I would want to be with someone for a long while and do really fun, impulsive and spontaneous things with them around the world before settling in a house. Maybe we wouldn’t even need to settle in one place. Everywhere we would go would be our home. We would have friends all over the globe. We would follow spring and summer and pick fruits and get by minimally, eat from the earth or from street vendors, rent leases for a few months or maybe a year in Istanbul first, then Budapest, Vienna, Prague. Amsterdam then Paris then Barcelona.
We’d have a painted van. Every person we meet could leave a sentence about themselves. Inside would be a nest of many pillows and blankets. We could do our laundry at forgotten streams in forests and ask the wind to dry it. From each place we’d collect what we both think embodies it best, then keep it in our van to decorate our next home with. Sometimes, instead of staying under a roof we’d drive out into the countryside, park the van and lay out a blanket under the open, starry sky and fall asleep under Summer’s spell. We would wake up with the sun and the fluttering butterflies and the birds and it would be just us, standing in the middle of a field dotted with flowers and obscure trees and we would be in love.
We’d send hand-made postcards to our friends. The Traveling Lovers. Our cameras would never leave our sides. We’d take pictures with strangers and pretend to own stray cats. Dance in the brightly lit alleyways of ancient cities at four a.m. Put flowers in mailboxes. Paint ourselves on abandoned buildings. Eat sweets on grand stoops. People watch everywhere. Leave our love letters in decrepit, untouched library books. We’d try every cup of coffee from every cafe in Paris. Have heart to hearts with drunken teenagers and 20-somethings like us off the street. Interview random people and jot down bits and pieces of their life. Find the place in the world we love the least. Throw public birthday parties for ourselves and invite passing strangers, even if it isn’t our birthdays. We’d write improvised children stories by using the drawings of children at the park, then set up a make-shift stage at sunset and read it to them on the soft grass.
We’d jump in puddles and cloud watch on mountains. Leave potted flowers in unconventional places. Sleep on beaches and count shooting stars before we sleep. Rent a boat and pretend to be sea-gypsies for a day. We’d exchange fortunes for a statement from each patron of their purpose on earth, bind it in a make-shift book and leave it on a bench at a train station.
We’d have no destination. The destination would never be important. All we needed was ourselves, our love and the ground beneath us (unless we were in the air flying or swimming). All we would need was that precise moment. A breath of fresh air, a gaze into the sky. We’d sit under big umbrellas in a rainstorm and read books. Pretend to be famous authors and give inspirational speeches in really crowded places.
When we get tired, we’d board a train that would travel for days, roll up in each others’ arms and fall asleep with the fantastic memories of the past few days and the uncertainty of the wonders that would come the next. We would wake up in a different town every time and flip a coin to decide whether or not to disembark or to keep on riding.
We’d work at vineyards for free just until we’ve earned one free bottle of wine. We’d keep those in the van, too. And we’d follow the cycle of the moon and have wine under its light. We could spend our summers in Norway or Sweden and take short naps in the short amount of time the sun is gone. In these northern cities, it would be daylight all the time. We’d photograph our shadows as it moves across the ground. We’d dance our way through White Night Festivals in St. Petersburg. We would make up festivals in small towns and ask others to join us. We would find the one place in the world where light does not pollute the sky and gaze into it throughout the night. We’d play music with the dancing Northern Lights. Become part of a traveling band of musicians or circus folk and talk about the troubles of elsewhere, and then laugh because we are here.
Take boats to tiny islands and bury treasure. Catch fresh fish and grill them on hot rocks. Watch the sunrise on the shore of eastern Panama and then the sunset in the west. Spend our days in shorts and sundresses in Medellin, Colombia, the Land of Eternal Spring-time.
ah, must finish this later.
◖◗ 