writing choices: academic, non-academic, academic…? hm…..

One hour of waiting for my endlessly kind supervisor left me a legitimate excuse to indulge in some non-academic writing, which I have not dare do for weeks now. Every time I’m tempted to, I feel all guilty because I should be doing academic work and I go back to staring at an empty screen or reading books and taking notes.

The following was inspired by the song I have been listening to ALL day : The Be Good Tanyas – Littlest Bird, and especially by these lines:

I love you so dearly, I love you so clearly,

I wake you up in the morning so early

just to tell you I got the wandering blues

and I’m gonna quit these rambling ways

one of these days

soon 

So what came out is still short and completely unedited, but it might be the beginning of a story:

With the days getting longer, I felt the time getting nearer when it would happen again.

It started while I was standing in the warm air of an evening in early summer, breathing in the tantalizing hint of a barbecue over a wooden fire, of flowers blooming in colourful abandon in every garden around me, and feeling the rays of the evening sun on my still pale face and bare arms. And suddenly I could feel the first tendrils of longing uncurl inside me as the wanderlust slowly awakened. It had been hibernating only, although I had been determined to let it die with the end of the last summer, with my promise to quit my rambling ways, and yet… here it was. Alive. Sleepy still, but probably not for long. While one part of me already reveled in greedy anticipation of the adventures to come, I tried to gain control again. ‘Stop it!’ I told myself sternly. ‘You promised. Less than six months ago you promised your husband you wouldn’t start wandering again.’ It didn’t help much. I tend not to listen to myself.