Back at "Riverbend" just in time to blow out the candle! And back to cleaning up the property which took a blow during the storm that hit it just a couple of days after I had left for Bali. The cleaning-up of the grey-green leaves of Australian gum trees after the stunningly bright colours of Bali is a fitting metaphor to describe my "Bali Blues".
Travelling is as much about leaving one place as it is about going to another, perhaps even more so. Leaving a place means not only to leave behind a lot of physical clutter but also freeing oneself from a lot of mental clutter. For twenty years, from 1965 to 1985, I relocated regularly from one place to another, from one country to the next, allowing no clutter, physical or mental, to accumulate.
Since 1985 I have lived in just two places, Canberra and "Riverbend", and it shows as I seem to have lost my physical and mental agility to the clutter and repetitiveness of this existence. Twenty years in fifteen countries - and now this!
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." - Mark Twain
Some more interesting quotes on travel.
Indonesian Rupiah Exchange Rate
