Sentimentality - doesn't it suck

Starting to move in the right direction to execute The Plan is doing nothing to quell the somewhat distracting yearning for the feelings only Being There can stir. Every other thought is of the jungle, of strange skies and unknown lurking beasts; of foods I’ve never tasted but can almost feel dissolving on my tongue, and a host of other things I have not time to share.

Fern Gully, a movie I haven’t seen for years, was on TV today and in the name of memory, my mom and I settled to watch it, complete with tea and toast. Just like we used to. I started out thinking, ‘Fuck, it’s SO well drawn, and so well put together. I love this thing’. But it was not long before the depiction of droplets of rain bouncing from the leaves, the sound of rain and of rainforest fauna, the mingling greens and browns, and the ‘hearing the forest’ energy of the film was all I heard and saw, and I longed to jump right in, like in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. If only.

Fresh pineapple butchery in my kitchen made me long to walk the streets of Kuching for the best pineapple in the world, served in smiling hunks by grinning elders outside every temple.

Yesterday, Lenny Henry battled on the screen with inhabiting the Amazon rainforest, fearful of nocturnal senses that I loved – the noises in the enveloping darkness thicker than anything you’ve ever known, and not knowing what’s sharing space with you. And speaking to a friend who thinks I’m crazy, but indomitable, I realised how wrong she was; far from being afraid of travel, a sense which I would have to conquer, naturally, I am truly comforted by the very act of going.

It’s strange to realise with certainty that you feel safest, feel most real, when unsettled in unfamiliar plains.