I have been born a thousand times in this lifetime. I have been born into different countries and groups of people; into different dreams and ideas; into different joys and pains. Sometimes, changes outside of my control breathe new life into my existence; other times, I die fighting what I believe is the good fight, and fight myself into being reborn.
A couple of years ago, I was lost, and as far from myself as I had ever been. I felt an existential dread coming to a boil in the pit of my stomach. In all honesty, it had started a few years earlier, but what I thought was a passing quarter-life crisis, inadvertently became a lifestyle, and now I was at the end of my rope. I was going to break; it was just a matter of time.
How did I get there? A friend and mentor told me about my Saturn return (Adele would soon confirm that this was, in fact, a thing). Maybe it had something to do with it all, who am I to say? Mainly, though, I believe it was the accumulation of poor decisions, and decisions not made. A regretful combination of them held me still right where I was.
Feeling stone-deaf, dumb, and blind at the time, I decided to get lost. The best place to do that, I figured, was on the road. As per my design, the trip began in New Orleans, Louisiana, and ended in Salt Lake City, Utah (with a posterior stop in Nashville, Tennessee). I could write a book about my adventures, but there is one particular stop that changed everything.
Amarillo, Texas.
I stayed at the Yellow City for one night and took some time to visit Cadillac Ranch. The site is an interesting thing in itself: ten heavily graffitied Cadillac cars buried nose-down in a field that seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. The coat of paint is so thick that, no real damage was caused when one of those cars was set afire that very night.
I was admiring the site, climbing on top of the cars, and contributing to the exhibition with my own can of graffiti. I was also patiently waiting for just the right moments to take clean pictures without any interfering tourists. As I walked around, I suddenly turned to face the field behind me. It was like nothing I had ever seen before, or ever come across again.
The sky above me, lightly glazed with cirrostratus clouds, went endlessly on. The ground at my feet, with patches of green and yellow grass, reached out to a horizon I don’t think it could ever reach. I was looking out into forever. The landscape was infinite. I was suddenly overcome with emotion. I started breathing heavily as I held back the tears.
Up until New Orleans, life had seemed to be getting smaller every day. When and how had I allowed that to happen? The world is not small at all, it is such a colossal place, such a beautiful place. And there I was, staring out into the unknown, into this ceaseless stretch of life! Something inside me died that very moment, and something caught fire, came alive.
My small world had been broken open, in all its gargantuan glory. Suddenly, I was limitless. The road after that became fraught with contemplation and existential ruminations. Tears ensued, but I found my inner child’s hand sticking out from under the rubble of what I felt my life had become and managed to pull him out.
That one stop, that one look at the view, turned my world around – and I loved it. It set me en route to reevaluate my life and make life-altering decisions. A lot of those decisions were delayed due to the 2019 protests we suffered in Chile, and the subsequent pandemic. But it was pretty clear to me that I was finding my way, and I could not lose momentum now.
I am still on this road, and probably always will be (that’s the idea, anyway). So far, it has brought me to Spain and taken me around Europe. For a minute, it took me back to the US, and back to Chile. It has now led me back to Spain. I have no idea where it goes... what it holds for me, I haven’t guessed yet.
Who doesn’t know what I’m talking about?