Roots

In the film Inception, dreams are manipulated so that Cillian Murphy's character sleeps and dreams, during which dream he sleeps, and dreams, during which dream he sleeps, and dreams, so that ultimately he is in a dream within a dream within a dream. It gets pretty confusing for the viewer, let alone poor Cillian.

I've been feeling something similar this year; my 'normal life' went to sleep when we gave up the flat and work, and travelling through Turkey, Iran, India was like a dream. But then we were called back to spend my grandmother's last weeks with her. Although we were going home, it wasn't to the same flat or to any work, or recognisable routine, and for obvious reasons it was strange and unreal; like whilst travelling we'd slipped into a further sleep and another, more nightmarish dream.

Once she'd died, there was the period of going through her belongings and saying goodbye, then a strange period of living back in London waiting to recommence travelling. Each of these felt like a new dream within the one before, or maybe a series of random unconnected dreams such as when you're wavering between sleep and waking.

But each level has to be woken up from, and when everything was sorted with Helen's house, and when we flew back out here, it was like waking a little more, moving a little further back towards reality. Except it's not as it was before. there have been some beautiful moments on this second leg of the trip, in Australia and Thailand (which I will write about, and post photos), but it doesn't seem as happy-go-lucky now, both because of what's happened and because it feels finite now, bounded, moving towards a rapidly approaching end point.

And when we do wake up for real, back in England, it won't be quite the same; we'll need to find a new flat, a new job in B's case and reconnect with work in mine. And of course, Helen won't be there, and neither will the closest thing there's been in my life to a family home since I was around twenty years old.

Rootless, is how it feels. I have my family, and I feel blessed for how much closer I've found myself to them recently -- the time we got to spend together was the silver lining to the time spent in England this summer, and though we're less by one, I feel we're stronger than ever.

But I need some roots of my own, and I guess that travelling has given me the time and perspective to see the importance of that. I have an amazing wife, a successful business, some wonderful friends, and, I'm told, a talent; one which I have some fragile hopes for. Now's the time for me to start making something solid, something with roots, of all that.

For awhile now an idea has been rattling around in my head, along these lines: when people -- like me -- who like to keep as many doors as possible open, hold back too much from ever choosing one door to step through, time closes some -- eventually all -- doors for you.

I think I've believed that intellectually for awhile, but maybe now I'm starting to feel it. I want to make my choices; I want to step through the doors I choose with my eyes open, and I want to make such strong roots of what lies on the other side that thoughts of those unchosen doors flutter away like each Autumn's leaves.