📝 Alex's scrapbook

07. Travel day

Sep 19, 20254 min read

The argument in the ticket line had a natural intermission, enough time to construct something better to say, which I then did say during our second act, trading a feeling of self-satisfaction and moral correctness for cortisol and trembling knees and a twinge of sadness to have treated this difficult young man badly.

Humbled by my own logistical naiveté, trekking through the baking streets of Valencia, sweat-drenched and stinging, cursing the siesta, every possible rest-stop closed. I thought this was a serious city, I have money and you have air conditioning, wasn’t that the deal we struck? How could you forsake me like this? Don’t you want me sitting here on my laptop for an hour in exchange for €1 of profit on the cappuccino you make for me? Don’t you realise I’m the most vivid person here? No, yes, I see why you choose lunch with your family over this alternative, carry on, forgive me, I have been coddled and adjusted to the atomisation of perhaps a more Protestant lineage, something like that. What seems to me like economic stupidity is probably the result of a more poetic attunement to life, you win, I’ll catch up, with time.

It’s happening more and more, unexpected warmth with strangers, twice today, three times. More activity at both poles - very unusual for me to have an altercation, and I have had two - to shout at my Dad, to call out the man who cut in front of me and another in the queue for the train tickets. To feel like a burgeoning beacon of light who has figured things out, then boom, humbled, the trains are all full, now scramble. The £65 view from my Airbnb somewhat ruined by the fact that I am will arrive at 1am, no time to explore the Gothic Quarter, straight to bed, and I’ve overpromised at work again, must rise early tomorrow, try to be of some use, though I doubt there will be time. I’ll try to extract the monetary value from the view in the morning - perhaps a selfie will do it. How many seconds of real presence will I manage?

Two people in my eye-line doing that thing of falling asleep whilst upright on public transport, your head tilting forwards gradually and then zoom a momentary freefall and jolt some part of your brain catches you and you mostly awaken with an unpleasant lurch and sit straight again only to repeat the cycle ten seconds from now, the cycle seeming to repeat for hours, a murky liminal state, a diffuse quiet despair somewhere deep, let me sleep, please get me there, this is somehow unbearable.

Strategic dehydration and appetitive abstinence to reduce logistical issues during travel. My body is miraculous, undoubtably, and this doubly salient after a fortnight with a man re-learning to walk. My new joy to be able to weave between anything, unassisted; you can’t encumber me, there’s nothing I can’t carry1.

Loving and caring for strangers, delighting in them, sometimes, a desire to see and be seen, let down the mask even more. I told the hire car attendant that he had kind energy, and he shook my hand and returned the compliment. The man from Cambodia who told me about his electric unicycle and personal body-weight in kilograms vs the kilograms of his enormous backpacks, one in front, one in back. The checkout clerk who said something kind in Spanish with warmth and forgiveness in her eyes when I reeled off my one phrase, lo siento, no hablas Espanol, I can’t even spell it. She didn’t have to do it, I’ve grown to expect the eye-roll, a miracle that I should emulate, surprising with kindness where it is least expected. Dad, I’m sorry for shouting at you, and when I apologised you said “it’s ok, I’m used to it”, and my heart broke some more.

Footnotes

  1. More youthful naiveté ↩

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