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Published: February 27th 2013
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YOU CAN'T TAKE ME, I'M FREE" Spirit
I am currently working on several posts that I need to do a little research for, but it's difficult because I don't have an internet connection in my accomodation, so they're taking a little longer than I intended, hence the las few posts being entirely about how I am thinking and feeling. I'll keep working on them and maybe they'll be finished by the time I get home... but in the meantime, a post about the cheerless subject of leaving Sanya - where I have spent the last 5 tumultuous months of my life. Enjoy ^^
I can’t read through an entire piece of travel writing in the order that it’s meant to be read. An emotion that is best described as excitement and longing takes over and I can’t think of anything else, I want to be there, in the midst. I want to be this writer, writing this piece, having had this experience. It’s the same thing that takes over when reading a particularly good novel – you read it so quickly that you skip over entire phrases and paragraphs, just so it’s possible to absorb it all now, right now.
It’s this
part of my personality that allows me to read a novel or article again and again. This morning I was reading a piece about glacier exploration. And although I have absolutely no desire to be tramping through a glacial bog and eating dried dinners made with muddy water, I wanted to be there. I wanted it to be me, to be having that experience, to be learning more about the world and about how I relate to it.
I’m leaving Sanya in less than two weeks and this thought tears me apart. I have not felt this at home in a place in a very long time – if ever. The people are amazing, accepting, generous and likeable. Gravity seems to drag me down every time I think about the future. It wants me to stay in the here and now, with a force that crushes my heart, tears well in my eyes and a voice in my head says “stay, stay”. But I know that this sentiment arises partly because I know I am leaving. Still, I am aware of my biggest fear – getting stuck in a rut, getting comfortable, bored and losing my sense of adventure,
Lasagna
Memories... and this fear is a huge part of me.
And there’s nothing that the giant pull of Sanya’s gravity can do. A combination of my excitement and longing to be exploring and my fear of getting stuck drives me on, being blown by the wind every which way. And the idea becomes apparent that if I wasn’t leaving Sanya, then this allurement might not be so strong... who’s to say that, at this very moment in time, I wouldn’t be wishing I could get away, go somewhere else, go exploring.
And this thought calms me a little, it’s true that the grass is always greener, there are new adventures to be had and new people to meet. The proof of this is seen in how I read travel articles – it’s a diffusion effect. I have to read the same piece at least two times, just to make sure that I’ve absorbed every single word and catapulted myself into my imaginary version of events. I know that I have to have more adventures in my life – maybe not glacial expeditions, but there is so much this world has to offer.
So I need to keep moving,
to keep plodding onwards because that’s the only direction I know. I’m uncageable, and in the irrefutable words of Spirit,
stallion of the Cimarron, “you can’t take me, I’m free”. And that’s the way I’d like to think of myself. But Sanya has a hold on me... one that will probably last forever.
And as the tears flood in my eyes, I know, I want to come back. And without the risk of sounding cheesy, because you are my friends after all – Sanya is my home, one of many. Because, as much as I’d like to think so, I’m not a free spirit, I’m a home bird – I just have a lot of nests.
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