1998 november 06

wanderlust

i got a postcard from philip today. he is in fiji with his girlfriend, waiting to see if he will be hired as a dive instructor for a major luxury hotel there.

the boy's got guts. i like to fancy myself a world traveler, ready to hit the road at a moment's notice, ready to explore the outer edges of the planet, ready to squirrel around in ancient forests and caravan across vast deserts. but you can be damned sure i've got a return ticket safely tucked in my bag, and my visa platinum card -- it's everywhere i want to get home from. not philip, he sees something on the telly, or reads an article, or sees a picture in a magazine and he's off, having scraped together the money for plane, train or boat fare, without a worry as to where he will sleep or what he will eat.

i used to be a little more like him, until the amsterdam fiasco.

travel hint for the interested: if you are deeply darkly depressed, if you have just been dumped with no real explanation by your fiance weeks before you are to spend a month with him in europe, if the erroneously romantic notion of death by flinging yourself into a canal in front of anne frank's house is fluttering around the edges of your brain, amsterdam is not the place for you, especially if you haven't made arrangements to stay anywhere.

trying to find an affordable hotel room after you've been flying for hours, haven't slept in days, are broken hearted and confused about life, in a city where it seems you are the only person not higher than a kite, is not particularly fun. what is even less fun is discovering that all the hotels you can afford are overrun with stoned backpackers and are at the top of three story buildings. if you've ever been to amsterdam, or the rest of the netherlands for that matter, you know what that means: skinny little steep, and i do mean steep, staircases. lord how i grew to hate those staircases.

in any event, the point of this digression is, unless i am in the land of the motel6, i always make sure ahead of time i have some place to sleep. philip will sleep on the beach, in a park, or at the house of someone he meets in a bar three hours after stepping off a plane.

sometimes i wish i were still like that.

^v^ ^v^ ^v^ ^v^ ^v^ ^v^ ^v^ ^v^ ^v^ ^v^ ^v^ ^v^ ^v^ ^v^

i joined a diary mailing list recently. as i mull over the benefits and downsides of letting loose upon the world my wondrous journal, i am looking for some guidance, some words of wisdom and experience, and, like anyone looking to join a community, i am checking out my neighbors. kicking their tires so to speak.

the topic of posting email one has received to either one's webpages or a mailing list was recently brought up in light of one member doing both. while i don't mind personal email being a source of inspiration, or even sharing some of the comments i have received, i am absolutely, positively, without a doubt against posting the email address of the person who sent me the mail, or even releasing their name.

i just wanted you all to know that. please continue to write me with the utmost confidence that i will not betray it. i am a little taken back that few people on the list seemed to think it was a bad thing, since it was done under the guise of providing amusement.

maybe i won't be moving in.

mums the word, claire