Getting as far as possible is the dream of youth and the privilege of old age. It’s all behind me. But geometric figure of old age, as it turns out, is a circle. You go further, and further, and if you go long enough, you reach the same place from which you had started. S. Mrozek.
People say, the most important in any journey is one’s return. This step on the threshold of the house when you come back after a long absence, when you try to put to pieces your own personality, because the trip was disintegration, a loss, but also simultaneously it was a discovery, again and again, in arduously undertaken efforts to find answers to your questions, even if they were not spoken, or even thought of, though perhaps by not mentioning them, they have always been more real, tangible, palpable, important. As long as no one asks me – I know, but when someone asks me – I do not know.
I’m going back not only to loved ones, who probably enjoy the return, whatever it is, but I am coming back to myself. So exactly to whom? Who am I? In a matter of fact, each of us is in someone else’s behalf, regardless who we are, we are merely imaginary representations of ourselves. What more, representations ever-changing, dependent upon circumstances, events, time, fashion, conventions, or even our own calculations. People say – be yourself. It is said in the audacious belief about the permanence of one’s self, about one’s identity. But being yourself, in fact means absolutely nothing. In order to be yourself, you have to be somebody, that is, to know who you are. And how can we determine, lost among the ever-changing ideas of ourselves? The desire for self-knowledge is only a futile wandering among people’s ideas.Perhaps it is even a kind of longing for one’s self, despair for one’s self, but also the continual escape into our ideas about ourselves. W.Myśliwski
So, this time, Jules Barbey D’Aurevilly in Les Diaboliques was right. I should have been more cautious and grave. So be it now. Sadly, I broke my knee cap. I would not be able to cycle with a broken knee, I tried, believe me, but I am not able to go with just one leg. I have been deluding myself for ten days into thinking that it was just a bruise. Even after the fall, I was continuing cycling half of the day, and then another two days loitered here and there, from one park to another, until finally I took the bus to Portland where I could relax and pretend that everything is fine. Over the weekend I wanted to move on, but after a few miles the knee started getting swollen ever more and the pain was endurable, so the time came to see a doctor, the visit to whom dispelled any hopes of an imminent recovery – certainly not this year.
Thank you all for keeping your fingers crossed, it is not the end of the world. The leg has not yet fall off, but now it needs to be taken to Poland in one piece as soon as possible. I’ll be back home in two days. Thank you everyone who believed in me (and feels disappointed) and those who did not believe (again, they were right), I am terribly sorry but there will not be more happy mornings, because I’m not able to go on, I’m simply not. Maybe if I could fly I would go further, but the wings, recently grown – are left undercut, trampled, wrinkled.
We say goodbye for now and see you in Poland.