I have a longing for life, and I go on living in spite of logic. Though I may not believe in the order of the universe, yet I love the sticky little leaves as they open in spring. I love the blue sky, I love some people, whom one loves sometimes without knowing why.
— Fyodor Dostoyevski
I am not the only girl who travels alone and lives abroad, and certainly I am not the first to live the life this way. Still, there are times I am absolutely bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have met, and each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it may appear, there are times when it is completely beyond my imagination.
I want you to know that I love travelling but it doesn’t mean that it does not frightens me from time to time. I don’t always feel comfortable while moving around by myself. It’s unsettling and sometimes terribly lonely knowing nobody in a big new place.
Sometimes I do find myself wondering if I really do know where am I going, but in the end, it is the possibility and not the guarantee that keeps me moving forward. Step by step. As for the place and the particular moment of my life that I am in, it’s definitely not perfection but the contained magic that makes me love it. Love it and long for more.
It’s not that difficult. If you have an afternoon, read a book that you always wanted to read, it will mirror your soul for you. Keep a physical notebook. Remember how to use the kind of pen that runs out.
Go into churches, mosques, temples because even when their ceilings are low, they impose a shape on great height. Go to the post office, with all its sounds of being sent. Learn the names of trees.
Read diaries, which make the day permanent. Read anything that slows you down to the pace of real life, like Murakami or Knausgaard who always leaves you breathless, but slowly.
Remember a time, not so long ago, when email was good. Imagine every email you ever received being delivered by a very small guy on a horse, galloping through an ether landscape.
Look out the window the way Dorothy looked out the window in The Wizard of Oz — as if the tornado has plucked you up and next you might see anything. If you can’t work, go for a walk. If you can work, go for a walk after you’ve finished.
Plant your feet on the ground and breathe in deeply and let your chest rise rusty as a partridge’s and sing. Stand exactly in a doorway like a cat and try to feel the invincible feeling that a cat clearly feels when it stands in a doorway.
What I am trying to say is that just as the seasons keep changing, human beings are constantly evolving and sources of inspiration are all around us — in the people we meet, the books we read, the trips we take and the art we see.
That’s why it is important to keep experiencing everything you can, even if it gets colder. The things you take in will influence what you put out to the world. So take it all in. All in.
I love the sticky leaves in spring, the blue sky — that’s all it is. It’s not a matter of intellect or logic, it’s loving with one’s inside, with one’s stomach.
— Fyodor Dostoyevski
As Charlie Chaplin wisely said: We think too much and feel too little. Trust you intuition, treat it as a gift. You’re only given a little spark of madness. Don’t lose it.
I personally want to live it all and write it all down. An aria to an empty train station, a requiem for a carrot.
Originally published at medium.com