be 'part' of it.
Maybe tomorrow.
The Brazilian friend told me about
the vicissitudes he’d suffered and
how he thought about leaving his
mission every night, but when he
woke up 'something' told him that he
should continue. He told me about
weird experiences with people in the
shelters, about the strange things that
happened in them, about those who
specialise in the ‘conquest’ of women
who come in search of ‘inner peace’
while these ‘professional’ pilgrims,
like sharks, devour them with their
sharp verbiage.
He told me how to walk, what
shoes to wear, which backpack to
buy, and that only one walking stick
should be used, not two. He made
me listen to the trills of the birds he’d
recorded in different forests during
his trek. He showed me pictures
of other pilgrims with whom he’d
walked and that after a while, he al-
ways found himself walking alone.
He assumed himself to be a new
pilgrimage addict and that someday
he would come back and "do" all the
remaining roads.
“It happens,” he told me. “People
become addicted to it.”
The feeling of being 'sanctified'
must be something very special, I
suppose. I wondered if in my case,
my addiction to my motorcycle La
Más, and to continuously travel with
her without a destination, fits the im-
age of the ‘sanctified pilgrim’. My mo-
ments of meditation when I’m riding
immersed in the wind, are the closest
thing to the glory of those pilgrims;
those who seek to reach the goal and
the stamp on a Vatican passport, with
the words: ‘you did it’.
The experience of my visit to
Santiago de Compostela caused me to
consolidate my status as a navigation-
al traveller. It’s by this condition that
La Más is my magical ship, and that is
why my trip has ample possibilities of
narrative development.
Anyway…
I’ve lived for years tolerating fifty
daily church bell tolls, in the city
of Cholula, in the state of Puebla,
Mexico where there are three hun-
dred and sixty churches in a town of
seventy thousand inhabitants. I’ve
lived for years enduring the infernal
noise of chainsaws and lawn mowers
in a town in the northern white. I’ve
lived for months in Muslim countries
listening to the Imam calling for
‘prayers’ five times a day; prayers that
mix with those from other mosques
so that all you hear is a confusing and
incomprehensible noise. I’ve lived
for months listening to the waves of
the Indonesian ocean. Yet, I spend
TRAVERSE
69
so much time immersed in silence. A
silence that sometimes brings me joy
to remember, that I prefer the coo of
a pigeon at the siesta.
The pigeon that I listened to in
my childhood, in my town of birth,
Morteros; and that I listened to in the
mornings at the countryside house in
Stienta, Italy, and then I also heard it
in Pontedeume, Spain.
For some strange reason, that
coo has haunted me ever since I can
remember, and finds me where he
wants, and when he wants. Every
time I hear it, I’m amazed at my own
bewilderment.
Since I started this trip, I knew
about the two sides of the same coin:
on the one hand the navigazione
tempestosa; the one that will lead me
to a shipwreck or to death, and on
the other side, the navigazione sere-
na, which will lead me to the desired
port:
To Be Happy ... GM
Guillermo, "Mac", is a world traveller, usu-
ally aboard his bike, La Mas. He's an artist,
photographer and writer, through his work
wants to inspire as many as he can. See what
this world traveller is about -
https://www.facebook.com/MACWORK-
MAC/