Travellers On A Break

Taking a moment to say goodbye to Rangitoto Island and to New Zealand in general, after 47 days of winter driving, hiking and sleeping in a van. ©‎ Carrie Speaking

Do you see them in the street?

Looking out the window, in a café, sipping on their cup of Americano (brown sugar, no milk, thank you), their eyes a haze, staring at something that seems to be behind you (in fact, way behind).

Do you hear them sigh?

You hear them stop typing on their keyboard. You hear their chair thrown back a few inches, while they stretch their shoulders and neck from not carrying anything on them. They stretch their shoulders to feel them again. They wish they hurt a little. They start gazing out the window — not to rest their eyes, not to dream of the end of the day when they’ll have a couple of beers, not of the upcoming weekend when they’ll chill, but to check out the sky.

Did they see that cloud before? How similar or different is it from the one they saw on that day, back there? Wait, is that actually the same cloud? They want to ask it questions.

What about the light? The way it reflects on things. What time of the day is it? What time of the day would it be, there?

Do you see them at family lunches, smiling at something that is not you, nor here?

Do you hear them not piping a word, to let it talk to them, to hear it out, to listen to it more carefully, more hopefully, hoping for a whisper, a muttered sentence brought by the wind and ending with the word “soon”.

“It” speaks from somewhere behind you (in fact, way behind).

Their gaze seem to go round the globe. It goes to the farthest point behind you to better reach the closest point to them. Inside them. Memories. These memories are nowhere around them, and yet they are: vivid, everywhere, anywhere.

These people are not day-dreamers. They are Travellers on a Break.

See, once you’ve been there, you stay there. You’re never really back. These travellers on a break, they can tell. They can tell, by seeing you in the street, in a café, or at work, you, positioned at some point on the path of their gaze, they can tell whether you, too, are not really back. They can tell whether it lives in you, too. These travellers on a break pretty much haunt the place where they are, until they are reborn(e) into the places where they’ve been.

​There can be so many, many things in a single cloud.

C.I.D