Gypsy Foot
It started as an introspective moment, and just kept going.
The light in the bathroom here, one of them anyways, is the sort of bright, humming, flickering florescent light that makes you cringe and turn it back off whenever you can help it.
But somehow, it's soothing to me sometimes. It hurts my eyes late at night or early in the morning, that sudden brilliance, as compared to the other light bulbs in the room, which start out very dim and slowly grow brighter as they warm up.
That's a creepy experience, if you're in there long enough to notice the slow brightening of the room, long enough to question your sanity in the wake of that changing light.
It makes you worry, the first few times, because it's the same as that slow brightening of your vision just before you black out. You know, how everything gets all washed out and pale, just before it goes to almost-white, and then black and you can't see anymore, though you can vaguely feel still as everything spins and you try to just keep moving.
Until it fades back in, slow and distant, and everything still looks washed out for a few minutes as the dizziness passes.
We're talking about the wrong light now. Back to the flickering, too-bright, florescent thing that humms and buzzes when you turn it on. The buzzing is enough to make you grit your teeth, the brightness working in combination to start a headache building just behind your eyes. But I find it oddly comforting sometimes.
It reminds me of those stupid lights in hotel bathrooms, the cheaper ones. Motels, usually. Too bright to turn on at three in the morning when your bladder wakes you up insistently, but the bathroom is always too dark to just leave the light off. There is no in between, and you never know a hotel bathroom well enough, never learn it well enough to do it with your eyes closed or in the dark.
So on goes the light, and you squint, and wince at the awful noise and hope the light and the noise doesn't wake anybody else, and do your business and go back to bed. Back to comforting, tucked-in sheets, snug around your body, cool where you haven't been, warm where you were sleeping minutes ago.
I've never understood why hotels and motels are as much of a comfort as my own bed. The flickering lights past the window, the half-lived space. Never there long enough to grow comfortable and messy, never needing more than what you have.
Maybe that's it, it soothes my Gypsy soul. I want to go, I want to move. I have nothing, no talents to sell to keep me going, nothing worthwhile to provide or I would ask... No, because I'm also just too settled for that kind of life. My jobs are important, my things are important, my family is important to me and I can't leave them behind.
I can only wish to be someone like Sooj and K, like the Winchesters, like those who work the RenFaire circuits. I can wish and hope and dream all I like, but these aren't the sort of dreams that become a reality. Not for me.
Because if I were to travel like that, I would need somewhere to leave all of me behind. That's what I feel like, I need somewhere stable to return to, somewhere I can leave all the things that are too important to let go of, but not so important I can't live without them for a while.
My material possessions need a place of safekeeping before my feet and heart and soul can wander freely, because I am tied to a material life. Because I could never decide what to let go of versus what to take with me, if I knew I could not come back to the things I let go. I can choose for a trip, but nothing more.
I am materialistic at heart, and I am aware of it. It ties me down.
I'm aware of that too.
I dream of my travel being forced upon me at first, and gradually becoming a way of my life. Something so that I just do it instead of hesitating, something so I forget what I had and live happily with what I have, and learn to be content with nothing more.
I used to dream of running away like that. Packing a suitcase, a backpack, and just running, leaving. Not to escape my family or my friends, but simply to get away, to go.
I still dream of it, though more refined now. I dream of packing a bag and a backpack, and getting on the next bus to somewhere. Anywhere. Because anywhere but here is a good enough start, just to travel. To go, to be on the road. Planes and buses and trains and cars and my own two feet, I want to go so so badly. My gypsy foot is acting up something terrible, seeking an independence, seeking that motion.
I want it so much.
But I am tied to everything I am here, and cannot find the strength or will to shed it.
The light in the bathroom here, one of them anyways, is the sort of bright, humming, flickering florescent light that makes you cringe and turn it back off whenever you can help it.
But somehow, it's soothing to me sometimes. It hurts my eyes late at night or early in the morning, that sudden brilliance, as compared to the other light bulbs in the room, which start out very dim and slowly grow brighter as they warm up.
That's a creepy experience, if you're in there long enough to notice the slow brightening of the room, long enough to question your sanity in the wake of that changing light.
It makes you worry, the first few times, because it's the same as that slow brightening of your vision just before you black out. You know, how everything gets all washed out and pale, just before it goes to almost-white, and then black and you can't see anymore, though you can vaguely feel still as everything spins and you try to just keep moving.
Until it fades back in, slow and distant, and everything still looks washed out for a few minutes as the dizziness passes.
We're talking about the wrong light now. Back to the flickering, too-bright, florescent thing that humms and buzzes when you turn it on. The buzzing is enough to make you grit your teeth, the brightness working in combination to start a headache building just behind your eyes. But I find it oddly comforting sometimes.
It reminds me of those stupid lights in hotel bathrooms, the cheaper ones. Motels, usually. Too bright to turn on at three in the morning when your bladder wakes you up insistently, but the bathroom is always too dark to just leave the light off. There is no in between, and you never know a hotel bathroom well enough, never learn it well enough to do it with your eyes closed or in the dark.
So on goes the light, and you squint, and wince at the awful noise and hope the light and the noise doesn't wake anybody else, and do your business and go back to bed. Back to comforting, tucked-in sheets, snug around your body, cool where you haven't been, warm where you were sleeping minutes ago.
I've never understood why hotels and motels are as much of a comfort as my own bed. The flickering lights past the window, the half-lived space. Never there long enough to grow comfortable and messy, never needing more than what you have.
Maybe that's it, it soothes my Gypsy soul. I want to go, I want to move. I have nothing, no talents to sell to keep me going, nothing worthwhile to provide or I would ask... No, because I'm also just too settled for that kind of life. My jobs are important, my things are important, my family is important to me and I can't leave them behind.
I can only wish to be someone like Sooj and K, like the Winchesters, like those who work the RenFaire circuits. I can wish and hope and dream all I like, but these aren't the sort of dreams that become a reality. Not for me.
Because if I were to travel like that, I would need somewhere to leave all of me behind. That's what I feel like, I need somewhere stable to return to, somewhere I can leave all the things that are too important to let go of, but not so important I can't live without them for a while.
My material possessions need a place of safekeeping before my feet and heart and soul can wander freely, because I am tied to a material life. Because I could never decide what to let go of versus what to take with me, if I knew I could not come back to the things I let go. I can choose for a trip, but nothing more.
I am materialistic at heart, and I am aware of it. It ties me down.
I'm aware of that too.
I dream of my travel being forced upon me at first, and gradually becoming a way of my life. Something so that I just do it instead of hesitating, something so I forget what I had and live happily with what I have, and learn to be content with nothing more.
I used to dream of running away like that. Packing a suitcase, a backpack, and just running, leaving. Not to escape my family or my friends, but simply to get away, to go.
I still dream of it, though more refined now. I dream of packing a bag and a backpack, and getting on the next bus to somewhere. Anywhere. Because anywhere but here is a good enough start, just to travel. To go, to be on the road. Planes and buses and trains and cars and my own two feet, I want to go so so badly. My gypsy foot is acting up something terrible, seeking an independence, seeking that motion.
I want it so much.
But I am tied to everything I am here, and cannot find the strength or will to shed it.