Middle-Eastern tour. Gave me a chance to reflect further into the future throwing evermore questions in the air about where I want to be, and what I want to be doing with the next chapter of my life. And, I guess having got this far wandering why I should stop dreaming and start conforming. I met a delightful Frenchman in the airport in Dubai who said to me “many people could be good in business if you choose to go into renewable energy but few people could tell the stories you can.” And it made me think am I crazy to want to go back to society instead of continuing to travel the world and challenging my existence?
But when you start mastering so many dreams, that you forget to dream or wander how you could even imagine topping the experiences you have had, until you find yourself 2 days ago in a speed boat crossing the border to Iran. Seeing dolphins and swimming in now shark infested waters!
You wander how life actually became a dream.
Until you wake up in Heathrow on Qatar airways in first class as a self confessed VIPSY and it hits you like a nightmare.
The dreams if you stay asleep too long become nightmares. Like gravity what goes up must come down and as you touch down numb silence and I watch through the window and I feel nothing! A holographic transparent empty nothing. Every other flight for the last 8 months has been excitement and anticipation. Flying into Geneva or Vienna or Linz from sleezyjet to private jets from cattle class to first class, Doha or Dubai or driving across the border into Oman a roar dessert of unexplainable depth to here LONDON. I almost feel afraid.
And then frustration somehow between touch down and now a mere 6 hours later, still trying to make my way home I have spent 100 pounds. I am still not home having taken 2 buses missed one and the only thing that stops me from racing back to Heathrow is my little brother Maya and Father who I know I will laugh the evening away with.
An extract which I wrote in my diary regarding Oman says:
Where the sands mountains have no shadows, and the sea does not meet the sky, they intertwine as one horizon as the waters edge meets the dusty worlds mirror that forms the seas awesome reflection.
If the world you see is the mirror image of your mind, then the reflection I see before me as I look into my soul is one of enchanted excitement and awesome wander a baron emptiness of peaceful barbaric beauty and never-ending questions without answers.
An image which if viewed for too long would change as the sun would set and show the horizon and prepare to wake up the land that I belong to, and will return to finding it hard to explain such awesome sites.
In contrast:
The view can see out of the window at my half way house in Bristol as I journey home. Is one of polar opposites not even challenged by the opposite of Everest to Oman.
London to Bristol:
The concrete jungle where city dwellers roam. The locals become refugees as they marvel how the city has grown. A city of culture it says on the wall, next to the for sale and to let signs desperate to take this white elephant from one hand to another. Buses trafficking innocent bystanders who have no arena and therefore become the audience in the by stands of a small game in a small life where they do not dare to dream of any other existence than what they have been shown on their television soap operas and their Hollywood sub-standard values.
Coming from the middle east where I found it almost amusing to watch women in their burkhas shopping in Carrefour until I realised how amusing they must find our outfits. I have to say the view I see now makes me sad. Dyed hair, obese bodies, mixed races, yes greenery but cultivated and planned by well paid architect and council bodies. Earrings and tattoos, unattractive flesh shown bodies, disability and our own cast system not dissimilar to that of Hindu religion but one cast and class. A lower class.
Difference becoming their only similarity! and yet all being the same. A culture so confused where it came from with mixed generations and cultures all amounting as one disgraceful mess. I have to say I wander what I have come “home” to?
There is an Alice through the looking glass moment when you have to think............ There is better world spending the same money, living in the same timeframes, having the same relationships, surrounded by the some comforts, BUT living a better life. So as I put I put on my ipod to muffle the sound with the rest of the refugees, living in their own country, but becoming a minority. I question why I would want to be here, not just why I should conform.
Go Beyond
There is a place … called Beyond
Where "but what if?" and "is that wise?" are never heard.
Where the ordinary, becomes extra-ordinary,
And today is never a repeat of yesterday,
Where people wake up to a cloudy sky,
And say, you know what, I don’t think I’ll take my umbrella.
Where caution is thrown to the wind,
And people dance like no one's watching.
In Beyond, the rule book has never been written,
Wealth is measured in time, not money,
Dirty is better than clean,
Now is better than never,
And dare is better than don’t,
And, well … you get the drift.
We can all get to this place,
Just pack some courage,
Some spirit, and some nerve,
Then go,
Go AWOL,
Go amiss,
Go off the page,
Go Beyond.
Where "but what if?" and "is that wise?" are never heard.
Where the ordinary, becomes extra-ordinary,
And today is never a repeat of yesterday,
Where people wake up to a cloudy sky,
And say, you know what, I don’t think I’ll take my umbrella.
Where caution is thrown to the wind,
And people dance like no one's watching.
In Beyond, the rule book has never been written,
Wealth is measured in time, not money,
Dirty is better than clean,
Now is better than never,
And dare is better than don’t,
And, well … you get the drift.
We can all get to this place,
Just pack some courage,
Some spirit, and some nerve,
Then go,
Go AWOL,
Go amiss,
Go off the page,
Go Beyond.
