When the English sun sets with a summer yawn tonight, it rises in the madrugada of Madrid tomorrow. The suitcases are bare and exposed, awaiting the painfully selected elite items which will begin to line their border and build into a mountain of essential living, where essential here relates to the closure of its lid only by way of a full weighted body sat atop. I have a newly bought luggage tag, crafted in leather with my initials – S C N – engraved deeply, wrapped tightly about the handle of my maleta in a loop, voyage-ready, synonymous to myself. I have lines of clothes for each occasion, each walk of fashion; so much that it spells the word vanity, but is also just a letter short of unnecessary. I have four cameras with four unique ways of catching little pieces of life in binary and if anyone were to observe them, they could only make assumption that I must be some sort of filmmaker setting off on a indeterminate journey to learn of what art is.
With a tenderness, placed are the objects into a matte coloured, army-style backpack, complete with ruggedness and hung over a woman’s shoulder as a display. I’m acutely aware of time’s decrement to the sharp noises of metal detectors and x-ray machines, a filter for bad intent and violent natures, because one half of my heart is faster than the other. Imagine the business-like smell of processed coffee and the blip blip of light up throwback teletext boards; a port of the air, where gente go to get away. It’s becoming more obvious that my running to is my running from.
The indifference of leaving is hurtling toward its betrayal. Cleared out and spotless flat, dusted, wetted, scrubbed and dried. It always feels like winter in the family home because candles are always lit, and in the obscurity of night, tall foot lamps glow and they twinkle like stars of their own domestic sky. I have said I won’t miss home because I haven’t a home anymore. I must take one cuddly toy of impeccable choosing to remind me of how to be a child and a series of books originally written in three different languages to teach me how to be taught. The last hour takes the form of a free-handed poem as tradition to melancholy and is born half and half, also as I was, from the lightning strike of sugar sweet unpredictable adventure and from the man who I cannot pack in a bag and carry.
Miles above, playing lyric-driven songs with a pressurised backing singer and a huge motorised drum beat, I think of fresh dry heat and virgin olive oil and how the future becomes us.
Image by Rodrigo Pinheiro
