(Note: This text is my own translation, with the support of DeepL translator, of my own post posted before only in Spanish: @aljif7/hemingway-para-el-insomnio-no
With slightly modifications on this English version).
After looking for a quote to relieve my spirit with insomnia, I found this quote by Hemingway:
Going to another country makes no difference. I've tried all that. You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another. There’s nothing to that.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
And it got to my guts, making me go all over my labyrinthine path; since the town where I was born (La Guadalupe, Veracruz) on a day of March with possible softly windy and sea breezes, to the bays of Hong Kong lulled sometimes by the intense fog, sometimes by the gentle passing of typhoons and sometimes by a beautiful sun passing slowly over the island and the sister islands....
Who could understand the depth of that phrase better than someone who escaped from his village wanting to escape from himself? What one-self sees in the past is ashes of what burned you as you tried to take the next step. But what you don't know is that what you are running away from is from yourself.
After two years into therapy, maybe I am managing to put some peace, some reconciliation with myself.
And at the pace of my steps, I don't know how many people I have scorched with the fire that I was trying to extinguish with that endless, incomprehensible search...
From fare away, one is still so close... So simple it is, but painful: You can't get away from you (...). It is not possible. From this closeness, I painfully managed to reestablish contact with my daughter María de Jesús, who was born from a beautiful, although brief courtship. A gift from Epiphany, which I hope to develop in another text. Now one more gift: Sharon, my little granddaughter.
From this closeness I was able to reconnect with my biological father. And in the middle of this journey to the past-present there is something that hurts and I still can't explain it. Could it be an uncommon excess of joy when facing the being that one was?
I have barely had a couple of conversations with my father: Pascual Lobato. Although we met briefly when my brother Rodolfo passed away, at that time (2012?) I think I was not yet ready to assimilate that hidden-present root. That unavoideble link that my mother never knew how to mention. And life made me interpret it as part of something I had to defeat, to overcome within myself. I was hard on myself because I believed it was the only way to face life, and become someone different. I only keep an image of that day when Pascual approached me in the hallway of the Casa del Campesino. He reached out his hand and gave me some money. I was tough and told him I didn't need any, thank you.
I was also hard on my brother, who always lived with him, with Pascual, until as the years went by and with early reflections that we are not guilty of what brought us to this world... that in the end he (Rodolfo) and I were brothers and we had no reason to treat each other as rivals or as strangers. It wasn't until he was no longer in town that I started writing to him. In the eighties (1980s and so on). My mother received letters from Rodolfo. So one day I decided to write to him. His new address was Xalapa de Enriquez, Veracruz.
Had he also undertaken this struggle of running away from himself?
There are still so many questions in the inkwell that I don't know if the paintbrush will be able to capture them in any of the conversations that may come up with my father. The 81 year old man, who I have no idea what he will think of this myself so far away... and so close.
In the meantime, it's time to continue with the daily struggle of life. And since I've stolen a chunk out of the night, I'll endeavor to retake the bed for a couple more hours of sleep.
Thank you for reading!
Note that I have adjusted my own translation with the support of:
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
