Pages

Monday, October 24, 2011

Wanderlust

Lately I've been having dreams about traveling. Before my grandmother died, it was nearly constant - almost nightly. And when I wasn't asleep and dreaming, I was awake and daydreaming. In the past few days, it's picking up again. It's always the same type of scene - me, alone, walking around in a brand new city, and the feeling or sense that I have in the dream is one of total connection with myself, excitement, peace.

The scene is always something from a trip I took to Europe in 2007. (Gawd, I blogged about it here, and before and after.)


Here I am at Wawel Castle in Krakow, Poland, freezing my buns off. That entire trip was a dream. And I've been craving the part of travel where I'm alone in a new place and I don't speak the language and I'm a bit lost and I am totally and completely at home with myself. I'm forced to be. The relative silence of being away from the familiar for a few weeks puts me in the company of myself and my thoughts, and settles me in ways I can't seem to make happen when I'm deep in my daily routines here at home. I am craving: being unsettled, unsure, unable to sleepwalk through my days.

In all these dreams, I just keep seeing myself walking down narrow, curved, foreign streets. I wake up feeling good, like just as I round the next corner, I'm going to find something important that I've misplaced. I'd pretty much figured that from here on out all of my vacations would be surf vacations. But I'm not sure this is something that can be satisfied with being in once place - even a beautiful place. For now I guess I'll keep dreaming mysterious dreams and try to pay attention to where they lead me.

3 comments:

  1. Hail, fellow traveler.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I've also been considering, lately, what is behind my growing need for some solo travel. Like you, I think it's a desire to wake up, to stop my sleepwalking, to get away from my cosy trap of luxury and obligations and meet new people and experiences, unencumbered by all this STUFF. I feel a different person out on the road: I think more, write more, read more, learn more, do more. I feel I AM more.

    When I travel somewhere I don't know the language I find (a) I can tune out the chatter and think my thoughts more easily, and (b) I am constantly humbled by people's patience and kindness, which isn't something I can say all the time back home!

    Your twisty narrow streets that are leading somewhere in your dreams..... that sounds like you're figuring something out in your subconscious.

    I hope so x

    ReplyDelete
  3. I've always wanted to travel somewhere by myself. Mostly becuase I wanted to know that I can. I want to know that outside of my mundane life there is something more exciting.

    However I also love traveling with friends. To create a memory and know that in the future you can reminesce about the memory with some else.

    I miss traveling over seas there is something so amazing about going to a different country and learning by touching, feeling and breathing in their culture. Its amazing!

    ReplyDelete