Going somewhere, getting nowhere...

There's something about having an end date, and destination, to a tour that puts a slight dampener on it for me. Truthfully though, without an end date, or destination, I would probably slow to a crawl that's so slow I would probably never leave. Is that a bad thing? My destinations are prescribed by others... I hear or read about somewhere that sounds nice, so I go there, but honestly I want just to explore at random like a toddler explores the objects around him. What stops me? Commitments. But virtual commitments - the needs of others whom I depend on for a sense of security. One day I may just let go of those commitments, ackowledging them as virtual, and to anyone whom I've depended on, including my own ego, I may seem to have disappeared completely either in body or spirit or both. Does this need to make any sense in order to be publishable? What if it doesn't? Maybe it's enough if the spell-checker works. What am I trying to say?

In the same way that having no destination would lead me never to arrive, having no point in this blog would lead me never to finish. But in this wilderness of thought I can choose arbitrarily to arrive somewhere. Mainly because at some point my body will crave attendance to one or other of it's basic needs, so finishing up seems like a good idea.

Let me arrive in Trinidad, Cuba. Here I got drunk with an Irishman in a cave, bought a tart a cheese and ham sandwich (no comma after tart), and the next day during a hangover I bought a couple of paintings then drove to Camaguey like a zombie, picking up hitch-hikers and not saying a word.

 

 

I spent a lot of my trip leaving somewhere important in order to arrive at another place of importance. I did enjoy it though - most of the places I visited were important for a good reason. But on the way, I craved just to stop somewhere very unimportant but something held me back.... my schedule. I was a slave to my schedule, that is until I met Julia - women come with that risk, because they can seem like a destination in themselves, but if they do you're doomed.

 

Trinidad was on my schedule, but some of the places I passed to get there were not, and they had a charm which drew me in. They are like flashes of a past life, beautiful and simple but somehow not. Yes, I know that makes no sense. It's bollocks, I'm just throwing letters into the bucket like my 2-year nephew and maybe just maybe some of them will come together with meaning. But it all has meaning, right? Just need to look harder. So look again, and if you find out what meaning it has, then I take my hat off to you.

So these places I passed through, I wanted to stop and take pictures, but there was so much life going on at such proximity I knew that if I stopped I wouldn't be able to take any pictures, not because the picture taking would destroy the scene - which it would - but because I could not get out of the car without becoming part of the scene - and this reality scared me. I could not stop at these places and be a spectator, a tourist, I would have to just be - and then anything could happen.

Cubans haven't been anaesthetised by drugs of modern life. Many of them, when you meet them, they look at you in the eye and hold your gaze. They have nothing to hide, no guilt buried deep and sealed by a constant stream of distraction. It's a precious thing, and a reason in itself to visit - but dare I visit without a destination?

Who knows what's down the rabbit hole?