TRAVEL DIARY

A weblog regularly updated by Jodi Rose.

Thursday, August 9, 2007

6:45 PM
Posted by jodi rose

I went to the cccb last night for their free cinema program, all on the theme of traveling. perfect. Got there early enough for a deckchair, and read my book until the films started. This one was particularly intriguing, a reality style doco by artist sophie calle and her then partner driving across america as their relationship disintegrated. 'no sex last night' was her constant refrain, although with a twist at the end involving a drive-thru chapel in las vegas. incredibly honest, intimate portrait of all the ambiguity and uncertainty floating beneath the surface of a relationship, in counterpoint to their actual conversations, power struggles and endless stops at roadside mechanics. the complete change that comes over her towards the end was astonishing, and her desire for that transformation so raw it was almost painful to watch. It made me realise how much we carry these unconscious urges with us in everyday life, and only sometimes let them surface in bizarre choices or unpredictable actions.

"The unexpected disadvantage of modern life is our victory over our own fates. We're called on to decide so much, almost everything, and we're thoroughly informed about repurcussions" *

Then again, my life is bizarre and unpredictable at the best of times. Feeling a little like i'm inside a pinball machine, richocheting across europe at the whim of some teenageer in control of the flipper. It's less drifting than a chaotic zigzag with a slow final roll towards the inevitable end game. Washed up on the beach in barcelona, cocktail in hand, watching the bodies seethe around me to disco music in the sand, seeming to have lost the thread of whatever impulse it was that carried me here. That's fine, maybe it's best to drift for a while.

"By nightfall, when we stopped at a motel in Indiana, we had all but lost track of our histories and futures - it seemed we had always been driving across a vast table of farmland and would always continue doing so. That is both the horror and the marvel of long travel. You lose track of your life with astonishing speed" *p248

I'm drifting. I'm a drifter. A while longer. Adrift but still afloat, simply drifting in the currents. Not lost. I have a home, many homes.

"Something was wrong with me. I lacked some central ability to connect... first you felt a floating sensation, as if your hours didn't add up to whole days, and your presence - in an airplane, on the streets - didn't affect the landscape as human presences ordinarily did' * p184

I still feel that disconnect, more now than before.

I have nothing to anchor me. It's a choice, but before you realise it the freedom of endless possibilities starts to look like a lot of hard work. The desire to sink down into a comfortable, familiar place becomes stronger every day. Suddenly uprooting yourself - again and again and again - is, I suppose, quite a strange thing to do. Not that many people can manage it, and survive, or stay sane. There are no guarantees that I have. But, like everyone, I develop strategies to make it through the day. Reading or making notes in a favourite cafe, stopping by the cathedral to hear the organ music playing - it sounded like a movie theme this afternoon, something starring bette midler with a swelling emotional climax, that or a coffee ad in the rush of an African waterfall - buying fizzy blood orange drink to mix with vodka and campari... all the manifestations of civilisation to keep the wilderness and haunting demons away.

"Perhaps we don't fully recover from our first loves. Perhaps, in the extravagance of youth, we give away our devotions easily and all but arbitrarily, on the mistaken assumption that we will always have more to give" * p246

Seeing the ongoing negotations between sophie and her lover, and reading this novel of open ended beginnings and sudden random disappearings, it seems that the things people use to tie themselves into their lives are no less arbitrary and tenuous than my constant floating. The effect of what anchors us is only as strong as our belief in it, without that, we can all float away on a light summer breeze. I want to stay. Somewhere. To be needed. To feel the force of someones love that is stronger than my impulse to disconnect, and remain free. I need to keep believing that it is possible. Despite all evidence to the contrary. Despite what the newspapers say, in their articles about loneliness and shopping addiction and infidelity and the inability to hold onto each other with any conviction or substance.

I give my devotion to a sweet smile here, a pair of sad dark eyes there. Maybe it is simply the act of committing yourself to a place, or a person, which gives the energy to developing constancy. Or is it simply an accumulation of days, weeks, years and the negation of will, the not making a choice, which brings permanence? I can't live like that, it's always been a problem. It has to feel real, and passionate or I just won't do it. Is it reasonable to expect such vitality and vibrant life in the everyday? I don't really care anymore. If you really want things to change, you need to make up new dreams, imagine a new life, and choose to create something else.

That moment when you finally catch up with yourself and stop living in dreams of the future, give in to the energy carrying you along from decisions made in the past, and fully inhabit the present moment. I'm not quite there yet. Or maybe it's been and gone already and I didn't even notice. Pick a number, any number.

* quotes from Michael Cunningham 'a home at the end of the world'