I'm a Memory Lane kinda girl and I love nothing more than to browse through old journals. I recently found this gem of a scribbling I wrote exactly three years ago. In the virgin times before moving to New Zealand and covid and the whole shabang. I had just travelled through Mexico and was spending a little while in Brussels selling all my stuff before taking a plane to the other side of the world.
As if she knew how much I needed time to just write, to let all Mexican and Belgian reflections pour out of me onto paper, my friend asked me to farm sit in the north of France. What followed were ten days of the most splendid solitude, of writing and reading, picking fresh food from the garden, cooking and baking, sunbathing and painting, talking to the animals, walking in the woods with fingers purple from the juicy berries they would find. Living in a little French farm dream.
That's where I wrote this:
What a blessing to have found my passion, to be able to always carry it with me, all I need is pen and paper and soon a new world unfolds. I get in a trance where the outside world stops, or keeps going, but I don’t notice and I don’t care, because my head is already in another place.
Like Colette wrote: the future doesn’t interest me very much. I will never know what will happen (setting intentions and manifesting, yes) so why would I spend much time trying to live in the future? I prefer to see and write about what is happening right now. Like the soft jazz playing, the little birds coming to have a look in the kitchen where I’m writing at the kitchen table for god knows how long with a cup of cold coffee. Flowers looking more and more sad every day, a basket of shiny red and zebra green tomatoes, the sound of a humming tractor in the distance. My nose is running, a faint taste of coffee takes over my insides.
I can describe my surroundings until the end of time, but we all know my favourite place to roam is the past. Memories of childhood playing in the garden, flying on that swing to be one with the birds, calling up ghosts with friends in dark forest huts, already being into boys, knowing there would be so much more to follow. Teenage years falling in and out of love, tasting the freedom of living alone and doing whatever I want.
My first travels by myself, to Greece for work, to Valencia for studies, Lithuania for love, Nepal for internship and the decision it wouldn’t stop after that. What I didn’t realise back then is that it would actually never stop. That at some points in my life I would try to stop it. To sweep my itchy feet under the rug but they wouldn’t be able to stay there long because I know how beautiful and full of magic this world is. And it’s hard knowing that and choosing to stay in one place.
When I do find myself settling in one place my mind easily wanders to the other side of the globe, like New Zealand, where my last working holiday visa is waiting to show me a good time. When I put my mind to something, I have to make it happen. I’m not for the all talk no action. I’m definitely all talk and all action.
Enjoying the impulsivity living inside of me when routine is not. That's what brought me here, house sitting a farm in France. Impulsiveness brought me most places I’ve been in life. When I start to think things through, it’s easier to say no and crawl back into what I know already. My comfort zone. While I know well enough this is my comfort zone. I always have it with me wherever I go: my pen and paper.
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