From A Scrapbook

Once upon a summer, I sat with you in the dark, and you told me about the photographs in your mind. They were immobilised there from long ago, moments frozen in time, and one of the faces held in your mind just happened to have been mine. Years have passed, and tears have passed, and friends have come and gone, but remembering you, remembering me, sometimes keeps me keeping on.

So the other day, when the world turned grey, and I felt so very alone, I looked through my mental photographs of you. Frozen in time were our voices, floating into the night; frozen was the friendship, in the firelight. We sat around the campfire, and sang all of our songs, drinking, laughing and smoking…I don't even know how long. I sang my soul into the night, and stared up at the stars, and took a mental photograph and wondered, if anything was ever really wrong.

And finally, I think I understand.

Stuck In A Small Town

Sometimes, I like to look into tide pools and pretend they are the world. The water ripples, and the sun dances across its surface. I swirl the water with my finger, tracing all the places that are finally within my reach. And it’s easy. The tide pool may not be the world, but it is my world, and somehow, right now, it’s enough.

Take Me Back

Take me back to a time when the world was magical

Take me back to a time of inspiration, love and laughter

Take me back to adventure

Take me back to myself

There is a version of me that lingers, lost in hazy memories

Beautiful, hopeful and bold

She believed anything was possible,

As she danced through the world

The places she wrote on cardboard

The words she held on her tongue

She savoured them like candies

And looked boldly into the sun

She was a character more than a person

Writing her story step by step

Chasing her own adventure

Never knowing what to expect

What was crazy became normal

Strange somehow felt right

I don’t know where that girl is

She disappeared into the night

Without her there is endless winter

Because the me that she left behind

Is the worst one in the world--

She is trapped inside her mind

So take me back.

Born From Fiction

You love adventure. You dive into the pages of your favourite book. Go explore Spain. Ancient Greece. Japan. Medieval Europe.  Middle Earth. Westeros. You see pain, danger, excitement and beauty, in the world and in strangers’ eyes. You learn about the meaning of life, and the characters make you feel alive..

You love adventure. You’re the first to run down the trail and climb steep cliffs. Drive over the speed limit, Sneak out at night. Smoke a cigarette. And you feel alive.

Then you taste the world. The commotion, the chaos and serenity. True love. True loss. Brutality. Suffering. Hunger…but it is through your own eyes. All of the sudden, living through a book is not enough. Not having that piece of the world is a dull, aching pain—a pain that strikes once, and then never goes away.

Learning How to Exist

I skipped like a stone across water. One country to the next, to the next. I had spun myself in so many directions that no one in the world knew where I was anymore. I had lost myself in the human tide. I found solace in anonymity. Even now I’m not sure whether I was desperately running to escape something, or if I was chasing some hazy shadow of a dream. Either way, I was both chasing and escaping myself. And no matter how fast I ran, I could never quite get away from myself. I was always just a day away from where I wanted so desperately to be.

But I was also free.

The first thing you learn when you travel is that you do not exist.

I do not remember where I first saw this quote. I do remember being frustrated by it. Try as I might, I couldn’t quite grasp what it meant, but I also could not let it go. I kept it in a drawer in the back of my mind.

I was god-knows where, alone, tired and hungry—though it would be a lie to say that was unusual. I spent the better part of the year alone, tired and hungry. For the umpteenth time, I thought about what I was doing to myself and why. I couldn’t tell whether it was masochism or exaltation. I was ripping myself apart, over and over again, but learning how to reassemble the pieces, not only finding where they interlock with one another, but with different parts of the world as well. And then, seemingly out of nowhere, I dusted off the quote I had read so long ago.

“The first thing you learn when you travel is that you do not exist”

And I didn’t exist. For all of my life, my existence was tied to my past. I asked myself what made me who I am. I am the wind on the prairie, the coyotes howling at the moon. I am songs around the campfire. I am my favourite books. My family. My friends. They defined me. They know me. They knew who I always was, and to them, it is who I always would be.

But in the middle of nowhere, alone, in whatever boarder town I was in, I did not exist. There was nothing making me who I was except for myself. In the world, I do not exist. However, not existing is the only way to know who you really are…who you want to be. It is the only way to be.