I live on a cul-de-sac in El Paso, which is a fancy way of saying I live on a dead end road (una calle sin salida). I don’t think of this as a metaphor (una metáfora) for any state of mind or body that is going on in my life, but (pero) I do acknowledge that it does have an inherent symbolism (el simbolismo) built into it. I truly like living at the end (el fin) of a dead end road, as it is relatively traffic free, only my neighbors (mis vecinos) or an occasional lost person really shows up at the end of my block (mi cuadra). Sure, we get visitors to our house, but you really have to want (querer) to go (ir) there, I mean, it is not a short cut to anywhere, it is merely a destination unto itself, a place where you can only go and then turn around (dares vuelta) and leave the same way you came.
When I was growing up, I lived on a corner (un rincón) of a pretty busy road in a neighborhood of families with kids (con niños) coming and going on all throughout the day. It didn’t seem like there was much traffic (mucho trafico) there, until my Dad was retried and he began to count (contra) the number of cars that went past our house each day (cada día), and to try and to implement (implementar) a plan to put in speed bumps or a traffic light (semáforo) or something like that, which of course, never happened. When I was a kid (cuando estaba joven), I used to go down to the nearby cul-de-sac to play in the streets with my friends, to have a quiet and undisturbed area free of cars (sin autos) and people wandering through the neighborhood, just a place where we could safely practice (practicar) on our bikes, skateboards (las patinetas) or engage in competitive games of kickball.
In Santiago, I live on the tenth floor (el decimos piso) of an apartment building, and although the area is relatively quiet, traffic, both vehicles and people (vehículos y gente ambos), stream by all hours of the day, from dawn to dusk and well into the night. I have also been throughout the city (la ciudad) and the country (el campo) seemingly with people wherever I turn, never really alone (solo) or at ease, like in a cul-de-sac road. In some ways, here, there are no dead ends, and perhaps (quizás) that is another metaphor for my life, in that there is always a new path to explore (explorar), a new opportunity to uncover (destapar), a new door to open and to walk on through to see what is there on the other side (al otro lado).
I even went on a road recently (recientemente) with friends, and we go to the last town on a mountain road, which sat at the foot (al pie) of the Andes, which loomed tall and majestic all around us. As we drove on a dirt road (una calle de tierra), we came to what I thought was the end of the road, the cul-de-sac in the mountains, and that we would have to stop (parar) and to hike on foot from here, or turn around and head back the way (el camino) we came. Yet, as we drove past the stop sign, and headed into what to me seemed the veritable abyss (el abismo), suddenly a new road opened up, a new path was before us to explore that took us to new heights, to new locations, to things we had not seen or experienced in nature (en la naturaleza) during our time in Chile.
I guess the message is that sometimes it is important (es muy importante) to go to the end of the road, and to look for how things will continue (continuar) to another place. In that sense, the cul-de-sac is merely an attitude (un actitud), not a destination, and perhaps the important point is that even when you come to something (algo) that appears to be a dead end, there is still something new to see (mirar), to learn (aprender) and to experience (experimentar), if you give it a try.
No comments:
Post a Comment