The Travellers Notebook

Open Travellers Notebook

Tonight was a sad night, it was sad not out of the things that make people usually sad, because I was laughing and chatting, like happy do. It was sad because as opened my little notebook to add something else to the many things I have added over this year I noticed there are only a few pages left.

This little notebook was initially a gathering of A5 blank recycled brown paper pages that someone thought looked good, got it produced for the masses, sent it to a shop, Helena passed by liked the way it look, took it home with her and early this year in Tenerife decided I should have it.

In the beginning I was quite confused really didn’t know what sort of things I should write, like if there was a right and wrong list. As the days passed by it became this notebook no one knows I have with me all the time. As the time passed by it started to contain a bit more, a piece of paper with tips for the Amsterdam girl trip we never looked at, the Asia odyssey I haven’t lived yet, a train ticket that reminds me I have been home and hugged my mum at least once this year, the memories of my Californian adventure, the right southern ticket for the wrong northern train, the Chevy road trips, the desert trip, my timeless artwork which will always look as if I did it 23 years ago, the San Francisco prose, the Seattle weekend, little quotes mixed up with dates, address, locations, the piece of napkin which story is unknown, it even knows my name in Arabic!

It is the cliché essence: “It has more than it meets the eye”. From the I don’t really know of Tenerife in January, to the I need some more pages in Progreso as I write.

I wish it was neverending, I wish I had more of this little notebooks pages. 

As It getting near its end, I write less and less, it’s a page I don’t want to turn, a book that I want to keep forever young as in it first days of life when I was walking about in Brighton daydreaming under the snow with the possibilities that the future secretly stored. I just don’t want it to be over, and yet I wish I had start it a 960 days ago.

The good thing about sadness, is that point of view based feeling at it’s best. The half a dozen empty pages I so want to hold on to make me sad I will have to put it down, but when I look back at all the things that precede those empty blank pages in a random unorganised chaotic order, it shows me not only all the stories I should of blooged about, but in its essence my very own 2011 best adventure book.

Las mujeres con la Dignidad Rebelde

And books, well books need a name, San Cristobal gave it the title “Las mujeres con la dignidade rebelde”, Shoreham-by-Sea the index “May be budget forces be with me”, 67 topes between Ocosing to Palenque and Madonna Inn men waterfall WC, made it to a few of the highlight of the contents, and the last few blank pages, well those could be just another random collection of the credits, but as those are already in the inside cover…. It will simply be as it has been… an odyssey to the unknown.