Flying home

[Written on my phone on the plane home from Cairo.]

This evening will be my first in England this year.

Home.

We each have a different resting point between curiosity and comfort. Certainly my equilibrium sits further on the curiosity side than many people I know. It’s a position of balance only I can recognise, and yet it’s also just a theory, based on too many assumptions.

Free of friction.

I sit aboard a plane, falling to the ground. Although, as it’s controlled and predicted, we prefer to describe it as landing.

My stomach churns. It seems to rise and fall inside of me carried by the planes momentum. Yet this sensation, twisting and tumbling, can be falsified with the power of my mind.

It’s not a simple balance between curiosity and comfort. There are many forms of curiosity – that which you experience yourself by watching, that you discover by doing and that of reaching for the encyclopedia. There are similarly many forms of comfort. Luxurious surroundings make you feel physically comfortable. A deep mattress and warmth. Family and friends give another type of comfort, one of belonging and security of place within a heavily populated world. Religion and traditions give comfort, in the same way as habits – like taking the same route to work.

Sometimes curiosity leads to danger and exhaustion. Sometimes its allure commands attention that should be allocated to responsibilities.

But too much comfort too can be damaging. Stagnation, obesity, taking our privileges for granted.

Why travel? Why seek the world?

Why return to a place called home and the arms of those with love for you?

It’s a tumbling feeling. Freewheeling through life, trying to find a grip.

I wake in Cairo. I fly, and I tumble. Searching to satisfy this curiosity, desperate for the comfort of belonging. For a fleeting moment I land.

And then, when I’ve taken that deep breath and regained my composure, I’ll be off again. Chasing a dream.

Photos: Taken at Hathor’s Temple, Dendara.

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