It is not how I dreamed it would be.
I want to tell a story about my perfect trip. I start, but I never finish. Because the story is never fixed. It evolves, it branches, returns, intertwines depending on the choices made. Fractal in nature. If you look deeper you will find the same structure at every scale.
Relax.
That’s the hidden message, the underlying never-ending structure. It is why I keep returning to the story when life grinds me down. The story is an escape to a land without pressure, a place of freedom where life can take a pause.
You will look at me strangely when I tell you some of the things I dream of doing to relax. Not the beautiful book I buy to read in the hotel, one with a pretty cover. Playing and composing music on an iPad. Reasonable, I guess. But solving a mathematical problem? Programming a microcontroller kit?
Those are true. I bought a paperback of mathematics challenges before one trip, solved none of them during it. Last week I thought hard and selected my Meowbit as something that could be coded from a phone. I saw myself building something from whatever materials I could scavenge in a hotel room.
I don’t think it’ll come with me this. What are the chances I’ll have the time or energy to do that? Very slim. Maybe I’ll copy one problem from the maths book, but I don’t see myself solving it. I started writing an ambient track in Garageband on the iPad. Would I actually take it out when squeezed into an airline seat when I want to relax?
Not likely. Just another thing to charge and squeeze into the luggage. It stays.
I have a book. Before the coffee gets cold, an English translation of a Japanese book by Toshikazu Kawaguchi. It’s not what I would usually read, not mind expanding science fiction. It does have a pretty cover, though, and is light enough to pack.
I get very anxious about travel, especially flying. Every time I think I have conquered it, the fear returns. Not just a fear of turbulence, although that is how it manifests, I now know it is the stress of trying to organise everything, to make everyone happy, the worry of what will happen to the house and pets when we are gone.
So I wanted to ease into this final week before we go, to spend it doing beautiful things, to relax and take the time to enjoy life.
Instead, and there always seems to be an “instead”, last weekend was a mad panic trying to help Alex rewrite an entire Modern History essay on the Ainu. I didn’t even have time to celebrate my birthday!
Then I had to wait and wait for something else that was promised to finally happen. I don’t know if it was that, but I slept poorly and all my meals were tasteless leftovers and sandwiches. I felt myself under the weather. Come Friday, I really was sick, but I had so much work to complete that I was still going at 6 pm.
The other two are active and delighting in the beginning of the holidays. Yesterday we drove to Burwood, had Singaporean/Malaysian food for lunch. It was there I bought the book. At night we brought mother-in-law to Revesby for a Cantonese dinner. When we returned I collapsed into bed feeling horrible.
Same today after we watched Jurassic World: Rebirth at the cinema because I had some discounts expiring and they wanted to go. I couldn’t find a better book in the lovely Harry Hartog store and ended up just eating takeaway Japanese style sandwiches for lunch from the new Washoku cafe.
Instead of relaxing I’ve got a cold and I can’t think straight! All I want to do is curl up in bed and sob. At least I packed my bag and did my chores early.
I had booked us a hotel room near the airport for the night before departure. I like doing that because it ensures that everything is packed and there are no last minute chores to be done. I love that thought of just relaxing the night before, watching planes out the window. Or the storm, like we had tonight, a night early. That would have been an epic display of fireworks.
The hotel room got cancelled. There’s the rubbish bins to take in on Tuesday morning. The food is expensive and so B would have demanded we go out somewhere rather than waste money in the hotel. Effort. And it would end up not being relaxing after all.
Once more, the preparations are disrupted and the dream doesn’t happen. Not a variation of it. Perhaps it can never happen, simply because it is a dream and reality cannot ever meet it.
Tomorrow I plan to go for a walk by the water and find another way to relax. To enjoy. To get into the mood to travel. Then it will be time to go.