Oh, thou art fairer than the evening air/ Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars

Life Lessons from a duck

The stairs leading from one square on campus to another are usually full of students either rushing to class, or nowhere in particular, or people sitting around smoking.

This is the last week of term, so the stairs are unusually crowd-free.

Anyway.

Today.

I noticed a lady mallard at the foot of the stairs. She awkwardly waddled up each one. Twenty-eight torturous, slow waddles later, she was at the top of the stairs. I know she didn't have broken wings because as I watched, amazed, she was then alarmed by a group of undergraduates running around in the upper square and took wing. Quickly and effortlessly.

I thought:

Why did you do that?!

And then I thought:

That is what someone who is looking at me from the outside might think.

Am I shuffling when I could be flying?

Maybe.

Or maybe, even though she knew she could fly, Ms. Mallard needs to do something slowly and tortuously? She wants to learn to walk better? She just likes climbing stairs even though she's not exactly designed to do it? Maybe she doesn't give a fig about what she's designed to do, and just wanted to see whether she could.

Am I doing that?

Maybe.

Questions to nobody in particular, which everyone should be able to answer

Who are you?

Why are you here?

What do you want?

Where are you going?

When I think about the essentials that I'd like to know, I think of these.

And I often wonder if I've missed a question, or even a whole way of defining what is important.

A few weeks ago someone on my Facebook said that they'd love to ask random strangers the most random questions - similar to the one's above - and especially on foreign soil.

I've had plenty of beautiful conversations with beautiful strangers but I've never initiated one by asking someone, out of the blue, what they most wanted out of life.

For no particular reason except to indulge my curiosity, I'd like to be able to do that enough to see patterns. Here's one that I think I might see: People who answer might be divided into three:

People who answer with the most truthful answer they know.

People who answer with a deflection: A giggle, a retort, another question (Who are you and why the fuck do you want to know springs to mind).

People who answer very fast, with the palm of their hand making sharp contact with your face.

I also hypothesize that the third group would be very small indeed.

People are so lonely, a random question like that might evoke a 3-hour narrative.

For the last few weeks, with my Dad's illness (again, again, AGAIN), a difficult schedule at work, the end of the PhD, and trying to figure out what my next steps are going to be, I've been feeling a little under siege. I've consciously viewed this time as a challenge, and tried to give as much as I can to the different aspects of my life which require care and attention. To me this means: staying up to date and involved with my Dad's state of health, and trying to be present to all the emotions that get stirred by the effort. Sadness, anger, anxiety. Without getting completely swept away by their current. Staying on top of work. I did not, for instance, take any leave during my trip home, and managed to submit a 'practice' proposal during the week, and revise a book proposal. Giving attention to my Mum, giving attention to my relationship.

I've sustained this for a few weeks, but it's catching up with me steadily.

No work has exited my laptop for 3 days, for example, and I've most of these three days lolling in bed. I've snapped at the Man, and at my Mother, and felt and felt and felt incredibly sad. all. the. time.

Slowly, I've tried to climb out of this. I've been thinking a lot about some of the amazing things that have happened to me over the past few years. Random memories, old dreams, chance encounters that sparked sudden changes, blessings in disguise, 'mistakes' ... And it struck me (again) how responsive the Universe can seem. Even when - especially when - we feel stuck in a 'bad' place. Every moment, it seems, the path underneath is unfolding, and bringing us what we need in order to get to a better place. The day before yesterday, I was in the shower early in the morning. I thought I would go to the office but I just couldn't move. I thought a shower would wake me up, refresh me. As I stood there I suddenly got incredibly impatient with myself. I felt like taking my insides by the shoulders, and shaking them hard, making them get up and move. I wondered what on earth I need in order to get through this time and get through it well. Not just live past it. It crossed my mind to get back into yoga, or meditation.

Half an hour later, I went downstairs to get a cup of coffee, and noticed that our mail had arrived through the door. Underneath an electricity bill (groan), a Virgin Media envelope (shred) and a pamphlet advertising Pizza Hut home delivery (toss), was a little scrap of paper, advertising, on one side, yoga classes at the local yoga centre, for £8 an hour (hmmm) and an 8-week, free meditation course.

Thank you.

Notes from 30,000 feet

No, I'm not in the air. But since I so often am, I've often listed out things to love and hate about being in a jetplane. Most of the flights I take are longhaul. The most obvious thing to detest about this is the fact that I have the carbon footprint of a small African country. And offsetting is not the best option. Not flying is the best option. I'm obviously also subject to all the usual trials and tribulations of flying in 2012: queues, delays, no elbow-room in Economy, the sound of babies crying (jarring at the best of times, but particularly grating under conditions of sleep deprivation and mild anxiety). And oh yes, the anxiety. I love travel, but I feel it. I used to be a terrified flier as a child. This has become better with practice, but my heart still races through turbulence, and I often wonder what I'd do if someone randomly got up in the middle of a flight, brandished a gun and highjacked the f.ing plane.

But there are things to love too. And I really do love them.

Airports. Queues and whatever else notwithstanding, airports have a beautiful quality. I imagine seaports must have had a little of the same aura in the past. An aura of adventure, and purpose, and constant movement. Equal parts chance and destiny. Airports are paradise to people-watchers. There is every hue and tenor of human emotion and behaviour out in naked display. And the people! In a major hub like Heathrow or Dubai, the people just stun me. Beauties of all types, heights, colours and textures. Clichéd little national prejudice sits alongside constant surprise. There's the party of Indians travelling with a year's supply of finger-food. *insert eyeball roll here. But look there's a Middle-Eastern couple, kissing. (Yes. Like properly kissing in full view. Both in traditional dress. Wow.) Some clichés are beautiful, of course. Early morning flights to Zurich, anyone? Oh, the beauty of a room full of beautifully tailored business suits worn by beautiful Northern men. (Nevermind for a split second that they are all bankers, and most wear a gold band on their left hand.)

Random conversations.

This is possibly the best of the best of the best thing about travel, for me.

In the slipstream of mass, longhaul transit, the beauty of tiny chance encounters and conversations is amplified a thousand-fold. Some of the best conversations I've ever had have been at airports. With complete strangers whose faces and words I will never forget. You can't plan for that sort of thing. Just allow it to happen when it happens. And it will.

Once inside the airplane, what's not to love about curling up in your seat, sipping red wine and watching every single new release out there. I don't get to go to the cinema much (or at all) in my non-travel life. So I hog movies on planes. Sometimes I cry into my blanket. I have been known to forget myself once or twice and laugh out loud.

On my last flight I fell in love with Ryan Gosling, which was pretty damn special.

Eyeliner above Iran. Travelling to India, flying over Iran or Afghanistan is where I usually get up and transform myself from clean-faced (for travel) to suitably glossed over (for arrival). I love that despite being thousands of feet in the air, travelling at a ridiculous speed, in a metal tube full of strangers, tiny personal rituals will just continue unbroken.

Arrival. Tropical heat, familiar faces, a blazing sky. Crowds of different faces. The smell of Mumbai, the taxi rank at Heathrow, stepping onto the wooden floors of Copenhagen airport or seeing the absolutely unforgivably crystalline light of Italy. For the first time. For the second time. Seeing the face of someone who is about to become a friend, a lover, but for now, just another stranger at the airport.

From the moment a ticket is confirmed, to the moment you touchdown, you're inside the current of Life. Beautiful, strange, frightening, magical.

I think this is awesome.

A whiskey-drinker I used to know swirled his glass around and, listening to the sounds of the ice, called this one of the 'great sounds of the Earth'. Hearing him say that was one of the great sounds of the Earth for me. I've always loved sensual people. People who often remark on the sensation of colour, smell, texture, touch. The first Kiss may have drawn me to the Man, but hearing him remark, 'Look at all the wonderfulness of all the colours in there', in the middle of a supermarket vegetable aisle, welded me to him.

Some sensations that I have always loved:

The sight of young, green leaves. Especially when the sun shines through them.

The lace of bare winter branches against the horizon. Beautiful.

The scent of the bread aisle. When you're hungry, especially, but even when you're not.

Beautifully cut, drapey, stark-white tee-shirts. There is no look you can't accomplish against the canvas of a deadwhite jersey tee-shirt and jeans. You can go maharani, or Parisian, cute, sexy, both. You can go balletesque, or geeky, vampy, trashy, goth, whatever.

Silk blouses, silk dresses. The feel, the scent, the drape.

Epaulettes make me feel something... But I can't say what.

The golden light that fills the room at different times of the day, in different rooms. Every house I've ever lived in has had a different room that lights up at a different time. Walking into a room and stopping short to realise - this is the room, this is the time, this is the light - is one of the great joys of a new house.

Conversely, I'm often horrified by people who pass beautiful sights and sounds by without a second thought. One of the most beautiful sights in the town centre where I am right now is that of the full moon rising above the crazy-angled rooftops. A few times a year, the moon appears huge as it rises. A pale swathe on the horizon that slowly takes shape. And in a few hours, a beautiful silver globe hangs just out of reach. I walk down the road and stare and stare and stare. And crowds walk by me, in the direction of this beautiful, glittering thing, and their gaze never seems to lift for a single second.

Why?

How?