When I walk home, I often think of running away. It usually happens on days when I feel I have given all I have to offer. I play with the idea of how if I were to leave everything I call my life, go someplace and start again, who or what would I become? Humouring myself with the ideas that come from all directions, all possible futures, I finally realise how even if things were different for a few months or even years, I would eventually end up with a life quite similar to the one I have, and when I say life, I mean how I feel about my days, what I do when I’m not given something to do, and who I am when nobody is watching. All else is a farce—the vocations changed like seasons, as they should, and everyone acted a little different around other people, as they do. Life was what we lived despite the world.
My feet were rooted in the everyday. It was because I knew magic existed, and it takes time, and when I say magic, I only mean the serendipity, the randomness of the world. There is no grand scheme at play. No person is meant to be anything they are not currently, and if they become something eventually, they were whatever they become to begin with. Life was not a process of becoming; it was a process of uncovering. I am already all the people I have been and all the people I will be; I will just meet myself again at different times. If some paradise, some future which bleeds of colour, did exist, the road to it was as much in the simple act of doing dishes as it was in the journey of a lifetime. It was all about how we sculpted our time with our hands. No one had a say in what our life was about.
Running away, then, was a fool’s errand. I would go for miles only to end up at some cafe, to sit still and ponder over things in the evenings, and if I didn’t find one, I would sit and think anyhow. I would do this in every corner of the world, in all worlds possible, in all times, and all lives I ever live.