Flight

For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return. Leonardo da Vinci

I have a really strange deep love for flying that I don’t entirely understand. So many people I know are stressed out by traveling, and especially by flights in particular—most likely due to overbooked flights or rushing to catch a connection, or lost luggage, or so many other things that could go wrong.

Those are all valid reasons for disliking a mode of transportation, I suppose, but for me what makes it worth it is the time actually spent in the air. I came to this realization on my flights this spring while traveling to and from Cape Town, South Africa…three flights or a total of about 30 hours of flying and layover time each direction. Sure, some of the time in the airports rushing around trying to find my gate and make sure details were worked out and there were no problems with my carry-on, etc was slightly stressful, but once the plane got off of the ground and reached its cruising altitude, the time until beginning the descent is really some of the most incredible I’ve experienced. While in the air, you’re completely isolated from any of the worries on the ground. All that matters are that time, the people sharing the flight with you, and the air around you.

It is the best possible time for reflection and self-discovery.

photo from http://www.airliners.net/

Bursts of Colour Fill the Sky

You know that feeling that happens when things work out the way they are supposed to? When everything just feels absolutely right, and you know that it's obviously how life is supposed to be, so no matter what else comes your way you would never give up what you have? That has to be my favourite feeling in the entire world.

I've been feeling it a lot lately....concerning friends, love, work... it's wonderful. I know that some of it IS temporary for certain because I'm moving so soon, but for now I'm enjoying every moment. Everything is fitting together so nicely.

My best friend and I witnessed some truly beautiful
fireworks a few weeks ago at the beach.
Photo Credit: LunaDawnImages

That's [Not] Funny!!!!

How do we develop a sense of humour? Why is one thing funny to some people, but not to others...and how are others still seemingly devoid of any sense of humour at all?

The Months Pass Just Like Seconds...

I always wanted a happy ending... Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity. -Gilda Radner

The passing of time is such a crazy thing. Some days the minutes CRAWL along, and it seems as though you will never make it to closing time (or to when your date is scheduled, or dinner, or a vacation)...but other days, every time you glance at the clock it seems as though another hour has flown by and is gone forever.

It is so weird to think that it has been basically two months since my guy went to San Diego. The past 8 weeks or so have felt so slow for many individual moments, but now looking back at them it seems like they almost went too fast. I'm sure that there was more I could have experienced in the past two months than I did. I've been busy with work, with sorting things out around here, with so many other things...but at the same time, I haven't had as much time to interact with old friends as I would have liked. 

In a way, I feel like that about the entire past year. For nearly the entire past year, I've constantly been looking forward to something. That doesn't sound horrible, I know. It sounds awesome. Everyone needs something to look forward to, right? This would be true except that if you're constantly waiting for something exciting to happen (or lots of little things over the course of a year, in my case), you're also going to be constantly wishing away the moments in between. If you are traveling every two months or so, that weekend/week/two weeks every few months are going to be your focal point--the rest of the time between those will simply blur and speed past, and be lost forever. That's what I'm dealing with at the moment. I realized a few days ago that I simply can not believe that Oct 2009 was an entire year ago, and even though I've lived through every single minute--every single SECOND--of it, my year has been dizzyingly busy, so it is really hard to accept that an entire year has gone by. 

[un]Home-sick

Have you ever been homesick for somewhere you knew wasn't home? Wait, let me narrow that down a little bit more... not just somewhere you knew currently wasn't home, but that you knew would never be your home? I've been dealing with that a lot recently.

This past spring I traveled to South Africa and Namibia, and I connected with Namibia in a way that I never thought I would with any place. Seriously everything about that country was beautiful and perfect; the landscapes were all incredibly breathtaking, I fit in with everyone I met there, and it just felt like home in a way that Virginia never has. I've been to plenty of places in the United States, and South Africa was lovely, but Namibia was just different.

It has been strange because recently I keep finding myself longing to be back there--not to be with the people I know there, and not just from a simple wanderlust, but from some deeper need to be in that atmosphere...which is rough because I see no chance of me going back there any time in the next few years at least, and possibly not for ten or twenty years depending on how life goes...there are so many other places I want to see that I don't think I could justify trading a chance to see some place new for a location I've already been.

I'm fairly certain while I was there I found paradise.

Photos: Credit to LunaDawnImages