am asked to move by a woman with small children. I slide into the next available seat. Put bag down. Look up at the shaven head and wide mouth of the man I recognised earlier.
His name is Guillerme. His girlfriend is called Julia. He studied physics, but renounced it in favour of a more creative life. The symmetry settles over us in ripples.
Our conversation pushes through the language barrier. Settles lightly on love, music and the mystery of quantum entanglement. He tells me to go to the desert.
I wish I had spoken to him before getting on this bus.
I comment on his necklace; a huge tooth strung with beads. Immediately he takes out its twin from his bag and tells me I can have it in exchange for something. I search through my bag although I know I have nothing like this. The only thing I can offer is a moonstone ring given to me when I left work back in April by a girl who said she did so because she felt for some reason it was time to pass it on. I know she would agree on this. Received in a time of great movement in my life. Passed on with the flow to the next stage. I hand it over.
He holds it up in the the light and it glows, as if the light comes from within rather than through the sun-splashed window.
Our briefly concatenated lives split once again at the station at Matehuala. Bang in the centre of the country. I find myself at the ticket desk being coaxed by a concerned onlooker to a decision. I point vaguely at the map and shrug my shoulders.
She tells the attendant to give me a ticket for Chihuahua, via Monterrey. At least two centimetres away on my map.
Whatever. Seems good to me.
I spend the hours before the departure curled in spine twisting positions underneath my shield of yellow cotton, trying desperately to conserve some of my fast-escaping body heat and concentrating only on the present.
The towel is so much more than just a square of liquid-licking loops. It provides moral support.
A traveller who knows where his towel is is a traveller to be reckoned with.
My equivalent of the towel is a bright yellow sarong. Its sunshine folds have nourished me in ways unique to this town of myth and crumbling fortune, excepting perhaps the comforting weight of Israel`s puppy, who is warming himself under my arm. I have a strong protective urge towards him and keep panicking that he is going to die. I don`t know if this is paranoia or foresight, but I pull him closer and he rests his chin on my knee in gentle companionship.
We crouch on the cobbled streets and contemplate.
While the haunting ruins and mind-bleaching vistas are beautiful, I haven´t settled here. My trusty sarong is a poor match for the freezing winds, and under the grey skies it has been one of the only flashes of colour in a town seemingly grown from the rock.
Under a different situation I would embrace this. But my mind feels limp and my body fails me. I miss my boyfriend with a dull ache that is as ever-present as the cold. And I am more sick than I would care to admit. Spit-dripping, retch-inducing, lung-emptying coughs keep me awake all hours. I`m so bored of people telling me to go to the hospital that I might actually just go.
My instinct pushes me on to somewhere greener. Less prohibitively cold.
I decide to leave. Pass a last precious half hour behind Israel`s glinting display of stones and silver jewellery, watching the world go by under a white sun.
One face jolts me with the shock of familiarity. Shaven head, wide mouth, almond slitted eyes and a long, feathered earring. My brain tries to tell me something but I can`t hear through the cacophany of sights vying for the attention of my eyes.
I smile at him but he is gone.
I run for the minibus, to be the first of a series of buses, each of them improving on the last like an automobilic set of Russian dolls.
I have no idea where I`m headed.
Through the tube of a tunnel - the only access to Real - to a scramble for seats on the next. My hula hoop causes amusement and annoyance in equal measure amidst a crowd of hawkers pushing everything one might need for a journey, from fat gorditas to pumpkin seeds to newspapers.
I settle into my seat but am asked to move by a woman with small children. I slide into the next available seat. Put bag down. Look up at the shaven head and wide mouth of the man I recognised earlier.
His name is Guillerme. His girlfriend is called Julia. He studied physics, but renounced it in favour of a more creative life. The symmetry settles over us in ripples.
Our conversation pushes through the language barrier. Settles lightly on love, music and the mystery of quantum entanglement. He tells me to go to the desert.
I wish I had spoken to him before getting on this bus.
I comment on his necklace; a huge tooth strung with beads. Immediately he takes out its twin from his bag and tells me I can have it in exchange for something. I search through my bag although I know I have nothing like this. The only thing I can offer is a moonstone ring given to me when I left work back in April by a girl who said she did so because she felt for some reason it was time to pass it on. I know she would agree on this. Received in a time of great movement in my life. Passed on with the flow to the next stage. I hand it over.
He holds it up in the the light and it glows, as if the light comes from within rather than through the sun-splashed window.
Our briefly concatenated lives split once again at the station at Matehuala. Bang in the centre of the country. I find myself at the ticket desk being coaxed by a concerned onlooker to a decision. I point vaguely at the map and shrug my shoulders.
She tells the attendant to give me a ticket for Chihuahua, via Monterrey. At least two centimetres away on my map.
Whatever. Seems good to me.
I spend the hours before the departure curled in spine twisting positions underneath my shield of yellow cotton, trying desperately to conserve some of my fast-escaping body heat and concentrating only on the present.
No comments:
Post a Comment