All my closing thoughts seem inadequate or overly sentimental – I remember flying home, arriving at the Victoria International airport, seeing my parents, driving back along the highway and entering the house I had called home for so long. I foresaw the unfolding of all the events in my imagination with a certainty uncharacteristic of life. There were minor variations, of course: hedges trimmed, new music on the radio, new pictures hanging on the walls, etc. They were all indicative of time passing but time that I didn’t see. Along with the ever-changing flow of life was a new faith in the genuineness of its transformation. There is a new vibrancy and clarity that accompany each relationship in my life. My time is no longer dragged down by the boredom that lingered before I left. The bustle of walking on different soils has eroded away the veil of presumptuous complacency and re-invigorated my dulling senses.

I have, as we are all beholden to do, begun the building of a grand temple: it is blind to the transience of the thick Roman stones of Nimes’s Arena, hidden from the gazing eyes that marvel at the steel of some Parisian tower; stronger than the rock that is the foundation of all Scottish castles and subtler than all the manufactured perfumes in Grasse. It will be more beautiful than the morning sun reflected off the warm ochre of artist’s studios in south France, more fulfilling than the cold water of an unearthly spring and more patient than the snow-peaked mountains of the Pyrenees. It will be a divine romance more intense than Claudel’s Waltz and a mystery more potent than the standing stones of the Salisbury plane. And it will be my home.

Tags: travel