Lost

She looks out of the car window as it drives past me. Turning I see it’s a taxi, private hire, not a black cab. I don’t know why she caught my eye, it wasn’t an attraction thing. It was something in the expression on her face, not wistful but pensive and almost regretful. It was something in the unreal quality of a city late at night, the streets empty the orange lights finding the edges of the buildings, trees and ground. I wondered what or who she was thinking of. If a person it must surely have been herself, her own life, not others.

Further down the road a couple are framed by the shapes of the street around them. A blonde woman, drunk, with long hair flowing down her black clad back. The man tall an unexceptional, they are arguing she staggers into him and away, he refuses to hold her hand. Shaking her off he pushes her into the road where she walks before swerving in again trying to hold him, make it all ok. I remember how much I have wanted to do just the same this last week, many more miles separate us. As I pass them I surreptitiously take my headphones out, hoping to sneak a little bit of their lives. All I can catch her saying is but you said and the rest is hushed by the man and I feel more strongly than I like the complete tragedy of being human. The crushing fear that we all seem to live with, that weakness we all have somewhere, hiding though it maybe it always come out eventually. Often under that sodium orange glow.

Zuganruhe is the restlessness exhibited by caged birds during their migratory period. Unable to move as they should they jump up and down and cluster as far as possible toward where they want to go. I know how they feel, I wish I could be free to roam, to have the world under my feet. Month and months ago I wrote in my journal:

Travel does make things wonderful. Not the new places, not the new people, not the languages or the food. Not the views or the history. It is the act of motion that frees. Lengthy travel appeals not for the destination but for the journey itself.

And I do think that’s true, I was thinking of adventures and what I really want to do is sit on a very long bus journey, or better walk for days on end across a strange land. To live wild and free, it’s the ultimate stupid hippy nonexistent dream but if anyone knows of how to get there, answers on a postcard please.