It all comes back

Originally posted on the 1st of March, after the Chilean earthquake, but the post was actually written before that.

There are just a couple of hours left before leaving for Santiago de Chile, and I just started preparing my hand luggage, following my usual rituals before every flight. I choose the book to read on board, charge my mp3 player, try to remember to take the travel pillow with me and slip an anti air conditioning sweater in my bag. I arrive at the airport, silence my stomach with a pair of rolls and to not take any chance I buy drink and food for the journey. FOOL! I'm flying with LAN, the Chilean national airline, not with Ryanair...! On board there are newspapers and magazines, pillow and blanket. A multimedia screen embedded in each seat allows you to kill the time with movies, TV, games, videos, documentaries and music. And of course lunch is included. I'll have a slight plastic-tasting salmon, thanks. At least I avoid the fake ricotta ravioli that my neighbour seems to appreciate.

And speaking of my neighbour, C. rightfully enters this trip  gallery of characters (with a capital C). And she enters it through the main gate after telling me how she decided to take a vacation in South America. One evening on the veranda watching the sunset over Cape Town, the sun disappearing from South Africa and - she says in a both serious and humorous way - the flavor of a joint make her asking herself  which direction the sun has taken. The globe reveals that it headed for Buenos Aires. From there it was easy to put two and two together and travel for the first time away from her two children to go enjoy the world. After collecting another flag to be pasted on the "come and visit me" world map, the clouds begin to clear giving a glimpse of what's awaiting. An island in the Pacific, formerly called Te Pito Te Henua, the navel of the world. "Ladies and gentlemen, is the captain speaking to you. We're going to land on Easter Island. It's 17.50 local hours and there's a temperature of 26 degrees."

Some time ago, in Argentina, we stopped to cheer a street artist. When the unfortunate guy from the audience throws at the juggler the two flaming torches to be seized while on stilts, the juggler, menacingly pointing the torches to the poor guy and among the laughters of the audience, says: "Remember, it all comes back in life!"
My passion for the mysteries of this world comes back, and what's more mysterious than the mystery of the moai on the island? A poem that I had long forgotten comes back, one of my favorite as a high school youngster: Ulysses by Lord Alfred Tennyson. 

I am part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades
Forever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end.
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. 

[...]
Come, my friends.
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
the sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be that we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are---
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.  

 Easter Island is one of my new worlds. Waiting to discover the other ones. 

Since I didn't have the time to translate the "cultural" post about Easter Island, follow this link to see the pictures at least