Plane Ride Blues
Jàmm rekk - Peace only, peace only, peace only, exactly what I wanted to feel and what I tried to harness during the bittersweet reconciliation of the end of my 6 month traveling, nomadic affairs. This reconciliation commenced on my long plane ride back home…
A 10 hour flight back to reality, just me, a plane window portal, and my relentlessly reflective mind. We all know that plane rides serve as the perfect interim for long bouts of sulking and contemplation, so that is exactly what I did. I nestled into my seat as comfortably as I could with the provided pre-packaged blanket and compact pillow, turned up my melodramatic music for a more cinematic effect, and drifted off into a sweet, yet still so sore and bitter, reverie that sought to make sense of it all.
Wrapping my head around the fact that half a year had gone by in this way: trekking around half aimlessly, little to no plan or itinerary, with a 35 liter backpack as the only trusty comrade to my intrepid spirit.
Now, physically, I was somewhere undistinguished high above the Atlantic ocean, but mentally, I was enveloped in a montage of my most cherished scenes from those past months: hiking the pastel- painted mountain sides of rural Albania, sipping the velvety wines cultivated from Florence vineyard grapes, unabashedly dancing in Barcelona’s electrifying techno clubs, gazing over the Cappadocia rocky valley as a colony of hot air balloons slowly ascended alongside the fiery sunrise, the euphoria of catching my first ever wave while learning to surf in Morocco, standing on barren desert roads thumb out, hitching random rides with strangers in an ultimate mission to cross the African Sahara.
Those are some examples of the adventures that were a direct result of my “no solid plan” plan. Never know where life can take you if you just keep an open mind and go with the flow (cautiously of course).
Restless I stared through the plane window into the empty air surrounding. And it wasn't a restless longing for turning back the clock and living it all again, I was sufficiently ready and excited to be back home. It was more of a heavy restlessness of grief, for all of the people and relationships that touched me so deeply that I knew were all always going to be fleeting. My heart was having a hard time handling it.
The amount of love and connection this huge gracious world had brought into my life during that 6 month period was SO abundant, it was almost cruel. Cruel because I forged these connections that were heart-achingly beautiful, and that I ultimately had to part from.
Yet that is just one of the most tragic promises of life- people come and go, phases start and end, and time will always be a persisting, unforgiving force, that tantalizes the daydreamer with glimpses of the unreachable past. Life is my good friend, Time is often my enemy.
So I stayed in this tantalizing transfixion of all the memories I collected, and let my head roam freely through the clouds one last time before its ultimate descent back down to earth. In doing so, I clung on to every semblance of peace that washed over me brought by the immense gratitude for the ability to have lived it all. Jàmm rekk, jàmm rekk, jàmm rekk.