I want to go through the accident and fear till I’ll become mad with joy and I will want to lose more and more.
Marta Mattalia
I’ve spent the last months travelling around Europe. My last stop has been in Canarian islands, then from there I decided to come back by flight to Italy, my home-country, for Christmas holidays.
When I reached the check-in desk at the airport to board the luggage in the aircraft hold, I showed my Greenpass proving the double vaccination. The hostess very disappointed told me that just from the previous day Italy government decided to request a negative Covid test for travelers from abroad, even if they held a Greenpass. I ran to the opposite side of the airport carrying my 13 kilos backpack, till the Covid test point. I waited in the queue to get an appointment and pay triple price an antigenic test. I waited in another queue to make the antigenic test. I waited almost one hour to get the result by mail. My 13 kilos backpack remained always on my shoulders because no one, nor hostess nor secretaries nor nurses, allowed me to put it down anywhere.
As soon I got the negative result of the Covid test, I went immediately back to the check-in desk. My 13 kilos backpack was crashing till the top of the head. The hostess even more disappointed than before told me that the check-in was already closed. She suggested me to run directly to the gate with all the luggage. When I tried to cross the security checkpoint the policemen scanned my 13 kilos backpack looking at me as a terrorist.
I came back to the airlane company desk and I bought a new flight ticket paying double price than my original ticket. I reached Italy in an airport much more far than the first where I should have landed. My father came to pick me up very upset because he had to drive for a long way to get there. On the way back It was the time for people going back home after work, so we remained stucked in a huge slow traffic jam. My father and me didn’t say a word for the whole trip.
When I could finally lie down in the bed it was late in the night, without having any food and water for all day long, with a strong headache and less money in the bank account. I slept wearing the same clothes I was wearing since from the early morning when I left from my room in Tenerife.
There is nothing smooth inside the story of this experience. Just a sense of compassion thinking of all of us, little creatures trying to protect ourselves from the non-sense caos of the universe.
There is nothing smooth inside the story of this experience. Neither there is a final moral message. Just a new boundless sense of compassion thinking of all of us, little creatures running on the surface of a planet suspended in the middle of the emptiness. All of us, completely tangled in our dynamics of impulse of fear, our theatrical reality made of social, political and economic forces which make us far from the essential meaning of existence. We are still trying to sustain our illusory point of view on the life as the rightest one, to protect ourselves from the non-sense caos of the universe.
I discover such a compassion for myself as well, that I was feeling so upset for my money loss. I dive deep inside the break caused by the thought of wasting money, the break of my back carrying 13 kilos of bagback for hours and hours. I want to go through my attachment and fear till I’ll become mad with joy and I will want to lose more and more. Because when you don’t have anything to hold, you are free.
That night the moon was almost full. The day after when I woke up the headache had disappeared.
Marta Mattalia is a graduate in Afro-american Singing at Music Academy. After received a master’s degree in Storytelling and Performing Arts at Scuola Holden in Torino, she dives inside the voice through the spiritual tradition of Baul and Indian classical music of Dhrupad.
Since 5 years she is travelling around the world, exploring the sound and the infinite ways to exist as human beings. Of course this is a painful story that need to be shared to make aware of our selves and nothing to hold on us to be suffered.
You can read her earlier story published while lauching of Telupu website.
