The van is heating up, as I am feet up on the bookshelf, writing my morning notes. It is bearable, almost fresh. I have a day of scrambling the letters, as I am writing - might be a build-up, as I have not been writing anything for a week now. Not my style. Only the to-do list has been active, with little progress made; I'm just adding tasks and pushing them like a snowplough in front of me.
The first ten days after the big festival of the year, we spent with our dear friends in South East Sussex. Now, a bit more than friends, as our second daughter is in a serious relationship with their oldest son. We stayed to celebrate his birthday, and to send our daughter off, as she was to go travelling with him, his family and a few other families in South East Asia for a while.
This was returning to a very familiar place, as we spent a lot of time there last year. Getting Silke ready to leave, working, going for walks, doing little things and big things. Being nomadic is about exploring new places, being adventurous and curious, but it has equally, at least for us, been about finding the right people and places to return to.
It seems our tribe is spread out all over. We find the right people scattered around the globe, and we find that being nomadic is as much about returning as it is about leaving. Finding the right places to come back to. As much as I can be in awe with a new location and curious about what is behind the next horizon, I also realise that some places are new homes. Temporary homes. Perfect contexts. Places to return to.
As I am writing this from my bed in a warm van on a late summer's day in England, I find myself at another base in the Lake District, with a different family we keep coming back to. The context changes, and we change with it. In East Sussex, we worked quite a lot, and did a lot of breathing out after the intense spring and summer; in the Lake District, it seems to be more of a contrasting combination of getting things done and the feeling of vacation. At least for me. My husband, on the contrary, is grinding.
In the Lake District, we have been walking beautiful walks, cooking amazing organic meals and doing a lot of crafts, with quite an extensive sidekick of an elaborate repair shop. It has been very satisfying to get all the little things repaired, and confronting to see how much time it consumes. We have realised that thinking it can be done on the fly is an illusion, and we have enjoyed taking our time to get it done right.
Shoes, clothes, Bluetooth loudspeaker, jewellery - all kinds of stuff are getting fixed, slowly developing strategies to succeed.
Our youngest son was thinking out loud about this changing context, changing vibe, reality for the nomadic personality: how it is somewhat a great advantage to be able to adapt and have the option to unfold so many different sides of your personality, as life in different locations and different groups of people changes who you are and what you can become - but how would it look to be based in one place, not moving and explore who you are if you are “just you”.
I see the point. Yet, it is an illusion. Wherever you choose to stay for longer, maybe with the idea of staying for good, you will still be in a context that allows for just a limited version of you. It is not a blank canvas to unfold onto to choose a city, an accommodation, some furniture, a job, and some hobbies. It will be limited by the options at that location, and hence limiting or finetuning just one version.
My son, who has lived most of his life nomadically, does not know this on a deep level like I do, and maybe we need to talk more about this. As a family, we often talk about slowing down, spending more time in one location to study, work, and focus on other things than exploring. Still, as life goes, we always choose based on what makes the most sense in the array of options available, and so far, it has never slowed down. It seems like some sort of pillow for the mind, where we sometimes think we will do it, but in reality, the choices we make point to a different path. We keep going.
Am I rambling? I am trying to share the realities of being nomadic, as my van heats up, the headache is sneaking in, and the day unfolds. I was reading this morning about a fellow travel writer who said the reportage format needs to be raw, and I liked it. Do not edit. Write the moment and share it. This is the authenticity we all need in this super-edited, super AI-organised, super uber planned out strategic world of online entertainment - the raw, real human.
I have always tried to be that. And it is so vulnerable. Am I rambling? Is it making any sense? Am I making any difference?
Spending this hour writing another personal blog post, aiming to write a newsletter later on today, is it worth it? It is hard to know now, but the internet has become a lonely place. As I mentioned earlier, when I first started blogging, the comment section was a space for discussion, and it was great to broaden my perspective by interacting with readers. Today, blogging is pure broadcasting.
But whatever. I am not turning to social media, as it's become crazy in its own way, so this is it. Broadcasting, like a radio in the 1950s, I hope there is someone out there listening, and I have to cherish the occasional email when someone reaches out.
The same author I was reading this morning talked about his travels: how he would make sure to realise he would most likely not come back to a location, in order to push himself into the moment and make the most of it. It is funny, because as we know, we can not step into the same river twice - yet we somehow fall asleep if it is literally the same river.
How often have we not heard people say they don't visit their home area's sites until we arrive to be shown around? How often do we not realise that it is the feeling of something being new or scarce that wakes us up? But really, even being non-nomadic, as in moving around all the time, we are all nomadic as we move around in time itself.
It is too easy to forget this, to forget presence, to forget the moments. On the other hand, it is often the distance to the moment that keeps us awake. Tolles ideas of letting go completey of past and future does not fully appeal to me, I find the distance to complete bliss, total harmony, immersion in the moment - this non-harmony, this distortion of bliss, this streching of the moment to imagine the future and use the past as a ressonance box, sparks creativity and keeps me curious.
It can be wonderful and healing to go into a blissful, harmonious moment of complete presence now and then, in moments of meditation, music or memorable moments of various sorts. Still, I would not want it to be the only experience.
Even inside this sentence, there is the wording “memorable moment” - where memorable serves to underline the value of remembering the past. In the novel I just finished for the second time, Matt Haig's “The Humans”, the main character makes a list of recommendations for the humans, and one is to make sure we will remember at least some of our roughly 30 thousand days in this life.
I am free-flowing, rambling, sharing the reality of my thoughts this morning. And now I think I will stop. To go out and make some memories in a big maze at some castle somewhere in England. With my sons and our friends.
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