Further to fly...

I'm committing blog-crime as I write this. My blogs are now out of order. I started one last night, "Travels with the objective observer" which is not done yet, and now I'm already starting a new one. I promised myself I wouldn't do that. Sorry self. ;)
I just have to.
"The open palm of desire wants everything, wants everything.. "
I am home alone, listening to itunes and surfing the net before I get to bed for 7am yoga. Kinda spaced out and relaxed. I walked by the sea in Sechelt this afternoon for hours, and only got up from a nap/meditation a little while ago.
I said "home"? Anyone catch that? I've been renting a room with a great new friend the past two weeks- a partner in the yoga/raw food challenge (I have fallen pathetically off the raw wagon, but am still doing 11/2 hours of yoga a day - small victories). Another entry on the 'home' concept is coming soon..
I thought I'd start looking at other travel blogs a bit, see what people are up to, and boy, did I find a winner! Gary Arndt's "Everything Everywhere", and the entry I first came to is called "The Lost Girls": http://everything-everywhere.com/2010/11/28/traveler-sunday-the-lost-girls/#more-9507. In this one he is starting to address other people's travel stories every Sunday, so I got two really great stories for the price of one.
The Lost Girls is about three bright young women from New York who spent a year travelling around the world, then kept their website going for other travel writers etc., and wrote a book which is being optioned for a TV pilot. Very inspiring. It's a great story.
I was thinking of that Paul Simon song yesterday (Further to fly), and it's a little apt right now; about moving on - from a relationship, a place, because you simply have further to go, in the words of the Tragically Hip - "It's not a deal nor a test nor a love of something fated." I always heard that as "nor something fated". And for me it's tinged with sadness, full of joy, and relief.
I started, here on the Sunshine Coast, to put down some roots of some kind - or feel like I was. All the time with a sort of trepidation, did I really want to do that? Luckily, I had some quiet time to myself to think about life and where I'm going, and saw that no - I don't. And the Universe agreed with me - the love interest didn't work out, the job I have been working on putting together hasn't worked out yet - still might, but in working out or not has openend my eyes to other fabulous possibilities. But that's one of the points here, and of travel generally - to open your eyes and your mind.
I was so into reading his blog that once I started the little two minute youtube video at the end I kept wondering why I couldn't hear it properly - it was only as it ended and "Further to Fly" came on my itunes, randomly selected out of 6386 songs - that I realized I was listening to two things at once. It doesn't matter - I was just thinking about how inspiring these stories are so that as the song came on, the message got through - I've got further to fly.
Reading others stories also reminded me that I sometimes feel different from some travellers - in that I have no home to return to. I have my brother, but he's as mobile as I am, and I am going back to Halifax - the place I grew up, for Christmas, (which you'll hear all about). But my parents are not there (any more than anywhere else) and I've lived in so many other cities that it's hard to put the label 'home' on anything.
On the other hand - I'm exactly the same as all other travellers - my idols Joshua Slocum and Beryl Markham - the Lost Girls, Gary - we are all putting ourselves at the mercy of the world around us, asking it to change us in ways that we can't imagine for ourselves.
And it always does so.
For now I think I do have further to go, in the world and in my inner journey. I'll leave the Sunshine Coast on Sunday - back to Vancouver, then Tofino, maybe a revisit to Quadra Island, then back to Halifax for the Holiday and to catch up with old friends and family, then back here?
"Whither then, I do not know"
The Sunshine Coast has been fabulous to me - I've formed the most wonderful friendships, with lovely, strong, wise and happy people - that I know I'll have all of my life, and I'll revisit here many times, like December 19th! But other things started to happen here, then did not.
Sometimes I'll be walking down
The street and I'll be thinking
Am I crazy
Or is this some morbid little lie?
What I wonder to be a lie, and I wonder if other travellers whose destinations are unknown to them feel the same way - is that I do have further to fly. I guess, because I have no destination, no timeline, no time or place to stop travelling, because I haven't saved money for this, but rather have to make it work as I go - there is a part of me, the safety seeking (which is perfectly ok) part, that finds a place it likes (I like) and says, "oh, can we stay here??.." And I really don't know what to say, because although I have intended to travel forever in a way - does Fate have something else in store for me? I am just a little sailor, all I can do is read the wind. And set my course. And watch the stars. And hope.
And the stars are beautiful tonight, by the way.
In the mountain village
The wind rustles the leaves.
Deep in the night, the deer
Cry out beyond the edge of dreams.
            - Minamoto No Morotada (In Written on the Sky, trans. Kenneth Rexroth)
I hear those deer. I hear the wind rustle the leaves. I smell dreams I can't see yet.
If I could put in the lyrics to the Gypsy, by Charlie Parker, I'd do so.
Just lie back and listen;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cy8FgocF3yQ