It was 20 years ago. I was a successful consultant in my field, editor in a magazine, had managed to become assistant professor in the college I graduated from. I was dating an eccentric girl and my future looked bright. Would fight for another 5 years and then accept a position in a good company in my field, wear tight Ermenegildo Zegna suits and seduce our clients over lunches. Maybe ditch the eccentric girl and settle for something more reasonable.
Then I found Malta. Malta was small, very small, something like the population of the third largest city in my country. There was no way to follow my career path. It was an island, I couldn’t just hop in my car and go somewhere else if I felt like it and all this water around it…Yes, they spoke English, but they also spoke Maltese which looked worse than Chinese to me. They were Catholic, which could be a problem to my much freer approach to the Divine. I would obviously not wear Zegna suits every day and would I find an eccentric girl there? Hell, I haven't even been there!
I gave all this a 5 minute thought, pulled up my sleeves and got to work. Internet was there, but not so much info in it back then, gathered and printed all of it. Went to the bookstore, gathered maps, charts, tourist guides, the pocket Maltese lexicon. I wrote to real estate agents. I needed to rent an apartment and a shop to open a small print on demand shop, which was a possible success back then and I had all the knowledge to run it. One of the real estate agents even sent me a magazine. There were two pasta recipes in there, one with black and red “caviar” and the other, a tuna, parsley, anchovy, cold pesto. Still cooking them regularly after all these years…
What was that? Were I hallucinating? I was certainly not doing drugs. Was it something astrological? My furious Sagittarius ascendant had managed to kick the butt of the Virgo in me? Or was it the first symptom that I was yet another fragmented guy who was just missing the importance of my own being?
It was then it happened. Went to a seminar abroad, met someone I knew back in the years and I fell in love…My second email to her was actually an invitation to go and live with me in Malta, still have it. She didn’t even take the time to answer this. It went very quickly: child, marriage, dark, light, cold, hot, laugh, cry, idiots, mentors, Iceland, Japan, divorce…
Momentarily, Malta winked to me, but I was so unbelievably broken…
Ulysses they say passed from Malta on his way to Ithaca. Was it Calypso the subtle? Was it the sirens? Who knows…What I know is that I envy him. And after all these years, I still haven't been there…
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