Travel

It started at my grandparents' farm. Or maybe earlier. I would walk down the railroad tracks and keep walking. West. The sun would set and I knew I had to turn back--but I didn't want to. It hurt. Something in me ached so badly I felt like I was killing it when I turned around. Feeling so limited. My body can only run so far before it is out of breath. And I can't fly. That has always been a sore spot with me.

Since then it has gotten worse. Roads call to me with a taunting, "You don't know what’s at the end.” Every sunrise calls me East to follow the new day, and every sunset I am called West, trying to catch the colors more brilliantly—maybe if I were just a bit closer I could. Whenever it is cold I am called South and whenever it is warm I want to move around until I feel the wind in my hair.

I own the open road. Not the closed road. The road next to the home. The familiar road. The comfortable road. No—the open road. With the feeling of not knowing. A little bit of dizzy heights, a little bit of insecurity with determination of courage, a lot of anticipation, and even more assurance that at the end of the day...it has been a good one.

I own the open road. The road that stretches to the place you must reach or die. West. Always west, into the sun. The road that makes you put away your camera--not take it out. Because capturing it in a small box is beyond impossible. The open road is some place familiar touching unfamiliar, calling you deeper and telling you that one day it will be even better. Even truer. Even realer. The open road is the place you travel to reach rather than use to travel.

I don't understand how I can be comfortable both here and there: the cold, hard silence of the metro speeding to the center of Chicago to the chattered, sweaty breath of a Kombi in the Centro of Carpina. Yet I am equally myself in both.

Brazil, you are so far away. Yet I can feel my legs walking underneath me, up the cobblestone hill to your house. It is the 5:00pm sun, warm and soft, telling me to get ready for darkness. The feeling that I’m almost there, and then I can take off my shoes, sit on the cool tile floor, and watch. Watch the world as it should be. The love I have for Brazil feels dangerously close to loving a man. How could I have a love affair with a country? And that is how it is.

Tonight it came out under the porch light, as it lights up the numbers of my house. I shuddered in the car, the radio singing me a lullaby. The hard, stone chimney stood in the shadow, and the banister cast zebra stripes down the lawn. I was other. I wasn’t there and wasn’t here. I clung to my car as some kind of magic, transporting me from one place to another. Still wearing my seatbelt, keys jingle and tears fall, my questions unanswered. I am other.

I am scared to go because there is so much I want here. I will lose familiarity. I will lose all the rites of passage and comfort of doing things how I am used to them being done. But I want Brazil. I want the simplicity. I want my spot in this world where I can make a difference, and see it. But I want my family as well. I want to have a family. And I feel like to go is to give up my chance. But to stay is to atrophy and turn into everyone else. I am other.

I have finally figured it out. After all the times of people asking me about Brazil and why I go...it is love. I normally list a couple of superficial reasons like palm trees and Maracuja, but I know it isn't that. It is like when you love someone and people ask why. You may say because he makes me smile or because he flosses his teeth, but those aren't really why you love him. You can't explain why you do. It seems unscientific and sometimes very stupid. But you do and that is enough. I love Brazil. I just know, that's why. It is part of me that was made to fit there and nowhere else. It calls me and I go--with the smile of God.