"The here and now it's bullshit!", Erika had astounded me, that Person from Ibiza which had already been quite successful in disabusing me of my comfortable certainties. "The here and now is just a way to keep us anchored here, without dreams or roots. Talk to yourself about forty years, about fifty, ask for direction, establish a relationship with time by travelling through it."

Please go ahead, my eyes said.

'Sow a seed where you think you cannot reach. Think big Jacopo. Exaggerate!" that even if it was all bullshit, how good it is to hear it and breathe deeply the air of freedom?! "We are in the middle of two eclipses: it is the right time to expand. Don't sit there wallowing about which way to go. Manifest things you never thought of: the Universe, in this moment, welcomes."

Please stop, said my breath: laboured in the pursuit of so much inspiration.

We then indulged in a dessert, or rather two.
We rediscovered the greenery of an Ibiza rarely so lush.
And we said goodbye in an embrace, leaving a glimmer open for that tomorrow, with which I found it permissible to deal.

EMBRACE THE COLD WATER

Ibiza is first and foremost an island.
Before being a land of discos, millionaires, radical chic, and people dressed in envy, Ibiza is an island with its own sky and its own land. An unexpectedly, and fortunately, green land: thanks to the rainy days that had preceded our arrival: mine, Gobi's and Thibault's.

It is Sunday morning and I am already sleep-deprived: I have slept three hours, due to the plane being too early and the zanchetta too late. The flight doesn't last as long as a binge, and by 8 o'clock we are exhausted and hungry outside the airport. The number 10 bus acts as our Charon towards 3 hours of stasis sitting in a bar, waiting for the van we have rented to appear before our eyes.
We send Gobi into hiding (we had booked a van for just two people) and close the paperwork: around the block, gears struggling to engage, and Gobi be at the corner to pick you up.

Each point on the map of the island seems to be connected by an interval of time that is slavishly around 20 minutes. Distance is no longer a unit of measurement. Desire wins, in a hedonistic exercise in self-celebration. First a mercadillo all hippies with money (Les bobos, as the French say), then a step into the sun, and Thibault's desire to go to the sea breaks the spell. Desire wins, always. So the sea and the beach of Cala Xarraca to hen our eyes.

Time seems to run so fast that it stumbles over its own steps, and drowsy from the sun, and drowsy from the sea, we head towards Juntos, where they are waiting for us Sonia and his friends. A sip of beer and a glance at the vegetable garden: just enough to remember the eternal battle between the city and nature. I sniff out all the plants I cross between the rows, surprising myself with my olfactory memory, still steadfast in its bucolic principles; Gobi meanwhile remembers he is an agronomist and unleashes aquaponics broadsides that we, loosely ignorant, had not seized as miraculous opportunities.
We sit in the garden.
Then we get up and go to yet another mercadillo.

Here the situation is like the previous one but worse/better/ or any other accretion.
The benches draw a mantra on the gravel and from afar music tribal It attracts us young rebels, us old dreamers, us men, us women, us cave paintings, us Duchamp urinals... it attracts us all* to move our bodies as the sun begins a shy sunset. Suddenly the music stops: a man, who could be a shaman, or the CEO of Rolex, takes the microphone and invites us to thank the sun. The world turns. The world thanks. And the music resumes.

Evening, which is already night, is a tin box on wheels parked a handful of metres from a cliff. At the top the stars. At the bottom sand mixed with rock. Around it darkness, filled only by the pendulum of the sea.

On Monday we are less sleepy and more in the mood for nature. So we lose ourselves, prophetic self-saboteurs, in a trek to Punta Moscater. "Shall we continue or shall we go back? Do we need to be on the west coast by 6pm?", I ask my fellow travellers carelessly.
"How much is left to finish the trip?", Thibault pointed.
"Falta como una hora y pico, creo.", I improvise as scout leader.
"Vale, vamos," and we set off again towards a hypothetical loop.

After a canyon, the sea.
Ahead is the sun.
In the body the sun.
And the desire for a summer prequel.

We undress, and naked, we embrace the cold water, letting her do the same. She too naked. She embraces us too.
Like lizards we seek the sun, feigning indifference to the other explorers, and as we dry off I declare my guilt: "No quiero hablar. No quiero escuchar." The usual twenty minutes of silence follow. The most beautiful. The most honest.

The next two hours are attempts to rediscover the high road, zero blasphemy and the heat wavering between water and cerveza. Then van again, and another cliff on the west coast, to Sa Figuera Borda. Gobi had his birthday, and the world had given him the gratitude of an abyss over the sea, food, stars, and friends.

We spent a night without realising the uniqueness of the moment.
But we enjoyed our passions: music, food, freedom.
If anyone had anything to be thankful for, it was us, and our choice to over-live.
The rest was a beautiful frame of an invisible picture.

On Tuesday I went to visit Erika in Sant Agnès de Corona: I waited for the best tortilla on the island, while I ate an avocado and salmon flatbread; and in such gastronomic incoherence, she cracked open my skull, poured word jumbles into it, shook it, and sent me back to the mainland.

---

From Valencia airport to home, silence reigns: 'beauty costs effort', wrote a me with less beard and more hair.
I arrive home, and sit on the abandoned office chair on the balcony: I tell Sarah about the last three days, but words are too small a container for such simplicity.
So I interrupt myself, light a zanchetta and mute, I find myself overwhelmed with immense gratitude.