Keep Moving

byTravellers

226 followers

12 years ago

On Day 4 of the 30 Day Blog and not doing so well. I’ve been too pushy and wanting my blog to be seen by everybody. I was told off – ‘This is about sharing – not about promoting’ – I was told. Of course this is right – I had just got a little over excited.

Anyway I am in Jerez de la Frontera in Andalusia today and will stay here until the end of the month at least. I haven’t decided where I will be next. Today on the 30 Day Blog we were asked to think about our definition of location. I think mine is about feelings, about emotional connection to a particular place. I am not a beach person, although there are times when looking at the sea brings amazing peace. I am not a rural sort of person, but there are times when I walk down country lanes and hear the wind in the trees around me and I feel invigorated. I call myself a city person, but there are times when the crush of people waiting to cross the road by the lights makes me want to scream. It is all about how you feel.

The joy of being able to move from location to location is the thing that is exciting in that it evokes many emotions, many different feelings inside of me. The process of moving is about moving my mind set, forcing me to think outside myself, it stimulates an expansion of my thinking, it allows me to be open to new ideas, it can even change my behaviour and attitudes. It allows me to become more generous. Because when I am stationery I am stuck. Maybe I have been in Jerez too long.

Many years ago I was travelling from Moscow to St Petersburg (Leningrad at the time) by train, overnight. I don’t know how I managed it but I found myself in a carriage with two elderly Russian women. They spoke very little English and I spoke no Russian. I could say thank you –‘спасибо spasibo’ but that was it. I fact I think I can sat ‘thank you’ in about 30 languages and nothing else. I feel terribly guilty about that.

Train journey Moscow to St Petersburg

It was the first time I had done a long journey in a train in a different country. The women didn’t want to sleep and were chatting away merrily and I didn’t feel tired myself. We tried to communicate with each other. Gradually over the 14 hour journey I learnt many things about them, about their lives, about politics, about art, about community and communism and capitalism. I really did. In broken English, a lot of gesticulation and mime I really felt I understood them. The most important thing seemed to be that we were moving. Literally moving from town to town – city to city – stopping occasionally at stations, which seemed pretty empty because nobody seemed to get on or off the train. Anyway we were moving. And all the time we were moving we were able to talk about ‘where we had arrived’ and ‘where we had come from’ and that opened up all our conversations about art and politics and everything thing else. I didn’t understand everything – perhaps I didn’t understand very much at all but I certainly learnt a lot.

The moral of this story seems to be you’ve got to keep moving – because you will always have something to talk about. Doesn’t matter where you are – just keep moving.