This was originally published on my old blog BackpackBook (Livro de Mochila), a project that blended literature and travel, sometimes just traveling in my lucid dreams. It ran as âBoa viagem Gulliverâ on August 23, 2007.
As promised in earlier conversations, I gave the wings back to Gulliver’s Travels. It was the first book I set free to travel through distant lands and unfamiliar minds. It wasn’t very planned. We were at the airport picking up Mandrake and Maria, and I realized the opportunity to free him was coming.
Goodbyes are always complicated. I tried to keep it as brief as possible, but like a disastrous first time, things didn’t turn out the way I’d imagined.
Mission impossible
A Thursday with normal traffic at the airport, flights delayed in the normal way, and on top of that somebody important must have been landing, because there were a lot of security guards. Or was Mandrake up to something again?
Never mind. I’m not very familiar with these places and it was all fairly new, so I tried to concentrate. I had to send Gulliver far away, and the boarding area would be perfect. I got a bit nervous, since I was behaving like a suspect, almost a man with a bomb. The strategy was not to look directly at anybody. I sat down and put the plan into action.
There was no plan. So I pretended to read the book and took a pencil out of the backpack to write the “instructions” for the “receiver”. After a few falsely read paragraphs I realized the pencil was new and hadn’t been sharpened yet. I laughed awkwardly at nobody and said quietly:
Right, now they’ll catch me!
I pulled myself together on remembering there was a sharpener in the backpack, also never used.
It seemed like a gentleman next to me was watching what I was writing, so I hunched right over. I was definitely building a bomb. At moments like that it feels like everyone knows your plans. After a few redundant and badly built sentences about the idea of sharing this book and encouraging the continuation of its trip, I photographed the experiment.
I don’t even want to know what the hidden observers made of it.
I put the backpack on the chair beside me and stood up, moving the book around behind my back as if I were putting it inside the bag. I looked at the monitors, decided “my flight” was arriving, picked up the backpack and walked off in long strides without looking back, before the bomb went off behind me:
Hey mister, you forgot your book! (KABOOM!)
After a few seconds of silence and dread, going up the stairs, I noticed that on top of writing very badly I had forgotten to mention “Livro de Mochila” anywhere. I nearly went back. It would have been an excellent way to spread the idea (or to burn my reputation with that text), especially for an airport traveler who can always count on hours of idleness and a good book.
Either way, I was more worried about the book still being there on the way back, having interested nobody.
I couldn’t take it. In under five minutes I went back and found a very curious lady with little Gulliver in her hands. What a relief. I felt like hugging her. I hope Gulliver’s Travels brings her new dreams and that she shares those adventures with more people.
To finish, I risked photographing the beginning of that relationship. I found the perfect chance, finger on the trigger and the focus in position, when in a fraction of a second I was illuminated by the possible disaster of the illuminated flash. I nearly ruined everything. I killed the flash and took the most valuable blurry photo in the world.
Safe travels, Gulliver and young lady. It was a pleasure to know you. May your wings take you far, and may the baggage come back much bigger, always bigger.