solitude

When I bought my tickets for this summer's travels, I did not take into account the amount of time I would be spending with only myself. Airports and flights present this unusual feeling to me. Lately I've had a hard time with transitions, such as traveling. Now that I am traveling alone I have to face this problem. Their are certain comforts that I have, such as my ukulele and its happy sound, writing, reading, drawing and escaping into my mind. But I´ve never spent more than a day jumping from plane to plane (suject to change when I fly to Rome), so ultimatley I know that air-transitions end very soon after they begin.

Being in Mexico, however, is a different kind of solitude. I've been here for ten days and I´ve been reading a lot, aside from my mural work. It seems to me that because I am alone in my room (and usually no one bothers me to come out unless absolutely necessary) I can focus on my book with an extremity I rarely accomplish elsewhere. The truth is, I am very rarely alone. Mexico presents an opportunity for me to escape into my mind more than ever before.

Now, that's not to say that I have been alone this entire time. I am social, maybe less social than last year, but I still enjoy playing with the kids and talking with everyone. Some of them have noticed the differences in me, and have voiced their concerns in one way or another. Mostly I am teased for being sad, but that is just how they communicate. I feel that if I didn't have an older brother who teased me endlessly in my childhood then I would be hopeless here. I never thought I would be thankful for those times when I was a kid, but that mild torture has helped me in so many ways.

I just finished reading Haruki Murakami's 'The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles'
you should read it.