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Around this time two years ago I had just arrived back in the states from a seven month trip abroad in Spain. Although it has been nearly two years, I feel as though it was just yesterday that I stepped through the airport threshold and onto the boarding ramp in Madrid to return home. I can still sense the overwhelming array of feelings that radiated through my entire body at the exact moment that I left the embarkment section and took my first step into the airplane portal. As I made my way down to the aircraft door, flashes of my stay quickly emerged and left in an instant only to intensify my emotions. Before I stepped aboard the plane I took one final breath of the hot spanish air and one final glimpse of Madrid through the clear plastic tarp and with much hesitation I reluctantly stepped into the plane to return home to my mundane lifestyle in the USA.
Once aboard I found my seat and I was happy to learn that it was by the window. I love sitting by the window for various reasons, but the best one by far is the simple joy of looking at the world below when I am thousands of miles up in the air. After a couple difficult and failed attempts of standing on my tip toes and stretching all five feet of my body to maneuver my carryon into the overhead compartment, I reluctantly admitted defeat and looked around for someone who I could make my please-help-me-i'm-too-short eye contact with. A spanish man who was seated in the center aisle a couple rows back from me noticed my non-verbal plea and smiled.
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" Usted neTHesita ayuda?" -
" Si, graTHias" I love the Castilian accent. It takes some getting used to at first and sounds a little silly like a lisp, but I adore it because every time I hear it I am reminded of my life there. Sometimes when I speak spanish, spanish speakers from the Americas can pick up my Castilian accent and they catch me on specific words that I say. They laugh and tell me I sound like I am from Spain. It's amazing how a simple change of accent in a word can give away a part of your identity. Spain is part of my identity now and my experience there has altered my life forever.
Once seated in the plane I remained there quietly and watched the others load onto the plane and once again I was suddenly overcome by melancholy. There is no other way to describe the past seven months other than for me to say it was a tornado of events and I had stood in the center of it half conscious and half in a state of utter bliss.
There is something mysterious and truly inspiring about leaving the known and venturing off into the unknown. This phenomenon starts off as an intangible sensation that creeps into your mind and once there remains dormant until a small occurrence triggers it to fully emerge. This occurrence can be anything from hearing about someone's trip to a difficult day at work or passing by a bookstore and noticing an intriguing paperback about an exotic and foreign place. It is a little voice that begs you to break free from the mundane and see what else this world has to offer. Once awake this emotion refuses to cease and overtime it becomes nagging and inconsolable. For me it becomes an obsession. I dream about where life can take me, who I'll meat and what I'll learn. When this desire becomes strong enough I have no choice but to succumb to it and figure out an escape route from my circadian lifestyle.
A couples months after I returned to the states I was at my library in the spanish section when i picked up a book called
El Zahir by Paulo Coelho who is a best selling portuguese author. The book had been translated from portuguese into spanish and I figured reading it would be a great way to keep up with my language skills. I read a couple chapters and loved it so much that I ended up buying it. However, like the majority of people in our society my life became burdensome with obligations that I needed to accede to and all of a sudden two years went by in a flash and I had yet to finish it. Last night I had poured myself a glass of wine and was relaxing in my room when suddenly my eyes caught a glimpse of the book. I happily smirked, set down my wine glass and walked across my room to retrieve it. I sat back on my bed, took a sip of my wine and then proceeded to open up to the page I had marked nearly two years ago. It was amazing how fast the characters and the scenery all came back into my imagination, just like the day of my departure back to the United States.
I wanted to know more about what El Zahir meant and after looking on the internet I discovered that it was a short story written by Jorge Luis Borges. Thanks to my last semester at Framingham State, where I took an intense spanish literature class, I know all about this Argentinian writer and his post-modern/ magic realism style. Anyway, I discovered through a well known internet source called wikepedia( i'm sure you haven't heard of it? Ha. ) that
" in this story, Zahir is a person or an object that has the power to create an obsession in everyone who sees it, so that the affected person perceives less and less of reality and more and more of the Zahir, at first only while asleep, then at all times." What an ironic occurrence it is to pick up a book i started reading when i first returned home in order to keep a part of spanish with me and to discover ,two years later, that the creation of this very book would not have been at all possible without its spanish influence. Just as this book could not have been actualized without a spanish origin, I would not be who i am today without my spanish experience. Even more serendipitous is that my obsession with travel stemmed from Spain and the perfect word to describe the indescribable feeling i stated in a couple paragraphs above can be no other than Zahir.
This is my characteristic, elaborate and roundabout way to explain the significance behind why I have decided to title my blog Zahir.
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