Transitions
“you can’t stop the waves but you can learn to surf”
I read an article that sparked my intent to write this entry. The authors premise was that the most important part of travel or returning from an event, such as a festival, is the journey back. Not the arrival at home but the melancholy attached during the transition. it appeared in The Guardian’s travel section;
Its often the part of the trip during which everyone is transitioning back to something but mixed in with reflection. we know however that going back to who we were is not an option. The experience itself is transformative, and has changed who we thought we were, even if just subtly. The distinct, but hard to locate aspect in our lives, that has now removed from our agency and is instead replaced but something else. sometime indeterminate. It’s not recognisable immediately, as it has to stay with us until the sediment settles. It is only then once we pan through like a gold miner and shift through the before we can bring it into our existence. There’s a delicacy to the trying to identify the changes and what impact has on us. This is not isolated to a return from where were physical, but this is no surprise to anyone with even a pinch of self-awareness that it occurs frequently in our lives.
Transition happens in that hazy dream like journey from a festival. A mixture of looking forward to home comforts, but tinge with the lingering delirium from indulgence the event itself. Coupled with little sleep and not wanting to part with the friends you’ve just shared the experience with. Haggard and in need of shower, but also reliving the moments of weekend. The experience of being on a holiday away with friends and family is also familiar territory. As you sit in the car, or the departure lounge, lazily looking for water and snacks. Getting ready for ride home, and eagerly awaiting sleeping in your own bed, but wanting it to quite be over just yet.
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I resonated with the author of the articles perspective, so much so it compelled me to write this entry. As the world churns under the weight of a pandemic and the political upheaval in Hong Kong and the US — blaring aggressively from screens — bombarding us with doomsday imagery with unrelenting intensity. I certainly do not want to turn away from it. To deny what we’re living through is a heinous as what is happening as I believe turning away from the magnitude of the what’s happening it criminal in itself. I seethe with rage at the racial injustice and inhumane treatment of African Americans. On an almost molecular level I ache at the continuous insistence of racism in society. So in direct opposition, I lean into it, recognise it, and act accordingly. I will justify myself on this position in a future entry. Rather, this concept grasped me in terrible moment of nostalgia, the longing for the moments before what 2020 has given us. But on a more simple level, the article teased at something delicious. I needed to grasp at that moment, bathe in it, and excavate my musings.
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The idea of transition resonates with me deep in the roots of the experience. Moving from high school to university, university to Australia, Australia to London. Heartbreaks, holidays, experiences, jobs, friends, locations and moods. These aspects are combined with long periods of reflection that accompanies the periods. Many, but not all, walked in arms with loneliness. Loneliness for loss of a person or a context that was no longer present. Like that sense walking into a recently empty room, the occupants shadow still lingering, but aching for its return, as without the person the space doesn’t wholly matter. In my early 20s I left terrible lonely. But then with some more years on my belt this settled into a more comfortable form of solitude.
I think this is why to idea of the airport terminal is so powerful an image. Mostly because it is actually a strange place to be. Not just as a physical building, but the actual embodiment of transition. A place to wait. For one place to another. It is all but inescapable, except through a gated barrier. I have spent countless hours all over the work in airports, at all hours, thinking about all manner things. It is a place that demands reflection. And I have certainly paid my dues.
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I was in Central America in early 2018. I spent a month travelling from Mexico to Costa Rica. Moving slowly via plane and car to explore, surf and work (remotely back to London). five days in Guatemala at a remote beach spot called El Paredon. Days passed slowly under the oppressive sun. I woke early surf and passed the day working and reading. Evenings were then back into the surf. this joyous experience passed and I entered Nicaragua. Soon to leave due to the political unrest. When I got to Costa Rica I felt a shift in my that had been nagging for my attention for the past year. It was like I passed through a process of evolution and emerged from the chrysalis as something else. I was 31 years old and felt that I required something more. I need to step up into the an adult of a more mature outlook. Accepting I didn’t enjoy nights out simply for the sake of it and need to be more assertive in listening to my intuition on living so recklessly and taking my physical and mental health for granted. This shift was pulling me into a new chapter of who I am and opened a new avenue of identity and moved away from a youthful one and into a more mature period of my life.
I will move through a new phase of my life in good time, but for now, we’re all living through a global event and the need to focus on the now is more important. Though I’m soon I’ve sit once again with these feelings soon enough.
