Dislocation by Tim Taylor

 

Three weeks, four weeks, sometimes five. Time for a place to become familiar and comfortable; not quite enough for it to feel like home. And that is just as well. When the call comes, there can be no sentimentality. Pack a bag and leave, never to return. That slice of my life is instantly discarded, prelude to a frantic journey to another town, another living space empty of memories, associations, friends. A few weeks to write those walls, those windows into my mind, to spread some essence of myself upon them, then the cycle will begin again.

              It had been going on so long, this procession of disconnected segments. There was no pattern to it, no linking threads that I could point to and say ‘that is my life.’ And I realised that only I could give it shape and meaning, provide a string on which to thread these beads of my existence. And so, at each new place, I bury something from the last: an object that had meaning, some words on what I did while I was there, directions on how to find the previous cache.

              I have a dream that one day there will be no call, that one of these random locations will become my home. And then, when I feel safe, I will uncover all these treasures, one by one, pull out the string that joins them, wrap it around myself, then I shall say ‘yes, this was my life.’

"Redland doorways" by Chris Bertram is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.