Touch ground when it thunders

Notes from home

I've been thinking since before I left about travel and what it does for the mind. I mean besides all the clichéd but true stuff about expansion and growth. For me, and it's only on this trip that I've thought of it this way, it (travel) allows me to see things not only for the first time, but as if for the last time. There's a big difference in how the mind records visual info depending on circumstance, and I think the difference between first sight and last sight is significant. This is only true of course if you let yourself see this way, or rather think of yourself seeing this way as you're seeing things for both the first and last time. There's undoubtedly a better way to say that. Jetlag also does strange things to the mind, this post being a result of one of them.

Another thing with travel is that it bonds you to people with celerity. I know I haven't written much about my friends while on the bus, but I spent all day every day with them and I miss them. Towards the end a few of us even adopted nicknames for each other based on the characters in the bad spy books we were reading. I was Asher Flores but Nibbles just called me Ash. Sam (Nibbles) taught me all that cool slang and was nice enough to laugh at my jokes and let me play her obscure american indie rock. Kate who was wonderfully reserved and proper, but didn't think she was which made it even better. Chris my Scottish partner in crime whose translator I became as I tried secretly to master the accent (I do a pretty good Glaswegian after 5 weeks). And of course Ed (Dick Carriage) who spoke the Queens English and taught me great words like "bowser" (which is a great big thing that holds liquid) and kept us all laughing until woozy. We played a lot of pool, drank a bowser of Brittney’s, went on tours/walks/boats good and bad together. They're all warm, funny, generous people and I hope, unlike what I've written about above, that this is not the last time I will ever see them.

posted by jts @ 5:33 PM