I called Mirko and told him he was going to a solar eclipse.
Which in itself is a rather absurd sentence, because Mirek is blind.
Not exactly. Almost. He sees the light. Some contours. Something. And it was something important at the time.
I told him I was going with a bunch of people who are very close friends of mine. Even if he doesn't know them, I know they're his blood type. That he'd be fine with us.
And then I said to him,
"You'll see something."
He laughed like crazy.
And in that laugh was everything. The mistrust, the joy, the pain, the fatigue, the curiosity and the way Mirko faced things when he doesn't know exactly where the forehead is.
Mirek wasn't supposed to go. Or should have. Or wanted to. Or not. As is the case with such expeditions, it has been spilling between "poison" and "I'm not."
It was all senseless.
A blind man goes to the eclipse of the sun. Three weeks after knee surgery. A bunch of people he doesn't know. Punk. Spain. We don't know where to sleep. We don't know where. All we know is that somewhere above us, the sun and the moon are supposed to meet for a while and we want to be there.
His neighborhood told him he was crazy.
And I guess she was right.
But that's what he liked.
I've been to Spain with Mirk before. I was in Croatia with him. He used to direct me to Morocco. I know his handicap. I know what he can do. I know when to help him. I know when to leave him alone. And I know his blindness isn't just a hole in the world.
It's another way to read the world.
It all came down to Sunday before the two-year anniversary of his daughter Victoria's death.
Victoria Man.
She was 18. She died of cancer.
You can't write this right. And maybe it's not even meant to be written nicely. It just is.
Mirek was sore. Not just the knee. All of it.
And I told him on the phone that he wasn't going there for himself. That he would go there because of all the blind people he could give the courage to travel. And Victor.
"You won't see him like this both of you," I told him. "But you'll be there together."
Sometimes you say a sentence and then you realize what you said.
We kept quiet for a while.
And then he laughed again.
Somewhere in that phone call, there was a name.
Blind sun.
It was accurate. A little rough. A little tender. A little stupid. And totally ours.
A sun to be seen by a blind man.
A blind man who goes to the sun.
A bunch of guys who, two weeks before they leave, are just putting together what they're doing.
Robert had that road in his head for two years. The eclipse. Spain. A totalitarianism belt. He was just looking for someone to go with him.
I've known Robert for almost 20 years. I go to his house. We talked about that trip a lot. But for a long time, it was just this: someday we could.
Once.
Sometimes.
Suddenly it was two weeks before the eclipse.
And suddenly it wasn't ever. It was now.
Charles, whom we call Lego, because he deals in used legos, has also joined. And from an expedition that was just a map in my head just a moment ago, it became a real thing.
Flight tickets.
Barcelona.
Car.
Soria.
Moncaya.
The eclipse.
And Mirek.
It all seemed a little improbable. Like when you're building some of the legos, but you don't have a manual, and half the pieces are from another kit.
Which is actually the best way to start an expedition.
We didn't know exactly where we were sleeping. We didn't know exactly where the eclipse was coming from. We didn't know what the weather would be like. We didn't know if they'd let us crash on the beach, by the mountain, by the swimming pool, or by the car.
We only knew we were going.
And that Mirek would see something.
Maybe not the sun as we see it.
Maybe not an eclipse the way they take pictures of posters.
But definitely something.
Light.
Dark.
Heat.
Voices.
The sea.
Laughter.
The way.
And maybe Victor somewhere in all this.
I don't know.
Actually, none of us knew.
And that's why we went.