February 9th, 2015

 It’s more difficult now. I don’t suppose I can pretend to be nothing more than a foolish boy anymore, hell bent on his own destruction. It used to be easy to convince myself that no one loved me … gradually I had to let go of that notion. I learned to accept that I was too deserving of love as anyone else.

It’s been a while since I’ve written to you hasn’t it?

Time has passed, as is inevitable. I don’t really know what struck me that I should write again. Maybe it was somewhere in the low rolling fog over the high mountaintops through which I ride. Past tea plantations, rice fields, scheeols with children at play, while a light slanted rain plays across the dense forestry.

Sri Lanka.

Really, I’m being paid to write now. I hate it in a way. For so long at the onset of these little games I’d play on paper with words mixed and jumbled as I pleased to make sense of things that didn’t – I never believed anyone would even mildly care. Certainly not relate, but that’s probably egotistical.

The same with travel. How foolish of me to take the two things that gave me the most solace and sense of personal adventure and commodify them in my personal economy.

Not that “The World’s 5^th Most Awe Inspiring Train Ride” isn’t a thrill and all but, something in the lure of it has lost it’s charm. Further, faster, and better equipped with less gut churning anxiety as to who I’ll be when I get there and what I’ll think of things I’ve seen once I’ve left.

That was a pretty epic waterfall maybe a meter away from my open window just now though, caught a bit of the spray.

A mother and her young daughter, sit across from me. The father lifted them through the window from the platform onto the crowded train. He waves to the daughter, and gives his wife a slight shake of the head, a wobble really with an unwavering, stoic gaze. In moments both began to sleep, their bags piled around them. Perhaps they will visit relatives, or the Father will be busy at work. I think they both will miss him.

The mountain people of Sri Lanka seem slightly different than their compatriates along the coast. 

Their jaws are set more firmly. Their faces, movements, the hair on the mans arms just near me now – they know the cold unlike the lowlying coast. That which had been a mist moments ago has turned into a heavy dense fog, and the view from my window shrinks around me in a thick shroud, light, but impenetrable.

I’ve grown less careless. Not entirely mind you, but some.

Now I think, oh she loves me and so I should do something about this or I shouldn’t do this because she does loves me. Before it would have been rare to set some other persons feelings before mine.

I saw someone ask recently, “What do you know of love?”

I declined to answer though because I do not think it would have been a popular or appropriate answer for that particular audience. It is sacrifice – that defines true, undying love.

In that sense I will either know the greatest of loves, or never at all.

The train is continuing for a few more hours now. I think sooner or later though, I should stop.