Day 0 - the process of getting there

It’s all been quite surreal. I sorta expected that I wouldn’t really feel anything till I was on the plane, and well that’s certainly been the case, but I’m on the plane this very moment and I still don’t feel it. It’s as though my mind has managed to compartmentalize this entire experience and stow it away with the dormant adventurer in me who somehow I just can’t get in touch with and therefore I simply can’t process this at this moment. But from the moment I stepped out of the apartment, got into Diane’s car, dropped off the computer at Jad’s, it’s all felt so normal, and then only occasionally, did it have that tint of surrealness. Strange. This should feel so much more significant and yet, I’m on the plane writing about how it somehow feels mundane. But, there’s still something there, underneath the surface, something surreal that is trying to be heard, to be recognized as a reality I simply can’t grasp yet. It’s in the details. It’s in the little moments I’ve had that I either haven’t had in a really long time, or haven’t had at all. In the security measures at the airport, in not being able to step out for a smoke, in getting onto my first 777, my first 747, in flying over Paris. This dichotomy of banality and underlying excitement is strange and I can’t really describe it, but I think the best analogy, the best example of how I can describe this, the normal and unique living together in these many moments, is to say that just outside my window, travelling at 500mph, at 40,000ft is a tiny ass dust-bunny flapping in the wind within a crevice of the wing. Now if that’s not surreal, I have completely misunderstand the meaning of the word.



I came looking for something new, something different. I suspect by the time I leave it will feel that way, for now, it just seems like a touch of home, transplanted onto the bald head of another land. It’s all so familiar, the traffic, the smells, the shops. It’s only been a few days. I’ve walked around Connaught place, worked from my hotel room, met a couple fellow travelers, nothing too out of the ordinary. It took only one night to get accustomed to the shabby accommodations and I feel as though I’m in some unusually real dream. I think it hasn’t hit me yet.