REALITY?: Literal Travel

I’m back and feeling better for a couple days of traveling. And oh, the places I have been!

I’ve been running back and forth between England and Malaysia, my Land Rover stuffed with my belongings, and determined to bring me searching through the foreign faces until sadly, my traveling companion died in hospital in Kuala Lipis and this trip came to an end.

I’ve felt the dry African heat upon my face that made my skin so tight the slightest breeze seemed like the cold of Paris late in the year. Paris was, I fear, a visit out of season. And my new friends were having problems so I must admit I was on the edge the entire time.

Machu Picchu was wet with rain and river, and the living things in the forest were about as bearable as the tour group which I finally abandoned to seek out Incan history on my own.

I’ve eaten birthday cake—homemade, like none you’ve ever tasted; cream cheese frosting thick upon the top and between the layers so you could separate and lick them partially clean and still have enough left to make you want to sticky-finger up all the crumbs from your plate.

There was a family that I stayed a week with for a day here in Connecticut, and I tried so hard to understand them but they didn’t even seem to understand themselves. I couldn’t turn my back, I rewrote their story as an offer of a hopeful ending and beginning to their lives.

You say you don’t believe me, that I could not have done all this—and truly, I haven’t told the half of it—and yet been gone two, maybe three days at the most?

But it’s true; I went via Confrontation, Issue No. 84/85. Partly inspired by this post on The Great Lettuce Head, and desperately needing to mentally journey far, far away for just a little while, I have been reading. Yes, and writing—loads of poetry that while not good, took the place of conversations that I simply couldn’t face the last few days, and some rewriting on the fictional end of life.

It was a welcome respite from reality, this journey of the mind, and gave perspective to the healing power of the pen.