I have had two COVID exactly one year apart And when I say exactly, it's been 365 fucking days: the math of life, a haiku from Wuhan with perfect cadence. New year, pam.
I think I caught Omicron eating eels (subject to the strict regulations of the measures that had to be followed, but that's life) but who knows, because The truth is that I live glued to a suitcase, a couple of books and a Old fashioned, and it is that I was always more of exposing myself than hiding. And I am clear that I no longer travel to fill out any file (the "fashion destinations" slip me a little) nor to show it off pretty in the showcase of bragging.
I travel to calm this fire that burns inside me, so as not to be dead in life, to empty myself of resentment and sorrow, I travel to look at the world with new eyes, to fill the backpack of discouragement with enthusiasm; I think, in short, every day a little more like Colin Thubron, that he left written what he already understands once and for all: “Traveling you understand that you are not the center of the world”.
In short, between one thing and another (Brexit, unexpected cancellations of KLM, closing of borders...) we have palmed exactly 902.34 turkeys in trips that will no longer be, but since there is no evil that for good does not come –nonsense: how sometimes plans go wrong and precisely because of that they go well– I have discovered something that I already intuited but now I know: how darn well one is at home.
Mohair, Formaje cheeses and good times, the luxury of having that tower of cultural Babel called Netflix (also include HBO Max, Disney or my dearest Filmin here) I already know that I am saying a truism but it is that you, dear centennials, did not live the kick to the neighborhood video store and The Empire Strikes Back always (always!) with the infamous ‘rented’ card stock in crimson red. Low red.
That's why I find so much recent bad drool funny with that refrain that we are the Netflix generation as if it were a bad thing, purposeless rogues wasting time with their noses glued to the pixel, poor souls in disgrace (this from The Little Mermaid: movie) fooled by the system (the system! Hail, Hydra!) shitty conformists who think that life is reduces to mohair blanket, sofa for two, pizza delivery and the next chapter of euphoria. Well, it looks like a plan to me.
And I go further (let me go I tell you!) because I have always thought that we travel by reading and of course —for a simple cultural extension— we also travel seeing dunes or leisurely riding the plains of medieval Japan in Ghost of Tsushima.
Thanks to this prodigy we take for granted I cried like a child watching This is the hand of God, by Paolo Sorrentino the memory of my father in each plane; I'm dying for them to arrive the new seasons of mindhunter by David Fincher or Better Call Saul by Vince Gilligan we suffered with Midnight Mass, we laughed a lot with The White Lotus and I got up three times from the sofa to applaud like a man possessed throughout the last chapter of Succession: “What am I gonna do with a soul anyway? Souls are boring. Boo souls”.
It is impossible to guess what will happen to the world (and to travel) in the days to come, but one thing is clear to me: traveling is also dreaming.
Ciro Capano plays Antonio Capuano in È stata la mano di Dio (2021).