I wrote this 50 hours ago...now I'm in heaven
Trip Start
Sep 14, 2011
1
17
43
Trip End
Aug 03, 2012
Yasawa Island, Yasawa Islands, Fiji
Thursday, November 10, 2011
My last football game and the first I can understand. Sat in my last bar and my first all American Cheeseburger (I made a half-baked attempt at one in Mill Valley…this is a solo mission). Driving through LA this evening on a packed and chilly bus, watching the sun slowly turn the whole place 'Dirty Sherbet Sunset Pink' (Farrow & Ball will be banging down my door to get my colour naming skills – mark my words), was my perfect chance to begin the reflection on the last two months. I sat back and tried to piece together my journey. I stumbled at the first hurdle, timings. Only two months, I have been telling people three months and genuinely believing that is how long I have been on the road. Two down, eight to go. So I began to think about September and how it felt arriving in New York. The same feeling hit me. I am tired. I am sore. I am happy…I am a little sticky and gross around the edges and this time however I appear to have gained around 7 lbs…can’t work out why, is it the food?
Here in another massive and even less inspiring international airport I feel so different to how I felt when leaving the UK. I am stronger in my mind about what I am doing. This is without a doubt the single best decision I have ever made. FACT. I am lighter in my step as I have confidence in what I am doing but heavier in my heart as I have realised how quickly this whole wonderful experience will dart past me and I already have foggy patches that I am struggling to bring back into focus. Did I really go to Denver for 5 hours, or was that just a dream?
America was a beautiful surprise for me, I am hypnotised by it all. I imagined a tolerance from me for the over-sincerity and the possible narrowed minded nature I assumed I’d find and I thought there would be an overriding ambivalence to my attitude to the country. What I have found is that I have a cotton candy pink, massive school girl crush on this place. I imagine I could be swept off my feet by this huge hunk of a country and we’d live happily in a log cabin with a gas guzzling 5 litre engine truck and a dog, got to have a dog over here. Mr America (there is very very little that is feminine about this country or feminist in a lot of places) would allow me to explore his land further and further and in doing so I imagine this crush I have will turn into love. If only the visa people thought this way.
The memories will be the hardest thing for me to filter accurately. I am already struggling with state orders and people’s names and where I stayed. This vanity of the "Bron -a-Blog" is a public narration of what I have done. It is commentary and company for me. In the real world I have pen and paper and reading through the mixture of gushing and ranting I can make out an emotional pattern of how things affected me and I can patch together a time line of places and people. The time here has been not just a chance to explore new friendships and engage with wonderfully odd people it has also been a chance to look back at who I have met in my past, review it and to celebrate it all. Good and bad.
Today I enjoyed remembering the dancing couple in Cambria who had such distinct class, I remembered the guitarist with jet black eyes in the band and the walls heaving in stuffed animals. I remembered the gung ho! attitude of the campest flight attendants on South West Airlines who swaggered up the aisle while we basically free fell into Las Vegas. I remember the shivering Home Coming Queen wanna be’s in Los Pueblos in next to nothing, backless, side less, man-made fibre dresses, waving with gritted smiles as they drove past the crowds, perched on the backs of convertible muscle-cars driven by guys who were once High School gods and Home Coming Kings in the 70’s – all now fat and still drunk. I remember the shouting on the buses and the rallying nature of everyone who travelled through the nights together. I remember the fear I had and the panic of New Orleans and the hatred I had for myself in possibly letting down someone as venerable as the women in my hostel. I remember the ease and comfort of my first home cooked meal in the woods in contrast; I remember the stillness of porches at night and the sound of streams and crickets. I remember being so close to the passing planes in San Diego on top of the hill that you felt you could touch the jets as the shot past and knocked you sideways. I remember lights, sideways, steam, fog, rain, sunshine and Fro- Yo. I remember with fondness the people I have met and now call friends I will treasure. I will never forget the colours or the smalls of this vast continent.
I also remember dick heads and racists and losers and perverts and bigots and liars and all the other shits too. I can vividly recall rotten vegetable patches stretching for miles, industrial estates, drug pushers, Meth heads, blood, spit, piss and cement – seas of it but they are so easily forgotten when you are lucky enough to experience real human kindness.
The places have also been so different, from the magical spirit of New York to the slow warmth of the Blue Mountains. Then down to the grit of Mississippi and the whirl of New Orleans, all fed by that massive dangerous, powerful river. I hated the neon and the filth in Vegas and Memphis, I shut myself away from the obliteration of the various downtown’s and the waifs and stays. I then had each time, a strange draw to be part of it and lapped it all up with equal measures of self-disgust and pride. I didn’t dive in as much as I would have wanted at times, but I always had a tiny voice saying “don’t be daft, keep safe tonight Miss. Rolls, to bed with you” which is a first. I do not regret this, no regrets. I had long mornings on my own on the streets, running through strange neighbourhoods and river banks while the world got over the night before. The experience gave me whole cities all to myself and that I think is worth every penny not spent the night before. Please, do not get me wrong, I have been no angel, just a bit of balance and measure.
I have walked under frozen waterfalls, scaled rocks, perched on cliffs, walked in wet sand and waded through woods of redwood trees. I have run down side walks at 2am my heart bounding in my mouth, sat still on benches in the sun, basking. I have seen bright stars and blood shot eyes. I have heard so very much soothing laughter and I have woken up to my own sobs.
So, now what? From here I fly into Fiji and then straight out on a boat for 5 hours to the Yasawa Islands to sleep of the last two months battering on my body and soul and regroup (too American?). There is however an alarming amount of peroxide headed, wide eyed girls here in “Just Married’” bejewelled T Shirts – best to avoid them. I may have been here for a while, but my English sense of cynicism is still intact. If they are honeymooning they will not need my potty mouth around, or my new hobby – Jilly Cooper – Giddy the fuck up and bring it on!
