LEAVING TODAY
The transition from one place to another is always dislocating. It is so hard to cope with the feeling that you are comfortably in one place where everything is normal, to suddenly being on the other side of the world where nothing is normal, where nothing can be done automatically. It is as if I have an out of consciousness gyroscope that is guiding me along without my thinking and suddenly I have to think about every decision with the chance, since I am going into the semi unknown, that I will make wrong assumptions and make stupid choices. And this loss of intuitively being in control is disturbing. I‘ve known people who are completely adept at making their way through any set of conventions, business or social, here in the United States who are thrown completely off kilter when they go to another country such as India where everything is done differently.
I am not going to India, where I am both clueless and comfortable, I am going to Greece, a country that makes a living off of and allowances for clueless foreigners. So the dislocation won‘t be that great. But still, something within me is on edge. One moment I am euphoric with anticipation of experiencing things I‘ve never experienced before and the next moment I wonder why in the world I am embarking on a cockeyed adventure where I am going to be on edge all of the time and the next moment I fall into depression as my gyroscope stalls completely and I am barely able to put one foot in front of the other and don‘t give a damn. Last night with the loss of Kathe often still making nothing seem worth doing, the hacking of my computer and violation of my life making me wonder if the financial arrangements I depend on will work, I felt completely frozen up and was glad that I had packed earlier because I was incapable of packing now, and during the day I was jittery with the panic that comes when you think things might fall apart in some way. I‘m not the only one, my experience is that many people completely fly apart when trying to pack up and leave, packing and repacking and having flashes of anxiety over one thing or another.
All of this is part of the dislocation when you are in one place and suddenly anticipate or find yourself in another. It is normal.
And it is also normal to be sitting here this morning high as a kite with anticipation of experiences that will dislocate me and stimulate me and make me feel very alive. My inner gyroscope that was wobbling all over the place this weekend has suddenly pulled itself together and is ready to steady me through anything. This process isn‘t conscious on my part, I can‘t control it, it is, for me, just the normal inner transition. I am ready to be straightjacketed in the plane for 8 hours and then to step out to some marvelous German Brötchen and coffee in the Munich airport and ready two hours later to ride the 95 blue line bus from the Athens airport with my face glued to the window as Athens goes by until I take the seven minute walk from the bus stop to the Hotel Acropolis House. And I‘m also ready for any of this to not happen the way that I expect it to. I am ready to leave.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 