I returned from London more than six months ago (and I wrote the first draft of a blog about London one month ago). It took me quite a long time to revisit the week I spent in that incredible city and craft some thoughts about it. The question of why it took so long does not bring any surprises: I have not picked up the proverbial pen because my hands have been busy wringing out my morbid fear that this is my final visit-in-memoriam to Spain, Italy, Greece, and the UK.
Today, I am not there except in my imagination. I worry that once I've commemorated London and walked on (spoiler alert: I recount my time in London in my next blog post), all these experiential and emotional monuments that sprung up inside me as I journeyed, as I met people, places, and myself, will be cloaked from my view, the paths to them erased. I am afraid that the stiff-collared custodians of opportunity are stingy and punitive, that they are quietly shifting the boundary rope back to where it belongs, behind my back, with each step I take. The territory in which I can experience life (I worry) is shrinking. Social pressures, economics, physical wellness, and whatever other routines which have defined so much of my life so far are restoring their rule. When will I no longer even be able to remember or feel any evidence of last spring's adventure?
This is an old topic, I know. I carry on about the dramatic emotions that this trip conjured in me, or that I have conjured in myself as a way of understanding and remanifesting the trip (even while I was on it, perhaps, but especially now to defy everyday inertia and keep the larger, brighter me and the glimmer of Europe which it contains alive). In addition to worrying about myself I wonder constantly how common such feelings are - the hope and exhilaration, the despair and panic which follow, the slow, quiet surrender to normalcy. I wonder what conditions would enable us to adopt hope and persistence as skillfully as we learn to give in to the status quo.
Well, we have the rest of our lives to figure that out, and I strongly encourage all of us to take up the challenge. Right now, because those musings have displaced other topics several times already, I will move us onto London (again, in the next blog) by way of some thoughts on departure.
Departure can take one toward a destination or away from it, yet each of these orientations yields a very different experience. While I was traveling I loved and desired so much of what surrounded me that I found it easy to select definite, appealing goals and depart toward them. I encountered a wealth of life, love, and curiosity everywhere I went, so I acted decisively, felt purposeful and valued, and found that people and circumstances welcomed me to an astonishing degree. By contrast, since I have been back, I feel at a loss to identify features of my environment that arouse the hope and passion I hunger for. I circle like a trapped animal on a small island of safety in a sea of expectation, loathing, and commodification of the human spirit. I dislike the obvious options and aimlessly depart away from what I do not want, without any particular goal in mind except to get out of what feels like confinement (not entirely fair to the proprietors of the island, who may have nothing to do with the surrounding sea).
In short, departure toward grants us confidence and purpose and promises abundance, while departure away from draws power from crisis or indifference, and ultimately it takes away from us. It feeds on negative emotions like fatigue, scorn, or fear. It removes us from an undesirable situation, but what new situation does it put us in? All our attention was on what we are fleeing, so where we wind up is anyone's guess. The latter only works in union with the former. For instance, when I was on Crete in late June, my body grew weary of the intense heat. Was it enough to tell myself I must get away from the heat? No, I also had to have another place in mind that I wanted to be - in this case, the UK - and from there I began to plan: not how to not be in Crete, but instead where I hoped to go and what I hoped to do in the UK, which led me at last to London (we're almost there)!
In writing, I have found a promising, dangerous opportunity to depart in either way. While I was in Europe, I sometimes wrote to move closer to what encountered me. I digested and was fed by my lived experiences, expanded by them and expanding them in love and gratitude. I submerged in a completely different sort of sea to feel the exhilarating, nourishing embrace of being, an invitation to discover more. I wrote from a rare place of participation in life, in order to participate even more and to invite others to participate.
I have also found in writing, notably since my return although I have experienced it many times, that I can write to get away from something. This is a strange and subtle distinction which I think might be more about the spirit in which I write than the subject matter. Sometimes I write like it is a fight or a flight, or I write to preserve something from doom, or to reclaim a memory, idea, or experience from a threat. During the act of writing, these are all matters of interpretation. The perspective I hold while I write helps determine the way in which I depart, and it is practice for how I live (and vice versa).
Therefore I must choose not to write, or live, strictly from a position of retreat. I can't think only in terms of what I will lose by writing, or not writing, taking this or that action. Terrible pain, fear, and loneliness have stalked me for most of my life but love, kindness and relief have also waited on many doorsteps and around many corners. I choose to remember and write about London from the vantage of hope.
I will not write under a dark cloud of despair or to flee into my mind from my current situation, and I will not worry about whether England, Wales, Greece, Italy, and Spain will soon slip through my fingers forever. Instead I decide right now that this writing is the thing that I move toward. It will be its own nourishment and from it I will draw inspiration for my next goal, my next source of vitality.
Now, at last, I am ready to be a good tour guide. I invite you to visit London with me.
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