Not All Who Wander Are Lost

It's funny how life happens sometimes. One month ago, I never imagined that today I would be sitting by piles of red rocks staring out across the Atlantic Ocean from a portico on Prince Edward Island--and I have a pretty wild imagination! Yet here I sit, watching the clouds gather grey overhead and the ocean resting so very still. Across the way, the black of trees on an outcropping of land silhouettes itself against blue rolling hills further aback and the blue light falling from the sky beyond and above.
For three years, I have fruitlessly lain plans with friends for roadtrips or plane-trips to this island, and each year they have fallen through; even this very summer! And now without a plan at all, with only a breath and a whim and a great big woosh, here I am.

It fascinates me to think what has been lost and what not? I no longer have a job; but I am still a professional. I no longer have an income, but I'm still existing and doing and eating and going. I no longer have my beautiful, perfect, and first apartment ever; but I have lots of couches and spare rooms and homes opened up to me for a return, for a visit, for a trip home. I am still a student and I am definitely an artist. I'm still a traveler, even if I have to let go of studying in Puerto Rico this winter because I cannot reconcile yet in my mind how do I pay for that when I have no idea of how my living will look? And I am doing and being what I do and know best right now: living a nomad's life and running to the sea. Crying and laughing with friends. Watching, writing, thinking.

I love that I have come to an island to think when I come firstly from an island. I love that the rocks and the dirt (or is it sand?)  hidden here is red-toned, like earth I remember from childhood. I love that I have friends across the world and am never quite gone from home despite being where I have never stepped before.

Though not new to me, it is still odd to think that I will not be "going back" after this adventure. That I will instead be going on to something newer yet, more unknown and that the picture ahead is not littered with the faces and smiles of people I have come to expect to see every day, whom I already miss, dearly. That the picture ahead has very little at all that I can expect to know.

What I do know, though, is that I can read signs. I can get to Prince Edward Island by myself. I have navigated countries not my own, spoken languages I do not know the names of, and have yet to not enjoy an adventure I meet with. I know that I love challenges and that I crave a rawness in life and well, I've certainly got that ahead of me! These are exciting and wonderful times, however strange and hard and tiring they may also feel. This is how I love to live; walking on an unmapped path surrounded by wonder and heading into a great and beautiful mystery I will get to explore and learn.

Mid-trip Happy Quip

I don't know how, but somehow in the absolute madness of the last few months I forgot just how much I love to travel. Not that I thought I didn't love it, but I forgot how ridiculously and completely happy I am when in motion, when lounging in an airport, when sitting in a place I have never sat before and perhaps will never again.

Right now I'm working at a coffee shop in downtown Portland, OR, and my sheets of paper and files litter the table while I stare out at a red brick building, a tree, and weather that changes rainy to sunshine to rain, etc, about every few minutes.

For the three nights of being in town, I rented a sailboat. My very own, whole, just for me sailboat. And it is wonderful. Last time I came out this way my friend Chloe and I roadtripped up to Friday Harbor from Portland and back again in the span of 24 hours. Now she is adventuring with me on my sailboat. It is glorious. Though I am tired and jetlagged and worn out from so much busyness and behind on my writing for school I am so happy I cannot stop smiling. My mouth hurts from defying gravity and poking up at the corners.

And then at this coffee shop, there is a piano. So I played piano for a while. Minutes. Not quite an hour. I'm not sure how long. But it was wonderful--such a deeply rich-toned piano that sounded like it would be friends with the boat if they could meet.

There is no doubt in my mind that one day I will have my own crossbreed of a sailboat/yacht and that there will be a piano in the cabin. And I will sit for hours on the deck and eat chocolate and cheese and listen to the wind and watch the expressions of the water change, and I will fall asleep to the lapping lullaby of the water again.

Tomorrow I head off to Seattle and then next week I head "home" again to London. I will be a jet-lagged wreck of a very happy person!

I love the random meetings with people you don't know at all. Love the walking past a boutique and finding the most perfect dress that fits just right. Love the sitting down to poetry and philosophy and the deep questions about life and the connections that make life so electric and eclectic. Love the live piano music in the airport and the man who tips you at the coffee shop to show how much he appreciates  you sharing your music. I love that I'm sitting here on the other side of a continent doing work with a friend I haven't seen in two years as if we come here every day. Like I live here. Because I do, in a way. I live everywhere. I live most when everywhere. When in between and out of place. My place is the dandelion in the crack in the sidewalk. The boat frequenting new harbors. The plane stopping in around the globe. The girl on the bus or running along the river or riding out into the sea. Where every surrounding has a friend that I know, that I'm about to know, and that I love knowing. That I love, simply.

Right now I am so exquisitely happy. And this is how it ought to be.