What do you do when you have walked 116 days out of the last six months, and you have nowhere else to go? How do you sort out the emotions that come the day after, a flash-flood of uncertainty that drowns any attempt at recovering control? Where do you go to get back on track? For me, it was clear that morning what I would do: take a walk, to Marsala.Yes, it was escaping reality, yes, it is anti-climactic, and yes, it makes for a messy finish, but I needed one day to let the end sink in, and this was better than walking aimlessly about town.
Furthermore, my friend Carlo had innocuously but insidiously informed me that Marsala, not Trapani, was the far west tip of Sicily, and there was absolutely no way in Hell that I was going to let it go at "wow, you were so close." So, having made a promise to myself to go no further, to stop the madness after Marsala, I set off.Mission accomplished. Besides sorting through my various emotions, I saw the famous salt pools between
Trapani and Marsala, spotted wild flamingos, bought two bottles of the famous Marsala wine as gifts for friends, and most importantly, touched the furthest west tip of the furthest west rock on the furthest west beach in the furthest west city of Sicily (which is, funny enough, not the furthest west region. That distinction belongs to Sardegna, which I did not visit or cross on foot. Don't even think about it...)No time to contemplate.
No exaggeration here: literally the moment I touched that rock, my mother picked up the phone, dialled the numbers she knew so well, and called her son, precariously balanced on top of an algae-covered rock, staring at the sunset over the Mediterranean. "Are you done yet?" "Yes, Mom, I'm done." 
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1 comment:
I suspect you will never be truly 'done'. I suspect from your blog comments, you have encountered more of living life that most of us.
Cheryl
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