Home is a moving vehicle

We walk into the controlled climate of a giant shopping centre.


The entire mall is covered in fairy lights. A red- and white-striped signpost cheerily points us towards Santa. Soft clothes, perfectly clean, seem glued on to plastic abstracts of the human form. Things, endless things, surround us.

The colours and smells are overwhelming and I am overcome with the urge to spend money.

My wallet contains four dollars and a few Quetzal, but even if it were full I would be unable to hand it over, paralysed as I am by this incredible shinyness, this impossible choice, the enticements of the advertisements and the lighting confusing me. I am bedazzled to such an extent that I simply follow my friends, wide eyed and silent, an idiot's smile belying my incredulousness.

I may still be in Guatemala City, but in this moment I realise the enormity of the gap between where I am and where I was.

Perspectives contract a huge, incomprehensible world into something small enough to be seen through your own, personal window. Most people spend a lot of their lives looking through the same window again and again, literally and figuratively, because that is what creates solidarity, that is what begets security. That is what makes it easy to do whatever they do; when they decide to look, they know what they will see.

In some ways I wish that would satisfy me. I could look out of my window and feel comfortable. But for whatever reason I was born into this body, a vehicle with an insatiable desire to move. My little eyeholes and my clamouring mind need constant change.

Perhaps this is why I enjoy bus journeys so much. The trouble is, when your window moves so much, a society that has previously seemed so logical can become a virtual reality, a shadowy vista on an endless road. And one day, you look back... and the concrete of a previous life is just candy canes and bottled smells, processed cheese and flimsy, pointless garments.

I feel left behind, in a sense. Step off the gravy train and the engine still chugs. Without realising it, I have signed myself out of that world… and not yet found another to sign myself into. Am I looking for something? Or am I just wandering aimlessly, the eternal fool, destined one day to return to a world that has moved far from my comprehension? These are the questions that walk circles in my head.


At the end of the day, although I may feel longing for that home I once had back in England, how many times can I say, "I live here now," before it begins to become true? And when my search for 'realness' over this side of the Atlantic means I meet such a huge concentration of people whom I truly understand, and who truly understand me, then perhaps at some point I do need to consider which world forms the best fit.


At some point, time became more valuable than money. With that choice, my windowframe collapsed. I think about my enormous, past collection of belongings... and I cannot remember where it all went.