THE ROAD

Seven thirty in the morning. My winter heart is still beating slowly. I am getting ready to face the long walk, surrounded by silence. A backpack check is vital: I must have everything—or just about—that is needed to start my reading expedition. The hike across the literary town is supposed to be a comeback to some sort of roots, therefore I need to downgrade.
This is going to be a long day—there's a forty-kilometer hike out there waiting for my steps. The very last minute is dedicated to all that I must not have: no money, no mobile phone, no maps—all of this is resting on the wooden table that my dad built decades ago.
The only gear I furnish myself with is a personal camera and my notebook—and in my notebook I cherish a single public dream-like transport ticket for my return, later on tonight. For that is my only link with urban life—the only pass for I return after I reach the summit at the end of my long trip through a cold and sunny August day.
Daybreak today was beautiful; the frozen humidity piercing my bones was a reminder of my old self as a small-town boy, of days when urban life could be easily transformed into a faraway kind of adventure—away from everything and everyone, away from the creepy sense of pacing in a cage that later spurred me to come live in the mountains up Rio de Janeiro state.
This is all due to the fact that I used to enjoy the warmth rising from the streets in Friburgo, it all looked magnificent at the end of July, in the deep frozen winter with the sun so huge on the horizon and the sky as our road. As I crossed the main avenue and dived into the backstreets of the south side of town, that big yellow star exploded like a giant crashing stone, it danced on the tarmac leading to the apartment in the street, the long sentimental road that lead me to you.
There must be some hidden beauty down there, where I am heading right now, toward the fragments of the sun still dancing in the sky and through the haze: a Star, a world beyond a world that used to be. Something that might happen again. Or that might not.

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DVD: UM BOM ANO (A GOOD YEAR, USA 2006) - Max Skinner (Russell Crowe) é um investidor inglês, sem muitos escrúpulos, que vive somente para ganhar cada vez mais dinheiro. Quando seu tio Henry (Albert Finney), seu parente mais próximo, morre, ele herda sua vinícola na França. Quando viaja ao local para ajustar detalhes a fim de vendê-lo, Max acaba passando uma temporada no local, e encontra o caminho do coração. Veja o trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-B6FsAAvmM