29th March
Woke up this morning thinking ‘JESUS MOTHER FUCKING CHIRST, WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING!!’. And nearly got myself a gun. It was 6am and my mind was racing. Leaving everything and everyone I know for 2 years at least. Moving to an Asian mega-city of several million shooting stars, seething with prostitution and decadence, buzzing and beeping with a myriad of mopeds. Feeling like I’m free-falling into a void of unlimited isolation, can’t stop the tumble, control just a distant memory. Terrifying. Keep still and try to sleep. Forget about it. Think about it tomorrow.
Somehow I do sleep and I wake 2 hours later in a totally different space. It’s like gravity has been reversed and the free-fall has simply slowed to a standstill. I’m floating, calm, observant, speculative. It’s amazing this desire for control I have. To fend off the unknown, to know as much of reality as possible before it actually happens, constantly seeking the numbers of life’s canvas so i can just apply the colour. But why? Why as a species do we so often plump for ‘the devil we know’ when it is precisely because we know it that we can say with some certainty it won’t make us happy; it will almost certainly never make us happy? Surely this is the real insanity? Surely we should try almost anything other than stick with a losing ticket?
Later I swim in the sea and think of where I’ve come from, the choices Ive made and the places I’ll be going to. It makes me a little proud of myself, and it makes me glow with an anticipation for the future, with a Gallagheresque ‘let’s have it!’ I summersault backwards and forwards, punching the water. Odd thing, to celebrate your life alone, but then somehow also so together, cocooned by the warmth of the tropical sea and the sky. I want to whoop for joy, for victory, but still Britishly fear the derision of the tourists on the shore. (Ha! Still imprisoned in my self-consciousness, even in a moment like this). I realise I am so fucking alive right now. I don’t know what will happen. I don’t want to know and that is the very thing that is fuelling me. That sense of ‘who knows where we’re going, but jump on for the ride; it’s going to be an adventure!’ And just heading out, your lunch on your back and a skip in your step.
It is dark. I am sitting on the balcony of my bungalow alone, watching the full moon carved up by the palm fronds. I’m listening to Keane’s ‘Somewhere only we know’. It is a perfect moment. I realise I am starting to have faith. To abandon myself to the current of life and see what patterns it has in store for me. And it feels like the beginning of a most momentous release. The letting go of all that exertion that has gone in to trying to ‘will’ the future. I’m reminded of John Lennon’s ‘Life is what happens, while we’re making plans’. And I smile, realising today I have freed a small part of myself. Given over the mantle to some other hands, feeling like if I play my part, if I let myself fall back, then they will catch me.
it takes an ocean 