what a year, a decade... a decade plus one year

As an early riser, I often find it fortuitous to live in the USA as a European because it means that my friends in other parts of the world are awake when I wake up… so, even if insomnia strikes, I am able to use the time to interact with friends I have not seen for a while. Being on holiday in South Africa means that when I awake, the world is asleep. However, this has a beauty and advantage of its own. It truly means quiet time and peace. The only sound is that of birds singing. Being in South Africa rips me wide open like a leg scraping concrete highway in a motorcycle accident… because I see so much of myself in my parents. I see what I love and what I hate. I feel my dad’s movements and expressions in my own and I see my mother’s face when I look at myself in photographs. Here in the upper business deck of an Emirates Air Bus, having just sat in the onboard bar with a wealthy gentleman from Boston (Peter… creator of TV car shows… and I must look that up later) somewhere over the Black Sea and a place reportedly called ‘Batman’, I am once more free to be myself, the self I have striven to be for so many years, and not to merely be a product of my history. That is not to say that I am not proud of my history, I am… and I am very proud of my parents, but I feel a desperate need to be a communicator, a traveller, an empathetic individual with individual views and choices. Here, in the air, approaching Bulgaria, I sip a Stella and I think of another Stella. I miss that connection, that laugh, that smile. Alas, she is happily in love now and long gone.
And so, I get back to Cambridge, spend one night in my own bed, wake up, travel to the airport and fly to Miami. Bleeding money… breathing alcohol fumes… meeting people from around the world… dancing… swimming… enjoying the beauty of everything from Little Havana to the rooftop pools of Brickell as I reflect upon a year including travel to Madrid, Montreal, New Orleans… a year in which I got my Green Card and my American driver’s license. What a time. It seems I started life late and, what an amazing time the last decade +1 year has been.
I remain grateful.









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