Caminante

I can't stop thinking about that Antonio Machado proverbio (or is it a cantar?):

Caminante, son tus huellas
el camino y nada más;
Caminante, no hay camino,
se hace camino al andar.
Al andar se hace el camino,
y al volver la vista atrás
se ve la senda que nunca
se ha de volver a pisar.
Caminante no hay camino
sino estelas en la mar.

In English, roughly, off the cuff:

Walker, your footprints are
the road, and nothing more;
Walker, there is no road,
the road is made by walking.
By walking the road is made,
and when one turns, looking back,
one sees the path that one
will never again set foot upon.
Walker, there is no road
save for foam trails on the sea.

Inevitable, eh? I can never decide, when I read Proverbios y Cantares, whether I'm left feeling darker or lighter. There's a hopelessness--"there is no road..."--a sense of loss, but not quite loss, or not a painful one... a shedding, perhaps? The road is something we leave behind us. Every act of creation is an act of leave-taking. To give something, anything, to the world, we first have to learn to let go. So there's the answer, I suppose: I feel lighter, not heavier.

No one has ever said they didn't pack enough. But we all have bits and pieces we wish we'd left behind.