I’ve never been to the moon and back. I’ve never been to the moon, period. Outer space has thus far eluded me. Being a human being living on this planet we called Earth, I still know a bit about gravity of course. As I fly across European airspace from Athens, Greece to Manchester, England, I am relaxing finally having been engulfed with what I will describe today as emotional gravity. That overwhelming feeling that spins in your head, grabs you by the throat, but also more predominantly elevates within the pits of your stomach. An unavoidable, great sadness as we leave Greece once again.
I have always had this feeling (we all do in such circumstances), leaving the Greek side of our family, our other home, heading back to our life in England. We visit Athens at least once a year, England is where the regular day job is, the other family, the less severe financial crisis. There is very little stopping us quenching our thirst to just get up and leave England to live in Greece – nothing of course except for those huge factors. That feeling of almighty sadness then remains whenever we embark on the journey from the heat to the rain. I felt it whenever I had to leave my then wife at the airport whenever we visited in the days when we lived those fifteen hundreds miles apart. We both did. And we do, though thankfully we can travel to the other home together, along with our little daughter and unborn son. We’ll be back, Greece, very soon. To experience all the addictive wonders you offer – including that emotional gravity.
So as I sit on the plane something thousand feet in the air, I took the opportunity to just write. This is a fourish hour fight, give or take some head-wind and other weather-type conditions, so I won’t be churning out a novel. But perhaps I should be typing out the equivalent word count, given the seven day hiatus, wherein not one single website post was written. The last write-up was the train shenanigans last Thursday. I am entitled to my vacation time as much as the rest of you. But finding the time to just simply sit and write is not always that forthcoming. It is something of a vacational paradox to exclaim I was just too busy relaxing to have the time to do the thing I love. Why would I write when I am sucking the very life out of a biscotto topped, caramel drenched chocolate milkshake, while the sun shimmers across my face so I can barely open my eyes anyway. That and ninety-nine other Greek adventures. Most of which, as my wife’s photography will demonstrate, included a hefty amount of food and drink. It is fair to say I pigged out beyond your everyday holiday indulgence. I ought to have been counting the calories I was consuming as well as the words on the page I was not producing.
Believe me I wanted to write. During last year’s visit to Athens I wrote and published a lot, including a piece on my thoughts as I finished reading the book Gone Girl. This year I am writing this, but not reading anything, let alone watching any movies. It was a terrific week away though, always is. I looked out my plane window and wondered where we were in terms of country-seen-from-afar. I guessed Belgium, judging by how far we had been sitting in those crammed seats. I’d only had one airplane coffee, I was doing very well. I was tempted to look at the satellite maps on my phone, that would confirm our current location. I was too curious to not know now. My guess was Bruges. I was wrong. Belgium, yes, but only just crossing the eastern border at that time. Like my recent flow of writing, I was miles off. Fear not, with awards season kicking off officially very shortly I intend to be right back on track by then. Just thought I would check-in in case you were wondering where I was.
