Traveling Inside Myself

Traveling Inside Myself

Recently I watched the movie Night Train to Lisbon featuring actor Jeremy Irons.

I had seen it but as I watched it did not recall the story yet I felt that there was something 

in it I wanted to "catch' again. And - there was.

The story is a mix of mystery, romance, and discovery set in Lisbon in a non-specific modern 

time. The characters too are rather universal and yet non-discript. Their soft identities do 

not take away from the stor. The Irons character, a middle-aged professor, saved a girl from 

jumping off a bridge in Bern. She runs away and he impetuously hops on a train to follow her 

to Lisbon, to find her and to discover her story. You guess soon into the movie that who he 

eventually finds, along with an interesting story, will be himself.

The key to the search for the girl is a haunting memoir by a young doctor - the other driving 

character. For me the heart of the story rests in the book.

All of this was familiar as I re-visited the movie ...then in the ending and I found what I was 

looking for - a piece of verse:

I spent some time today recapturing it. I don't want to lose it again be cause the poem tells 

me why I am tied to memoirs and to capturing my past. It is the reason for my own personal 

searches and now at 85 years old I have a lot of ground to cover as I find bits of myself and 

quilt them together.

This is the passage of one of the characters in the film who writes into his journal which will 

come his book. 

We leave something of ourselves behind in a place we have been. 

We stay there even though we go away. 

There are things in ourselves we find again only by going back there. 

There are things in ourselves we find again only by going back there.

 ( Collage by Ellouise Schoettler )