A Voyage I Never Made (III)

Shipwrecks? No, I never suffered any. But I have the impression that I shipwrecked all my voyages, and that my salvation lay in interspaces of unconsciousness.

Hazy dreams, blurry lights, confused landscapes – that’s all that remains in my soul from all the travelling I did.

I have the impression that I’ve known hours of every colour, loves of every flavour, yearnings of every size. Throughout my life I lived to excess, and I was never enough for myself, not even in my dreams. I must explain to you that I really did travel. But everything seems to indicate that I travelled without living. From one end to the other, from north to south and from east to west, I bore the weariness of having had a past, the disquiet of living the present, and the tedium of having to have a future. But I strive so hard that I remain completely in the present, killing inside me both past and future.

I strolled along the banks of rivers whose names I suddenly realized I didn’t know. At the tables of cafés in foreign cities, it would dawn on me that everything had a hazy, dreamy air about it. Sometimes I even wondered if I weren’t still seated at the table of our old house, staring into space and dazed by dreams! I can’t be sure that this isn’t actually the case, that I’m not still there, that all of this – including this conversation with you – isn’t a pure sham. Who are you anyway? The equally absurd fact is that you can’t explain…