A strong sense of certainty

Ernesto and Raol did spend quite a bit of time together, there were some serious problems with the farmland and ongoing and longstanding arguments about ownership. There was in fact a court case pending and Ernesto very felt obliged to look further into the ranch’s problems and assist his father. The robbery had become the tip of a substantial iceberg. Meanwhile I grew closer to Claudia as we whittled down the time sitting on long dark wooden loungers, petting the horses and walking in peculiar circles around the trees. She was likable, she was moody in a peculiar but attractive way, she was bored with ranch life, she missed the city, her books and café people and the campus dramas and she was very much against the up and coming overland journey. I did discover that Ernesto had semi-bribed her with the opportunity to join us when we arrived up at Cartagena for a celebration of some kind. He didn’t seem to have grasped my vision of the life changing nature of the trip. He and Claudia would reunite, the journey would be archived and his medical career would resume, that much he has figured. A blip. I was not even willing to plan such a thing, should we arrive on the northern coast I would do what I felt I had to do following on from my baptism of road travel, that reunion and celebratory event could be years or lifetimes away.

I found myself staring into the yellow yolk of a fried egg. Yellow as saffron with white flecks of over cooking nicking into the circle, but then shiny and serene like the head of a bald gay man or the Dalai Lama. The white had fat bubbles and framed the rich centre whose consistency seemed solid but threatened to be liquid, unexplored. Fit to burst and pour on contact with a knife or even a dull piece of bread or an innocent spoon edge. Explosive. Or was it to be still, set and benign, something to be sliced, salted and munched with little or no mess or ceremony? It was the standard breakfast egg, done to another’s sense of perfection and proprietary but not mine. I am stuck at the point where I believe that there are some things than only you can do properly and they cannot be trusted to the efforts of others no matter how genuine they are with their efforts. Delegation is the hardest skill to master.

I also developed a strong sense of certainty that (assuming the journey ever started) that the car would morph and shape shift throughout that journey and when that did happen what would then happen to the bemused and weary occupants?