On the road

the roads were glittering and cape town was shiny and clean and blanketed in cloud and rain as we took off. i tried to check myself, to force myself to accept the reality of what was about to happen. i was leaving cape town and my home for almost three months. i was going to somewhere i had never been for almost three months and i was going to have to confront the fact that i had far more time than i'd had in almost 10 years and probably not enough money to sustain myself.

and yet, in trying to force myself to accept that i was leaving home, I was sobered by the realisation that i don't really feel like i have a home. i have a house, but i don't really live there. i sleep there 3 nights a week. i haven't spent more than a week at a time in the same city since september 2010. i'm a gypsy, used to living with music in my earphones and trying to sleep in an airplane seat, or drinking coffee in an airport lounge, waiting for another flight, or hot-desking with my laptop. i've become, in some ways, incapable of accepting a stable existence, unable to deal with stasis.

Another adventure starts today*. it won't be like india, but it will, i hope, be pretty awesome. i fully realise that i'm in a rare position and that i'm really, really lucky, but it's up to me to make the most of it.

fuck, i sound like charlize theron. no more emo bullshit.

what's next? paris. then marseilles, nice, milan and and and... all of it, i hope, with the person i most want to spend it with. unless, that is, she decides that i'm a shitbag and leaves me for a greasy italian.

Whatever happens, I've got a passport, a credit card, an ipod and a whole shedload of grit. Bring it on.

*I should also write more about india - you know, actually write it up into a narrative that is (a) coherent and (b) moderately entertaining. i know, i know, i know. and i will. i've got a few days worth of posts in the pipeline and i swear i'll get around to posting them. actually, by the time you read this, they should be posted. and, seeing as i have the next 3 months off, i'll start transcribing the rest of my notes and writing it all up properly, because, apparently, people actually read this (and not just my mom. Hi Mom!).