I HAVE SEEN SO MUCH, I HAVE SEEN SO LITTLE

by Alfredo Cohen (Mexico)

I didn't expect to find Mexico

‘He who reads mucho and walks much, sees much and knows much’ Four years have passed since the day I read that phrase. How unreal it seems now that my life changed in that moment, with just a brief yet powerful message, pushing me to leave now, to live now. And so I did, almost three years ago I decided I had to leave and to live, in a way they tell you it´s unwise, pursuing something that society rejects for not bonding with its right path, its “master plan”… its perfect trap. Still, this venturous leap, it required courage, a lot of courage, which I did not have, not then. With my mind set to an idea, willing to break free from an incessant race for an unachievable idea of “happiness” that comes along with a price tag, I began to plot. I tried to be smart about my dream. How funny that sounds, given I was reaching for a world of adventures when, at the same time, I was imprisoned by the concepts of a reality I was so eager to exit, wanting to obtains means that allowed me to maintain a certain financial security and had something to come back to in case the adventure was over. ¿You see? While planning my prison break I was building a back door to my jail cell, unconscious of that little voice in the back of my head saying: ‘Don´t do it, freedom is scary. You are not ready. This is safe, this is home’. Fear can be as gentle as the softest whisper, and it will always be there, by your side, over your shoulder, in your knees… Then, something happened, and so it happens that it was precisely what needed to happen because, had it not happened, my adventure might have never begun. It was autumn, a Tuesday, a sunny, a bit cloudy and somehow melancholic Tuesday. That was the day she died. She was my always faithful accomplice, my dearest Sancho, the one person that, no matter how crazy my dreams were, she was there to say: ‘That sounds like a fun idea, let´s do it’. Although we knew that our paths were going to part the moment I left for my adventure, she never asked for anything else than for me to always pursue that dream and to live it to the fullest. I think that, in a way, that was her last gift before parting, for it was her sweet and caring voice that I heard in my head, overcoming that whisper of fear that used to say I was not ready. It was still autumn and her laughter was no more. Chilly winds blew as a reminder of the upcoming winter, but the truth is that winter was already here. One expects to find a perfect day to begin an adventure, but there will never be a perfect day, so every day is as good as any. I took a backpack and fill it with clothes, grabbed a bottle of water, started my motorcycle and drove away. That day my adventure begun, almost three years ago, and what an adventure has it been. I have seen the perfect sunset five hundred times, I have met and old man with hands as rough as the wood of the furniture he built, I have seen a father lose his children and a mother save his husband, I have seen a man cry with a poem of Neruda in the saddest winter of Toledo, I have seen a masterful tango being danced in a park of Lisboa, I have seen bulls killed in Pamplona and birds being adored in Vancouver, I have seen souls hug amidst a war for borders, I have seen the play of Othello performed by women who refused to give Desedemona an undeserved sentence of death, I have seen children work for crumbles being so close to home… I have seen a pained society, I have seen a regretful generation, I have hope for a new world. I have seen so much and so little, and therefore I must continue venturing because you never know what you will find.