THIS is a series from the desk of AVM.
A scrap, a shift, a sensation - a link between that of old felt anew. THIS, dear reader, is for you.
#4
To get to the airport, one must drive through the Mendips. They have goats there, they lie sleepily as though on a hammock in a quiet garden, not hanging off the edge of Somerset’s sheerest drop. I am reminded - it is just me here now, and will be for a while - of something a dear friend and reader once said, of my penchant for scaling the heights of far-flung places alone and at speed - intrepid, like the mountain goat.
There is much which is anomalous about the travel experience. You wear things you don’t usually, sneak eggs wrapped in foil, buy your coffee from chainbucks, douse yourself in duty free perfume and stuff your bag’s side pockets with unfamiliar toiletries from the big Boots on the other side of security.
As you’ll soon hear on #1 of A Peeling, the AVM podcast, interest in the behaviour of the successful great & creative good is baked into the human psyche. Once upon a not so distant time the holiday season was heralded by lit chicks posting Joan Didion’s packing list.
By now, appetite has grown; we don’t just want to know how many leotards were taken on a trip to meet the Manson Family, we want names, details, a list of supplements exacted to the milligram. In other words, evidence of commitment to the bit, how to get it - whether it be pursuit, calling or lifestyle.
On Friday night, I wrote a list of my own. The following morning, I packed it all into a black, Eastpak travelpak, pleased at its contrast blue zips, and the fact that it had space for all items detailed above. Even the writing case, even the resistance band. Since early October, I have been living out of small bags, sanding down my attachment to things generally, waiting for a new perch to reveal itself like a sword in the stone. Great luck with the former, not much on the latter. And yet…
Remember when I said ‘BIG FREEDOM COMING SOON’? Yeah, I meant that. What if the perch was within me all this time? Laying flat atop my solar plexus, neatly folded like an origami swan. Dear readers, stay tuned as this solitary soul soars. Whatever I find will be yours to delight in. Observations, overhearings, the lives of others. Big, small, absurd and quotidian, all will wing their way back to you.
AVM travel season is upon us, at the end of WORK month no less (no coincidence). After my fair share of failed professional and personal projects, hopes raised and dashed, of some things I can be certain - the existence of great beauty, marbled magnificence, seas of toe-tickling warmth. The importance of following the line of creativity, of doing it a n y w a y.
It seems wrong to give up and bemoan the state of things, whilst refusing to check out other states, examine their things. You know the one about running into the same brick wall over and over and expecting it to turn into a trap door being a sure sign of sado-madness? Mad, perhaos. And no stranger to pain, but intrepid and curious too. Watch me spin some yarns from a different kinda wool. It’s time for this G.O.A.T to return to the mountain.
I kneel and offer you my word on a wing.
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Backing the mountain goat to find hammocks on hummocks and cannot wait for the yarns ♥️
Although you are well advanced in your travels now, I am only at the beginning of your journey and full of excitement about what's to come...