Was I about to land? I can’t quite recall. I’ve run it over and over in my mind so many times but this is always where I get stuck.
I lower my list. Now, I definitely want to take the futon. I’m selling the television and the fridge. The washing machine can stay here for the next people.
The piano may have to follow, it all depends what size I get. I’m taking the lamps, they may come in handy.
The computer is coming too. I’d better back my work up again. I write that down so I don’t forget. The drawers can stay. The desk too. I’ve never liked it. I won’t need a full shipping container. I don’t seem to be taking much. All the things I’ve collected over the years and look how little I care for most of it. The clock. The clock has to come. That gets added to the list. Can I trust a shipping company to look after it?
I’m still not sure about flying. It all seems fine until I get to the landing part. It seems too sudden. Can I let my life change so drastically over a few hours? Step on a plane at one place and step off at another, without seeing what lies between, without slowly adapting to the changes in landscape, language, life?
Have I lost you? Sorry if I have. The thing is, I’m leaving. I think you know that. I’m not on a plane.
You knew that too. I’m at home, where I’ve always been. Writing. Writing about my life. I have been on that plane journey, metaphorically. Hundreds of times.
I’ve just never had the courage to do it.
Until now.
You know, when I began writing this odd little book of mine, I had no idea how my thoughts would alter the course of my life. I had no plans to uproot myself.
Yet from the very start I wrote of getting on an 196
aircraft. I thought that I would leave the vague plot ambiguous. Never divulge whether the character was running away from something or going back to where she once lived, whether she was in a relationship or not and so on, the choices countless. I wanted it to be extremely sketchy. I used the flight idea as a mirror to what I was feeling. I didn’t think that two years down the line I would be taking it more literally.
The telescope must come too, that goes without saying. I need to look at stars.