Nostalgia for Travel

“Poor heart that shudders,
one day far away you were the dawn.”
(Cesare Pavese)

How much I miss traveling...

Crossing the long carpeted corridors with the trolley towards the tunnel that leads to the boarding gate and then onto the asphalt of the runway, towards the airplane, which is a private territory only for those who are about to fly. The clouds that filter cities and landscapes in the silence of the neon blue nights.

Or the train stations with our noses in the air checking the platforms and train schedules. The lottery of who will be our traveling companion, the sublime pleasure of taking out the chosen book, and losing ourselves in the rhythm of the page and the delicate clatter of the train.

But above all, I miss smelling the new place as soon as I leave the station or the airport. Every city has its own smell.

The impact with the perforated wall of foreign languages; and in that tangle of phonemes starting to unravel the threads that lead towards familiarity.


I miss getting lost, because only when one gets lost can one begin to find oneself.

Ultimately, this is the charm of the tracks, for me.

A long line that has no direction, that goes north but at the same time south, is one thing and its opposite. Walking those paths is moving away, which is, however, already a sign of returning to a different self.

Sometimes, to understand a little about ourselves, we have to walk along long corridors and tunnels, go around, and zigzag. We sit for hours on beaches at the edge of the sea that wets our feet stuck in the sand or in crowded restaurants bumped by acrid smells, elbows, and unknown words.

But this is always understood after a long time.

I have now found many of myself in these last years and I wouldn't even be able to say who I really am anymore.

And, honestly, I'm happy like this and I don't care at all.

Italian version