It's a fire and it burns bright, baby
In keeping with this new habit o'mine and with an hour to spare, I am pleased to find myself again sitting here, buttons chinking annoyingly on the keyboard and brain all full of fizz. I was lying in the bath just then, trying to read, when the bubbles started hissing new possibilities into my damp, cloggy ears.
"Go and live in the country!" they hissed. "When they ask you to do it, grin and say aye!" Contemplating the porcelain, I pictured myself wearing saggy clothes and caked in dirt, wiping my beleagured brow covered in the salt of the earth, staring at the sky and praying for rain. ah, how melodramatic. I saw myself being hesitant, signing up for a local netball team under the watchful gaze of big, strapping country lasses with scarred knees and elbows.
Scooping up my cats like a pair of furred, clawful handbags, I will be able to put myself wherever I wish. The future stretches out ahead like a searing white blue sky, hard to study ... I cast my eyes askance. I have made tentative steps and now my soul demands more. The months are suddenly shimmering, fluid - if i poked them they would wobble uncontrollably.
I have spent the past few days feeling clingy and even lonely, at times. I have spent so long building this warm, encompassing space around me that on some level it seems like madness to leave it all behind. But in new environments there are stories, and I'm not ready to draw on this space for inspiration. I can see myself in years to come, one of those batty old ladies drifting the streets of Mt Lawley and collecting people's souls to exchange for stories. But now, I can see myself drinking pastis in Paris, shimmering my hand across someone's shirt in Melbourne, floating quietly in the warm waters of the Balearics, hand trailing a lazy path and sweat collecting in pools in my belly button.
I was not born rich, but these experiences can be mine. All I have to barter with is words, and I want them to be my livelihood and my currency. Leaving home needs a deep breath, a brave leap into the unknown, a series of goodbyes. But somewhere out there is my next hello, and I want to find it.