IDEA//LIST

I meant to write sooner here, to get into a flow of travel-writing and inspiration after having this blog be dormant for so long. Instead, I got the flu. So these words are coming from a still-slightly-woozy place...

My brain, already full to the brim with reflections and no one to share them with (the downside of travelling solo), has now become a hazy mess that is taking me too long to pull out of. Also, there are so many hellfires burning in the world right now that it seems imperative to be doing something that matters.

Instead it's a lot of swirling wishes, frustrations and tangled energy that has no outlet. This exists for me when I am travelling anyway, but even more so while sick. I get tired of spending each day "doing nothing," even if I am excited by new places, by history and architecture and ordinary people watching. For me, it's about three weeks in a new place (or places) before I want to just find a job and get to work - to start building a life instead of skimming the surface as a visitor.

In some ways, this trip - more than any I've taken before - is an attempt to find that kind of life, to create a scenario where I could stay, and settle in, and contribute. I may not be as much of a rambler as I thought.

Full Moon in Leo vibes - artist sadly unknown

One thing I've been feeling during this travelling time - when not foggy-headed, I easily get quite existential about everything - is how small I feel when I roam. When I'm not integrated into the community, and not busy with my own day-to-day tasks beyond feeding myself, I more keenly feel a sort of washed-out existence. Like I am here, but not here. Or maybe it's more like, I'm everywhere.

Travelling quickly via plane and train (in particular) does this for me as well. I am moving in the environment so fast, that the scale of my life, my body, seems to shrink until, as this great article from The Atlantic shares, I am just a speck.

And there are so many people! Coming from a very small, remote mountain village, to be suddenly surrounded, all the time, by so many people - in airports, on trains, in shops and on the street - is a humbling experience. There are also places here in Europe that are so old, that you know have seen so many centuries of petty human existence, that it isn't hard to feel like just a blink in time. 

The crowds of Amsterdam

When I travel alone, it is quite easy for me to feel the boundaries of my Self blurring with the crowds, and in a way, becoming one with the masses. It's actually kind of comforting. I blend in (somewhat, depending on the place) and in that there is a kind of freedom and relief.

And I am starting to get the feeling that if I surrender to this experience of blending into smallness - staying present with it and with myself - I will actually find that my sense of Self returns, with more clarity, having been kind of cleansed by the experience of such activity, so many bodies, such life! Like how in chaos and dissolution, a new clarity can emerge, perhaps from the blending of colours and shapes and smells that have never been combined quite in the same way before. Sharper edges, after a time of blurriness. New art, new options, a kind of ordinary alchemy.

Maybe it is actually the sameness, the ordinariness, that lends the most relief. The ability to relax into the crowd, into the smallness of life on a huge planet, and know that you don't have to fight so hard to be special, or different. That you can exist here and now, even just for yourself, perceiving all that you choose to, and letting the rest roll past. That you are in good company doing that, with people from country to country who are just trying to get through the day with a bit of grace. There is a lot to be done to make the world a safer, healthier place. And also, for right now, you're okay, and you matter, and you're a part of it all.

Centuries of history - and so many people, lol - in a local cemetery, Bristol, UK