Back to the Known.

I was speaking earlier today to one of the women who run the bookshop where I’ve spent some days this summer. Officially, I worked there, but it never felt like labour. I suppose the hours I spent rearranging bookcases counted as work, but the conversations I had with the writers, readers, tourists, geeks, historians, & plain old “Blieken” — as they call the people from my hometown — and the time I spent reading Walker, Fry & Pfeijffer certainly did not feel as such.

We sat on the low chairs in the little nook next to the counter, warm coffee poured delicately in the antique cups that we keep in the staff kitchen. Nothing matches books quite as well as old things. I don’t know why or what it means but it seems a simple truth, and simple truths are best left unquestioned.
Today was the first time we spoke face to face about London, about the next year of my life, about this sporadic decision made that would once again change everything. And though I feel particularly tender about the subject, I also feel an excitement for what is going to happen. Because I am once again going away. And again, it is London calling. And like before, I don’t really know what to expect of it all, and thence the parts of me that long so deeply for control are terrified, but when I think of the energy that has always buzzed through the city as I walked through the little side streets in Soho, when I remind myself of the coffee and the bookshops and the museums and the hours I could spend walking without once seeing the same thing twice, elation takes over.

“I remember when I was your age and I had left everything behind to travel the world, me and my mother would write each other letters once or twice a week. I remember running to the postal office in New Delhi to see whether a new letter had arrived. It was exciting.”

And as such, today I was reminded of the importance of home, even, or especially, when we are going away. Nothing means much if it cannot be shared. And whether it be through letters, Skype calls, long conversations over the phone or the occasional Instagram comment, that connection to everything known makes the unknown worthy of being discovered. It offers as much protection as it does perspective. It steadies the self.
Because no man is an island.

“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all”

Hellen Keller wrote in her novel The Open Door, and I find myself agreeing heartily with the notion. And though I am unsure whether I would call moving back to London an adventure, it is surely an experience, and that is the only thing I’ve ever been keen on collecting.

Onward.

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