Ringing the Liberty Bell

Portugal
October 2019

Solo? Tout seul tout le voyage? Always alone? Sí, está bien. La majorité, oui, je suppose. Yeah, I guess, but I meet people along the way.

But many times not. But don’t fear for me! Aim your worries elsewhere! Biographies and classics distract me to sleep, electronic maps and digital conveniences show the way. Flashy plastic 16-digit cards and internet accounts allow me access to a binary bank. I keep thick socks and a bright torchlight, layered microfiber shirts and jackets all in reach. I have the logistics of my life's modern essentials. I am fine. Self-sufficient. Responsible. For myself. Complete.

Imposing sunset after clouded imposing sunset the regimen regresses, consuming me with where I will sleep, what I will eat. Bread, cheese, leftover soup from yesterday. Chocolate to finish my desires. Tonight thin clouds stretch across a full moon. Tomorrow grey and rain will cloak the lunar lamp. I retreat into the tent from another day between the dots of the map.

And again, but wetter. I dodge the drops, but nimble knows long-term trudging travel like oil in this dousing under morning's first grey. The sun only peers disgruntled, a flash between the clouds to confirm I'm still plodding forward. Then it vanishes. Sweat slips down my skin below the layers of self-sufficiency attempting to shed the rain. They are for warmth as a barrier against a breeze biting my meager skin with hours of prickling gusts. Amber streetlamps and jagged red brake lights reflect from the asphalt mirror as evening falls quickly. I continue further still through the outskirt towns.

Just past a Roman bridge, I reach an evening respite in an airy old stone marketplace, illuminated by the spotlight and reflective droplets. I shake them away, traipsing to the first guesthouse on the square to inquire for a bed. No response. Then the next. Full. Another. No space. Return to the first. Again no response. I call at the luxury hotel for any remote chance. Nothing. The tent remains a dire possibility destined for the rocks under the bridge. My oversatured skin shrivels as my stiff fingers struggle with the frigid brass handle to the bar’s entrance on the praça.

My cracking voice requests a hot tea and any direction to a place to sleep in town. Even a floor will do. She bounds upstairs to ask for ideas. An English speaker sitting near me translates her Portuguese falling on my waterlogged ears. He suddenly chatters on the phone for a moment while I stare deciphering a few syllables. Someone skips down the stairs and kneels athletically next to the table, and all three stumble on one another's Portuguese. My eyes dart from person to person. I extract a few words. Casa. Camihão. Caldo. Chá.

Then the tea appears. With a enormous bowl of soup and bread. "Would you like to eat something?" João the translator asks me. "There's more, if you want. Maybe a steak sandwich? Yes, have a prego." Before I can understand or object, Joana has bounded upstairs again.

"And this is Nelson. He wants to give you a ride to the next town and pay for the room." My eyes bulge as I slurp hot liquids. I swallow, burning my throat to interject. No, no, it's not necessary. I can pay, don't worry. Sufficient. For myself.

"Please, he likes to do nice things for people." Nelson smiles roundly though we exchange few words. Had I the means to speak more of his language, I would humbly decline or reason. But I only have the vocabulary of simple acceptance: muito obrigado. We smile together and I offer in infant Portuguese to buy a beer, but he chuckles. So does João: "He owns the bar. Come here for lunch tomorrow. He'll make a meal and you can have a beer then," João offers. My eyes widen again, embarrassed, my mouth stuffed with bread. I smirk and nod, then the droplets fall from my hair as I shake my head in disbelief.

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent..." reflects John Dunne, the 17th-century English poet and cleric upon recovery from illness - a divine intervention in the Elizabethan sense. "...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." The phrases echo in my ears, though I’m hardly the first. Hemingway borrowed a few words to title his Spanish Civil War novel "For Whom The Bell Tolls". But the other rings louder to me.

My determination forms my destiny. I adapt, molded by the seasons, adept in raindrops and sand-covered paths. Gusts and brash illness attempt to smash my immunity. I am not a product of perpetual similitude; the seasons temper my soul. Personal responsibility weighs heavily as the compass in my hand. My sextant of independence squeaks in need of adjustment. Yet I step upward in the climb of my own belltower.

But why do I voyage seeking what I already possess? I roam toward further self-reliance, a wandering, circuitous path aiming for liberation through my own capacities. Almost ruthless, fearlessly I’m fixated by a message of resistance against a bright blossom that might emerge from a moment's doubt. A moment when my proud clenched fist drops the sprouting seed as I wave my hand to catch the eye of any passerby.

I relent in accepting the offer of a stranger, and so begins a vulnerable stumble. Yet I somehow advance even more. I march toward incapability in my roadshow only to pause, kneeling in the storm of newly conscious inevitable inferiority between the dots on the map. Still, I progress! Independent sustenance blows the wet westerly breeze on my face. The door of help from another bursts open with new winds. Air of liberation kisses my cheeks not by avoiding the supportive outstretched hand, but by grasping it with intention. Together we rise to our feet.

No man is an island. Nelson is not Portugal. Nor Madeira. They are not Indonesia. She is not El Salvador. He is not Mauritania. I am not USA. We are a continent, Pangaea, ancient and conjoined, awakened to collaboration by the clapper that strikes a bell, tones echoing clearly, magnified in dreary drops. Do you hear it?