h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Yael, i am sitting here *finally* with tears running down my face, tears that needed to come out years back, i am absolutely at my wits end and considering all kinds of madness, my "lover"? (bloody big question mark!) has just left encore,i am seriously debating just running off anywhere, see Eye say if i get it together,then i find this:

***Hypothetically Speaking
-----------------------------------

If I had to leave -
if I absolutely had to
become an exile
in some beautiful foreign city
that will never be my own,
even when I know it -
what will I take with me?
Besides the obvious,
clothes and books and photo albums,
heirlooms, music CDs,
memories and tears and a decent winter coat,
what will I take?
A stone, maybe,
a small stone
to sit on my window sill
take in the rays of the sun,
same sun, but different,
dream of summer heat and white dust,
grasses dried to a crisp,
the silence brought by bright sunlight,
the joy of the first rain,
the sudden flurry of short-lived green,
the clear chill of cloudless winter nights,
the sound of Muezzins and loud conversation,
everything
everything.
Isn't it too much for a small stone
to represent?
So much homesickness
could bring you down.
But no,
English doesn't even have
the right word.
***

I have a box in my expo called "Shama'al", it's a dirty, horrid little desert, a bit like RL, with a burnt out sun struggling to shine, and two little kids in a rusty shack smiling despite it all, the gritty sandy wind howling round their necks...ho! Who knows just how abrasive the sandstorm can be, yo ho ho, the desert is NOT Lawrence of Arabia sand dunes,it's like a building site on a very bad hair day!It is made of bandages and real desert sand.

http://punk2junk.tux.nu/

I don't know where home is, i don't think i ever really had one. English maybe doesn't have the right word, no, closest is "in some foreign field", get into Rupert Brook big style, maybe Yeats also is my advice.

I am...at the edge, i may end up hitchiking and visiting you, be prepared...on the plus side i make the best hoummous on earth!!!!

And yes, i will bring a stone...maybe the one i picked up in Qatar, on the beach, with the hole in it, the twin to the one i eventually strung and sold on the greek island, which kept us fed for a week? Or maybe the shiny rock i found in africa, currently snuggling up to a cactus? Or the crystal that a friend gave me, which reminded me of another crystal that i gave to another friend, or maybe the petrified rock that abbi sent me...or...or...or...rock 'n role will never dye, as the tshirt said.

Keep writing, keep making people weep and think, but don't dissolve yourself too much is my advice, cathartic is good, therapeutic is great, but be careful not to end up wallowing, leave that for the hippos! It is a very difficult balance, i have many evil and frustrated cheeseboxes lurking, which i snarl at regularly, they serve a function which no one knows that's the bloody point ...oh well, it's healthier than bloody war isn't it?

keep on keeping on, my dear friend, shalom.





zdt *in very very weird mode*

Wow.




I don't really know what to say Terri...
Have to agree with the wise words on the 'Eye Say' thread though - running away won't solve anything. Wish I could help with all that stuff.
It's a bit different for me though, I never felt the need to run away, in fact it's pretty much the opposite. When I think about leaving (like when I wrote 'Hypothetically Speaking') I tend to think of it in terms of being _forced_ to leave, of exile... I do want to travel, I long to travel, all over the world (and I will some day, just you wait and see), but I'll always need to know I have a home to come back to. It's like-- have you read Wind in the Willows? There's a bit like that there. Makes me tear up every time.


I remember the Shamaal cheesebox, I think it's my favourite one on the site. Didn't see the kids in the tent though.


Thanks for the reply, Terri.