And here I find myself, in a scene from the film Lawrence of
Arabia. I am literally sitting in the set of the 1962 film: I am in the desert
Wadi Rum.
It is still early morning and so the rose coloured sand
beneath my dry dusty feet is still cold from the chilly night, a woody smoke
seeps from the remaining embers of the ash filled fire pit.
I am sitting in a vast, dry basin surrounded by scattered
rocks, rocks disguised as cliffs with nearly flat, sheer faces extending as
high as any city skyscraper. Flat except for a peculiar detail: up close it
looks as though some heavenly body has dolloped runny icing sugar on top of
these massive natural monuments and it has oozed and dribbled down the sides,
all the way to the ground and hardened over time.
The desert undoubtedly fills me with a sense of quiet. My
usual storm of thoughts and murky pool of emotions are stilled, silenced, in a
way that matches the silence that engulfs me here. That, or I am humbled by the
magnificence that surrounds me, that dwarfs my comparatively small and
meaningless life. I think about these rocks that have taken millions of years
to become what they are today, and this overwhelming realisation that I am
relatively meaningless fills me with a great sense of peace.
I stop writing for a minute to watch a large black Scarab
beetle scuttle past me and I continue to stare at its criss-cross prints long
after.
I strain to listen to the empty space around me… I can hear
some birds off in the distance. Occasionally a breeze picks up that whips
through the rocks and sounds like a fighter jet overhead. The fighter jet lands
somewhere off in the distance behind me and again I am left in silence. It is
so quiet and I am straining so hard to hear signs of life that my ears hum and
buzz.
My silence is broken by male voices. Our father and son
guides are up and are calling me over for tea…
This is day 6 of my trip in the
Middle East; let me go back to day 1.
…On second thoughts I will go back even further and give you
some insight into why I am here at all.
To be completely honest I think the number one reason I now
find myself in the deserts of Jordan is because the alternative was job
hunting. I HATE job hunting!
Work wise I had a huge 7 months. I’m not sure if I just need
a break after my last job or if I am escaping the thought of starting any other
job that will undoubtedly fail in comparison to the exciting work I just left,
this realisation gives me a solid sinking feeling in my stomach. I can describe
the last gig in three words: unpredictable, educational and life changing (does
a hyphenated word count as one or two words?).
Can I really bring myself to work behind a desk in a city office
after my last job?
So I found myself in August with no work, no house (I had
sub-let it for my FIFO work), plenty of cash and a whole lot of shit at home
that I wanted to avoid facing. So I figured I had one option left… travel.
Travelling seemed at first to be a flawless immediate
solution to finding a life plan.
However this particular plan actually has a few small flaws:
the first being that it takes a whole lot of energy to travel. Perhaps not if
your holiday leads you to sipping cocktails in a private swim-up bar in
Hamilton Island. But the sort of travel I seem to naturally fall in to is
exhausting (refer to African travel blog www.abra-kuma.blogspot.com). I
don’t have the energy to travel right now, not even enough to get excited.
Before I left home I repeatedly convinced myself that as soon as I am on that
plane the excitement will build. When I was on the plane and still felt nothing
I insisted to myself that the excitement will build. 6 days into the trip I
desperately search for that inner driving force, that persistence, that patience
and that resilience required to travel… Or maybe my problem is that somewhere
bubbling just below the surface I am too much of an Anarchist, too much of a feminist and too much of a
gay activist to really get into the Middle East?
Time will tell. And so will this blog I suppose.
The alternative hasn't escaped me; the possibility that I am feeling more than relaxed about this trip
because for the first time I am blessed with the relief of a travel companion,
at least for the first part of my trip anyway. Daily I find myself ever so
grateful to have someone with me who has cash when I don’t, who can halve the
cost of cabs and hotels, who can pull out hang nails for me, and who can make
good decisions when I so seamlessly make bad ones. In the past I have mostly
travelled alone but right now I welcome the support and comfort of someone I
know.
But don’t get me wrong, this travel buddy of mine does not
come as a priceless gift… this travel buddy is my recent ex… enough said!
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