"I have never seen someone who can sleep so well on a bus before. You just get on and, wham, conk out."
"It's because I'm moving, so I feel safe."
Long pause.
"Wow, you're getting all psychological on us."
This was a breakfast table conversation amongst a group of us who were billeted out together on the first night of tour. It was really early at the time so it didn't really develop into a serious discussion, but the idea of feeling safe while moving has stuck with me since then. To be honest, tour busses are uncomfortable. After sitting for that long you start to get restless. I find it difficult to sleep on them. And yet since getting home every single day I've been wishing I was back on the bus. This confused me. Hadn't I just spent five days saying I wished we didn't have to spend so much time on a bus? I was less anxious to get off than some people since I like road trips, but I was definitely finding it a bit ridiculous by the end. I realized the other day though that this sense of safety in motion is why I want to be back on the bus. Those of us at the back of the bus became a little family of sorts. I was comfortable there, I felt safe amongst those people, and I was moving, I was going somewhere, which combated the all-too-frequent sensation of stagnation I get in my life. I just want to get back on the bus.
Lately I've been feeling the need to move. It is this overwhelming feeling that something in my life is going to change and as much as this scares the living daylights out of me sometimes, it also excites me. Sometimes I feel like my life is simply stagnant and I hate this sensation. The other day Audrey said to me, "I guess maybe I want to feel like I am going somewhere every day, you know?" And I do. It frustrates me when I don't feel like I'm moving or going somewhere, and I guess that's how I've been feeling for the past week or so. Like all of the potential paths that I had to walk down have suddenly disappeared. Perhaps I only imagined them in the first place, maybe they were never real. Maybe I was always just stuck here, waiting for something to change.
I just started following this tumblr called Passage d'Enfer. It's the 35mm photography of this guy who lives in Paris, and is really fantastic. As I've been looking through his photos of Paris with snow I keep thinking to myself, "If I have to endure winter, why am I not doing so in Paris?" I mean, seriously. I could at least be somewhere that the snow looks pretty. A couple of days ago I wrote about the fact that I like taking black and white photos from the windows of moving vehicles. This picture is what started this interest. I took this while in Paris several years ago, and it is one of my favourite shots from that trip. It's the sense of perpetual motion that entrances me.
There is something you should know about me: I am a klutz. Not in the spectacular-accidents, land-myself-in-the-hospital way, but in small ways. I walk into walls and doors on a regular basis. I trip while walking on flat surfaces. I smash my shins on furniture almost daily. I nick my hands so often that I usually don't even realize it until I look down at my hand (often in class) only to find a bloody cut. This is just such a fact of life for me that I pretty much don't even think about it any more. However, this week I was reminded of my klutzy-ness in a big way: I burned my hands several times. So, word to the wise, don't pick up a hot iron by the metal plate, don't grab a hair straightener that is on even if it going to fall, don't try to move a muffin tin that has just come out of the oven with your bare hands, don't kick a running space heater, don't grab the outside of a metal kettle and don't pour boiling water on yourself. Yeah, I did all of those things this week. It's actually ridiculous.
No, this picture has nothing to do with being a klutz. I really like it though. I am a big fan of taking black and white pictures from moving vehicles. There is something about the motion and the lack of clarity that intrigues me. I think it is the sense of going somewhere that the resulting images exude that fascinates me so much.
