Soon, then, the travelling will stop.
After more than two years of incessant shuttling in between a distant home and a distant workplace, the peripatetic man will be forced to grind to a halt, catch breath, and look upon the environment in its astonishing, unfamiliar stasis.
It will take a while for the accustomed kaleidoscope of events to slow down and assume a more predictable pace. It is a lesson for the mind as well as the eye. No longer will fields of sheep or cows rush past at a hundred miles an hour; no more will the hurtling desperation to catch this train or that supercede whatever beauty or interest I might otherwise be absorbing.
When events accrue with such rapidity - as they do when spending most of life travelling to or from somewhere and never seeming to arrive - the tendency is to ignore almost everything. This advertising hoarding, that irate man, the greenish, trilling pigeon staking its existence on being able to navigate a safe passage through the mad stagger of innumerable human feet.
There is much to re-learn: it is not a crime to stand quietly and observe whatever is unfolding in front of the eyes, even if it is not momentous in its significance. It will take a while for the idea of slowness to cease being a surprise; a while before the appreciation of the mundane and everyday occurrence re-emerges.
I long for the moment when I am officially told: this is the hour of your redundancy. For more than being made redundant from this job or that, I am being presented with the leaving gift of my own eyes, own ears, and own internal clock marking out real time, that I handed over to my employer when I agreed to become such an insane, blind pendulum, swinging up and down the country for the hell of it.
As my eyes and brain apply the decelerator, so will in time my body become more comfortable with the idea of existing at low speed. No longer is there the need to sprint from one side of the road to the other as though pursued by the characters from a nightmare made flesh; no need to respond to every text message within 30 seconds; no need to swallow food as though it's the last bite in the whole of humanity.
In ten days, a more sedate life will begin - that is the theory, anyway. Discipline and difficulty lie ahead in dousing the urges that would have me complete n tasks simultaneously. Such hard steps are required, however, if I am ever to lift the fog of confusion and haywire activity that has attenuated all things of interest and vibrancy.
