The Flighty Road

We are inland somewhere unknown to me in Northern Brazil. It is late and while lying on my mat I try to avoid any contact with the floor that burns oil. My dreams smell like gas and the sea salt that I bring with me on my dress. I open my eyes directly into a spotlight and it takes me a while to figure out my whereabouts. The license plate of a car parked way too close shouts the answer to me and I wonder whether Campo Maior has anything aside from this gas station. I get sick of the floor and offer to keep an eye on our stuff while L and J sleep. In the wee hours of the morning the station workers and I run out of coffee. I enjoy the silence. I go to the toilet and frantically wash my feet, fifteen minutes later I have them as dirty as they were. The instant tropical dawn takes us by surprise. I go into the station shop that has just opened and wait for the woman to finish praying to the Christian channel. She finishes. She stares at me for a while and then says it: “I’m sorry that you have to live this way”. I smile at her, one of my biggest smiles, and tell her that I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. The woman shakes her head as she pours coffee. She repeats she’s sorry. I repeat that this is a great moment for us all. She and I stay in silence and I jump into my muddle of reasons, because there is no sense in denying that sometimes the feeling of drifting towards nonsense and touching it with the tip of my fingers crawls inside my body. So I ask myself why and, faithful to our inherited utilitarianism, to what end. To spread myself and embrace it all, to run away, to get lost, to find myself and oxygenate my system, to be fed with courage; to stop fearing desire, to bathe in every water, to hold my breath, by chance, to live the story, to let my arms grow and my legs grow and see my body opening its own way at strides between the green, brown and why not blue spots of the globe that spins on my childhood desk, of every single dusty map hung in libraries and memorized, systematically, in every classroom that prepares us to repeat the world’s name aloud without ever owning it. I pay for the coffee, all in coins. She counts them one by one. One penny is missing. She claims it. I give it to her. The mass broadcast hasn’t finished yet. I smile. As I leave the store L and J are ready to go. We discuss which car will take us today. Red, it is usually red, and with our backpacks parked at the shadow of a speed control sign, we entrust ourselves to the road.