“See you around, one of these days,” I sometimes say when parting company“ one of these days” comes as a whisper, without a fixed appointment but somehow a certainty. And it’s this certainty of the time and the day to come, the “one of these days” I have uttered, that pumps up the motivation to carry it on and make it happen. It doesn’t matter if it rains, a chilly morning or a lazy afternoon. On “the one of these days” put on your fancy boots, your comfy shoes, your spurs, and let your feet become best pals on a road trip.
The merry-go-round starts. Even so, at the beginning, inside the family the topic is treated with tongs and sips of warm milk: “Son, what about your job? You have such a nice job, it’s stable, what are you going to do with it if you are travelling around the world for a whole year?” The word “travel” has the same radical as “trabalho”. So mom, don’t you worry about work. My family should already be used to these faenas. I have already given a lot to my shoes. To my my back too, and turned my guts into the dream of travelling. Travelling hurts to those who depart and those who stay behind. Sometimes it hurts my buttocks too, as I settle in an unworthy cargo or a smugglers’ boat.
“See you around, one of these days” and, who knows, on that day, I'll be stumbling around, and shooting around, and not even a good wind and a good bow, or a piece of bread will save me. What will save everything is the beauty of this world and how much people and places and diversity destroy the myopic view some have of the world. In this sense, the unit of distance travelled is not only the kilometer, but also the diopter. Speaking of units of measure, I like the liter. A measure of sweat. And liter tankards taken from the barrel, but I try to counter this life shaped from plastic molds. Even if you have to walk down the office corridors, reach the Director's and don't ask for a raise. Instead, ask for time. Hustling for a sundial or begging for quartz and a little electronics should be part of the collective work code.
It takes time to get to know people, places and cultures. Time to nibble and drink at the local pub, time for the smell of places to get in your clothes that don't come with a smoke extractor, time to relieve the yoke of days, time to close the cold water because there will be no hot water, time to hitch a ride as if it were a ball from a tombola, time to be mundane in rome, time to cry and say "don't mind, this is from chopping onion", time to burst out laughing, time to swirl coins in the hands, asking "by any chance, sir, don't you have that in smaller? I don't have money for everything. I came with time, but without a raise”.
I believe in the immediate and subsequent benefits of the personal sacrifices included in travelling, namely the abandonment of the swivel chair in a comfortable office and of a stable telenovela schedule. And the olympic ideal of going is not to go further, or to take more steps, it is the freedom and the lack of prejudice that this leads us to and brings us to. But these are pevides of another watermelon that I will slice "one of these days", throughout the next and near episodes. Mal Parado in“someday”, Lisbon, Portugal, December 2019