Leaving Australia!

Officially my last Sunday in Western Australia for goodness knows how long. The sun is out – unusual! I’m sitting out on the verandah with a cool breeze drifting in and bringing with it the sweet scent of grass and upturned earth. The clouds hover over the inlet, shadows dancing over the horizon and that still blue blue water contrasting with the deep greens of the blowing trees.

I’ve had a primarily silent day, having spent the last few days with family and friends and talking and talking and talking. This is lovely and I’m glad I have built new memories just before I depart, but oh, a few moments of silence, of stillness, of unconditional love and non-verbal conversations with my dog through eye contact alone, a push and a pat.

My empty 22 litre ruck sack sits beside me, having just had a make over with a silver pen, some swirls, stars and half moons and my beloved London key rings clipped to the side. I have the soundtracks from Les Mis and Alexander playing in the background, not condusive to writing, I keep having to stop to draw in sharp emotional breaths while goose bumps run up and down my arms. I should swap the music, but it’s impossible to turn away from genius I find.

So… am I doing the right thing? I suspect there’s no such thing as ‘the right thing’, the ‘right way to live’. When you think we humans are just a monumental evolutionary whoopsy-daisy, a monkey slipped and fell on consciousness, then made tools, then sorted out cropping… eventually the first of ‘civilisation’ formed. There was no plan, no head-honcho, patient zero, who methodically worked out how the world should look… that we should have education the way we do, to have sky scrapers, to eventually have the internet. Humanity, like each individual member of it, is stumbling blindly through moments, days, centuries… So when that niggling little voice starts admonishing me for not being a walking talking womb, or not having the house and the car and ‘settled down’, I say, that is a story – its simply a story, its not the right story and certainly not the wrong one. Its just one option, one way.

So, right thing? Yes. Mad thing? Yes. Scary thing? Definitely! Fortunately I have a wonderful ability to compartmentalise my emotions, intellectually I am aware that I’m somewhat worried, however the sensation itself is filed in the inner most part of my cranium with a lot of grey matter preventing its escape.

It’ll probably hit me when I’m in the air… probably on the second leg, after my seven hour layover in Kuala Lumpa.

For now, must get some face wash, new pair of jeans, roll all of my clothes up and moosh into my backpack, wheely bag and laptop case. Two lunches and one doggy date and I’m out of here!

Adventure 3.6 underway.

Speak to you when I’m on the jet!