Good. I don’t want to gather any fucking moss. Ugh, lately I’ve felt trapped by my life and due to a family situation and my middle class poverty that I can’t do shit about it. From the first time I stepped into another country as a child, I knew the travel bug had bit me and there was no turning back. Interestingly enough, years later a legitimate travel bug bit me while sleeping in a Scottish hostel, but that’s another story. When I was 18 I went to Montreal with my parents and some other family. This wasn’t my first venture out of the US but a particularly important one in the shaping of who I am today.
We rented a 200 year old stone cottage outside Montreal with no television. Instead of being your typical surly, asshole teenager, I loved it. I loved living like I was a local. I loved no one knowing who I was or what I was there to do because I didn’t know those things either. I could be whomever in a place where no one knew who I was before. We traveled into Old Montreal for the afternoon. It was sunny and August and although my family makes its presence known with our boisterously loud voices and characteristically American, heavy footed gait, I felt like I was all alone and took everything in. I even wandered off in the outdoor market for a while and my parents didn’t even notice. I loved that. I had lunch at an outdoor café and that is where I met my idol.
When college admission boards and employers ask you, “Who is one person who shaped you?” Most people say their Grandparents, parents, a former boss, an ill relative who really taught you something about hard work. You know who shaped me? A waiter in a Montreal café who taught me how wasteful hard work can be. I don’t remember his name and the way I picture his face is probably wrong but the impression that he made is quite clear.
He was an American who had traveled the whole world by waiting tables. He was in his early 20s and had left after high school graduation in a bid to see the world, so he did. He had put down no roots. He made friends with his housemates in hostels, worked tables to cover the bare minimum, and got an insider’s pass to the secret world in each city he lived. He was able to do all this because he didn’t fret about spreadsheets, labor distribution, and literature reviews. His paycheck was cash, his home was the hostel with an empty bed, and his family were the people he met along the way. I knew then that this was the life that I wanted.
I met a girl while I was traveling with a friend. She was traveling on her own, visiting all of the tiny islands around Ireland after trekking through Europe. She had come there from Australia to spend 3-months traveling before she started work in the London theater world as a costumer. It still boggles my mind that she could be so independent and fearless.
Unfortunately, right around when I met worldly café boy, my life changed without my input.
I don’t blame my family’s situation on anyone. I don’t think illness is a curse from God and I don’t think the inability of hardship to lessen is a sign God doesn’t care. I think it is what it is. I think the plague on humanity isn’t disease but a need to lay blame and point fingers. I am who I am, good or bad, not because of how someone slighted me or if my parents spanked me. I’m Dani, because I want to be. I try to change the parts I don’t like and I try to improve on the things I do. The part of me that thinks things sometimes suck is the part of me that doesn’t want to realize that I can never be happy with one foot in my world at home and one foot always looking for the next step. My fix is the next chance to be someone else, somewhere else. I know that I can’t be Vivienne (my alias) who sleeps under the arbors in the Tuileries in Paris because I have another calling. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to totally put both feet on the ground and suck it up and get used to my 9-5 cube, and that’s ok. I think that if I did resign myself to the fact that this “ordinary” life isn’t temporary, I’d lose a little bit of that spark that makes me, me.
I recently spoke with a friend who shares similar views on travel as I do. I told her I wanted to up and move and wait tables in Barcelona. While she would also love to be able to do that, we can’t. We can’t pick up and start over in a million lives because then we’d never truly be happy or settled. While I want to always be moving, never gathering moss, I don’t want to vanish. So for now, I know I won't be able to move to Inverness and teach the banjo (no I don't know who to play the banjo) but I will forge ahead with this life in Boston where a thousand more nights of adventure await. The million gifts that travel has given me are each still inside my head waiting to be plucked when I need a little extra boost. Until my next trip I can be thankful that I am able to grow from some really amazing experiences both at home and away. Like everything else I said, it isn’t good, it isn’t bad, it just is. Besides, I’m too clumsy to waitress.
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