A couple days after I landed in Lisbon, I was thinking about the chain of events that led me to come to Portugal. Although there are many reasons, partly having to do with a cancelled trip from 2001, I realized that there were also little subtle clues.
These are the little coincidences that seem to be pointing somewhere, telling you which way to go. Since striking out on the road last year, I´ve gotten good as tuning into these clues. Maybe they are simply a reflection of some inner unacknowledged desire. Maybe there is something more spiritual to them. I don´t know. But I can tell you that when I follow them, my life comes much closer to telling a coherent story, which is what this blog is about, it seems.
One clue that sticks out to me is the photograph on the wall of my sister´s living room. I´ve been looking at it for the last six months, whenver I went in there to watch television. It´s a still from the movie Casablanca, specifically a shot on the tarmack at the end, showing a Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergmann, and Paul Henreid standing beside each other. At least I´m pretty sure it´s on the tarmack.
When I was in Lisbon, it suddenly hit me that Bergmann and Henreid´s characters are about to fly off to the very city I was in right then, into which I´d flown just a couple days before. It´s argubably the most famous plane flight in cinema. Lisbon is the city of escape from tyranny, and towards freedom.
So maybe looking at that still on the wall night after night for six months somehow sunk in. In any case, I knew it was the right thing to do.
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