Dear deviant friends, I haven´t forgotten you and Italian hasn´t taken the spot that belongs to English in my heart. So, here it is, the latest note I have written on Facebook (they are not EXACTLY the same..., but a good 95% yes)

(Italian version on my facebook notes)

Dear fellows adventurers of the Southern Reaches (and the Western ones, of course), I eventually found 2 seconds to update you all on my wanderings. We must re-plot the course, take stock of the situation, get new coordinates...

I am in Berlin, right now, and there is a lot to think about. I keep noticing how things, life, death, love, friendship, never go the way we want (let alone the way we fancy them ) and whenever that happens, it´s probably just dumb luck, so much for planning ahead and / or following your guts. So I wonder, are brains and the sith sense just a "defense" implement? Cause I always thought I´d keep honing them to use them "actively", to shape life, fate, everything. Apparently these things go their own way, and being clever and insightful just helps contain the losses. Oh, bother...well, so far, so good...

Incidentally, as I write I am watching the COMMS tower in Alexander Platz, from a dunkin donut shop, and wonder how many hit points would that concrete and steel club inflict me if it smashed right on top of my head. Looks really frikkin big and, nothing, just a bit unstable. Anyways, carry on...

Been drifitng for 3 solid days now, filled with looooooong walks through the town, day and night. Summer warm days, and frikkin cold nights. Every lymphocite in my body found a note on her desk this morning saying that despite the omnipresent fatboys hanging out in their t shirts at night and enjoying their booze, I am NOT one of them and cold can still kill me. Heck, haven´t sneezed once so far, but ya never know....
The most annoying thing is that I have no luggage until tomorrow morning, which is just so frustrating. I left it at a friend ´cause lumbering with that hulk isn´t funny, and now they are all gone on field trips and no one will be back before tonight, i.e. tomorrow morning. Whatever...

Anyhow, I am far too used to being alone with the buzzing drone produced by my brain when I listen to it for too long. Imagine an old tape player, with no cassete in it, and you get the idea. What else, I got my hostel (just checked out anyways) and it was fun. A little less funny is that as soon as I paid, the friend (who has my luggaed) told me I could stay over at hers. It frikkin figures. Still, if you have to be an adventurer, it better be on a full fledged journey in the search of oneself, so I went for the hostel option. Old style backpackers lounge, with skinny kids with lank hair and ipods and lots of people with highly relative concepts of personal hygiene and style. It´s part of the package, they say...
For my Italian friends who did not shun serving their country in arms, it´s like a Navy dorm, but with no discipline enforced and lots of morons who haven´t figured out quite yet the way their lungs work, despite their 20 and more years o Earth, consequently snoring like jigsaws all night. 10 euro / night, what can you expect?

Next to that, I have to say that my shoulders are just ridiculously stiff from carryng my luggage up and down flights of stairs. it feels like I am carrying mercury rods, for God´s sake!

[link]

The final touch was the welcome back bbq (well, it was a bbq, but they upgraded it to a Welcome Back Manuel bbq) on a raft floating on the Spree canal (humidity 200%) where a guy with a big crate would open you bottles of beer and another guy, with a crate and a mixer, would help himself to more beer and mix the music. The dancefloor was insanely packed but it was fun and, eventually, at 3 am I made it to the hostel. Good thing I am as stealthy as Batman. Too bad the other guests aren´t so.

Which brings us back to a long lonely day. I have been thinking about you guys, wondered how you were doing, if you were seeing each other,how would things become now that I had left.
I kept asking myself if there are such things as cycles, or if it just me seeing life as a huge telefilm, divided into series 1, 2 , 3 and 4.....
Cycles that, at some point, just end (or merge seamlessly into the next). These braks, perhaps, give us the time to recharge out batteries, to crave for one another´s presence and, if it was even necessary, to learn the lesson, and I mean THE lesson.
We WILL NOT take for granted the presence of those we love. Simply because, for fate, a chain of decisions, constraints, desires and goals, 900 miles of land can just pop out of nowhere and sperate you from your loved ones. Or 3 countries, or 4 languages, whichever barrier you like, it can just rise and tear you asunder from your fellows adventurers.

We will meet again, down this road, at the next crossroads on weary mounts (dibs on the velociraptor, BTW) or at the next inn, to sip mead from huge horns and goblets, or on a battlefield, side by side, back to back, ior perhaps simply along a river bank, fishing a trout and sharing it with our next.

So, the very last one is? The very last note or post before the next? Maybe, maybe not...
It must be 4 or 5 years now, that there are "very last ones" in my life. Maybe I am too damn serious about everything, but that is how things stand at the moment.
it would be so much easier to live everything lightly, to spend freely, to not care about the coming days, yet fear, I reckon, has now become a stable companion of my wanderings.
Fear of Death, somehow. Yeah, let´s call a spade a spade, it is just Death. Not the pain, not the end, but the tug of loss, yeah, I fear that one. That is why I have been counting the "very last ones" from longer than I can remember.

Maybe the very last time I see my cat rolling on the windowsill and roasting her chubby tummy under the spring sun. Maybe the last time two elderly people that I know, and who live in different parts of Italy, will see each other.

Maybe the last chance you are given to hug a friend and a fellow in life, a chance to let him or her know that you don´t just think you have the inalienable right to his or her presence, just like that, without lifting a finger. You just want them to be damn sure they know you ARE grateful you know them, and that you are taking every chance as the last one, until you are graced with the next, whenever it may come...

Time to go now, and find something to do (and eat, perhaps) and come what may

Love you all,

Manuel.