October 16th 2003, 1:15 PM, I was
coming out of my office for lunch break. My usual sandwich in
the same sad bar in Murat street. I have lunch there every time
I am at the headquarters, and I go there alone. One hour on
my own. I carefully avoid the self-service restaurant and any
other restaurants and pizzerias where my colleagues eat, although
I would probably eat better and pay with company tickets. I
actually avoid the world around me in general.
That’s always been my choice. I usually eat on my own.
I read my newspaper and get out of the world, I “go away”.
Often times I put my mobile’s tone on “silent”.
For one hour, I don’t belong to the same world. I know
that in some other part of Milan Emanuela does more or less
the same thing, when she can. But she doesn’t read the
newspaper, it’s probably a male habit.
Murat street is a really grey place. Maybe one of these days
I will take a picture of it and show it to you on this website.
Sometimes sitting in a bar in Murat street and eat a sandwich
while reading a newspaper can be quite depressing. Sure enough,
it’s a snobbish kind of depression. But the depression
capacity of each of us is measured by our own every-day referral
system. Mine revolves around Murat street.
October 16th 2003 was one of those days you typically see in
Milan, especially in October. Veiled sky, but not too dark,
grey day, but not too grey, maybe sunny, maybe not, maybe that’s
fog up there, maybe it’s smog, maybe there’s a ray
of sun, maybe not. If you get out of Milan for a few kilometers
on a day like this, you will find yourself in a typical Po Plane
atmosphere: veiled, but not too dark, grey, but not too grey,
maybe sunny or maybe not, etc. Except, you will also start to
feel melancholic. Which might be even more subtle than the snobbish
depression you will feel in front of your salami and cheese
sandwich eaten in the small bar of Murat street.
*****
I know it well. On October 16th 2002, at 1:15 PM, a train
was bringing me to Milan Central Station, after crossing the
kind of Po Plane I just described, in a Milan covered by a
sky which was precisely identical to and colored of the exact
same non-colors shade I’m seeing exactly 365 days later.
On October 16th 2002, on Central Station track 12, our long
adventure of Asia Overland 2002 was coming to an end.
Finally at home, that day I wrote on the last page of my travel
log (which you will be reading in a few months – I am
still transcribing Tibet in this moment…): "I’m
looking around myself. Milan is grey. Is that the way I’m
writing the word “end” to this story? I’d never
thought about it in these months, I understand it only now.
What do you write at the end of six months of travel?”
That’s the way my travel log ends - (maybe) some of you
has already started to read it through the pages of Asia Overland
2002 in this web site. If this ruined your final surprise,
I’m sorry about it.
Now, twelve months have passed since that day and I’ve
had enough time to find an answer. Maybe I’ve found some
stupid ones and they won’t lead anywhere.
I’ve felt I’ve left many things on that train, things
I often miss and that I anxiously try to get back at night,
before sleep comes to me. How far those things are already,
so far back from me.
Indios say about the flow of time: future arrives at our shoulders,
we don’t know it and we cannot see it arrive, while past
runs away in front of us and we cannot see its face. Isn’t
this extraordinary? Think about it: it’s the exact contrary
of our interpretation of time, with the future in front of
us, coming nearer, and the past at our shoulders, escaping
from us. Still, the indio perception is much truer than ours.
At least, for me, it’s quite clearer. Today I can see
distinctly my recent past running away rapidly, and my remote
past losing focus. I’m trying to grab it, also by copying
my travel log on this website. But I already know it’s
just an illusion.
I know close to nothing about my future. I know that there
will be news and new adventures, and many many lunch time
sandwiches in that sad bar of Murat street. I don’t know
what I will answer to Zuz if he will ever ask me the answer
to my question. I know that, if he will want to, I will let
him read my logs, and maybe even the ones I wrote in Patagonia
over ten years ago, and I will try to transmit him what no
travel log page can show: my motivations, my imagination and
curiosity which have been the necessary premise of those logs.
Most of all, I wish he will have the capacity of dreaming,
further and further, higher and higher than the last target
he just achieved. Of going to sleep every night with a thousand
questions in mind and look for answers to each of them, and
never surrendering until those answers will have arrived and,
again, until they’ll have triggered new questions.
I believe there is only one way to convince myself that the
sandwich I’m eating in Murat street is really good. Considering
it an interval between a dream come true, running far in front
of me, and a new, future dream, about to arrive at my shoulders.
If you look at it carefully, by bus no. 83 Central Station
is only ten minutes from Murat street, even during rush hours..
P.S. Who is Zuz? We’ll talk about him another time; he’s
a good subject, talking about travels…
P.S. What you see up here is the first picture I’ve shot
during Asia Overland, at Milan Central Station on May 3rd
2002, when we were about to step on our train to Frankfurt.
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