I gave chase in a plane.

"In a night 200,000 years can pass, time moving only in our minds. The steady marking of the seasons, the land well-loved and always changing, continues outside, while inside the light years revolve us under different skies. [...] My own heart, like this wild place, has never been visited, and I do not know whether it could sustain life. In an effort to find out I am searching for a dancer who may or may not exist, though I was never conscious of beginning this journey. Only in the course of it I have realized its true aim. When I left England I thought I was running away. Running away from uncertainty and confusion but most of all running away from myself. I thought I might become someone else in time, grafted on to something better and stronger. And then I saw that the running away was a running towards. An effort to catch up with my fleet-footed self, living another life in a different way. I gave chase in a ship, but others make the journey without moving at all. Whenever someone's eyes glaze over, you have lost them. They are as far from you as if their body were carried at the speed of light beyond the compass of the world. [...] The journey is not linear, it is always back and forth, denying the calendar, the wrinkles and lines of the body. The self is not contained in any moment or any place, but it is only in the intersection of moment and place that the self might, for a moment, be seen vanishing through a door, which disappears at once".

Sometimes, only sometimes, it is easier to quote someone else's brilliant train of thought than to conjure up one's own. Chances are I have made well over 5000 scrupulous attempts in my lifetime to come up with a simple paragraph to narrate my exact frame of mind, but all too often, the initial idea slips through the floorboards of my brain before my pen has time to translate. Thank you Jeanette Winterson for saving me from any more failed attempts today (the above excerpt was taken without permission from J. Winterson's 'Sexing the Cherry'). I will probably try again tomorrow. With that said, someone told me recently that it is okay to write a piece starting from the end and working towards the start in order to overcome fear of failure. Back to Ms. Winterson-- this is just one excerpt out of many underlined in the book that has become weathered with rain, children and travel. As previously mentioned in another post, the choosing of literature for this journey was the most difficult part of leaving. Now that I am here, I have been quite satisfied with the selection.

Devendra Banhart has been accompanying me on my daily outings and errands. As one of his appropriately titled album name suggests, I have been "Rejoicing in the Hands" of this man. Brilliant. Yesterday, Devendra and I took a train to the Haup Banhof, or Main Station in Zurich to explore and fill a few rolls of film. I wandered aimlessly, stopping along canals to sip an espresso here and an espresso there, read my coveted PV (Paris Vogue) on the pier, and take pictures of the birds on and above Lake Zurich. It was a pleasant day and at one point I was sitting at an Illy bar writing on a yellow legal pad when I noticed two couples beside me on a double date. I continued to watch them all the while thinking of all the first dates that take place in similar environments to the haunt where I sat, (i.e. Fresh and Cafe 22) and laughed. I noticed that the one couple, old hats in their relationship were so enraptured with each other, they were ignoring the couple who were obviously on their first date. I sat sipping and watching, enlightened by the fact that nervousness translates, regardless of the language barrier. My laughing stopped short when I realized that if their unrest was obvious to me, then my own unease was recognizable to them. That sobered me instantly and made me miss the familiarity of my own neighborhood haunt, Bar Italia. I am sick of being invisible here, time to come home.

To be frank, I fled Winnipeg bidding a few demons adieu and sincerely looked forward to becoming a ghost in Switzerland. As always, my ship of a brain dropped anchor on the heart of my well hidden unhappiness about four hours after settling in to my new surroundings leaving me four weeks to sort out the wreckage. Land ho, my mind is finally clear and I am ready to set my sails for home.

"The house is empty now, but it was there, dangling over dinner, illuminated by conversation and rich in the juices of a wild duck, that I noticed a woman whose face was a sea voyage I had not the courage to attempt" (J. Winterson, ibid).

If I can pray for anything, it is that I come home with the face of a sea voyage, weathered and satisfied with my decision to return to the mother land at long last. I am coming, I am coming.

Adieu, Switzerland. Hello, demons of my own doing. I am coming home.
Frances.