Never mine, never mind

Day 13 - Nuwara Eliya

It happened. Somewhere on the train between Peredeniya and Nanu Oya a romantic, idealistic, sure-to-be-disappointed dream of travel was made flesh. The butterflies in my stomach fluttered through valleys and hills blanketed with tea plantations. The land was verdant green and cool and there was an affinity with it I'd never before known. The trees turned straight and tall, their russet foliage contrasting with the lime of the shrubbery. The grass was no longer wide and indolent but prim and upright much as if the British had imported their own all those years ago. I talked about the country around with a Nederlander whose meditation related injuries suggested it was not always the calming experience it purported to be. Later, sitting in the door of the train I slipped into a whirlpool of feeling from which I would barely escape. All seemed possible even that which was not. Next to my beastly filth sat dark intrigue that intoxicated with tales of the world. I thanked chance and fortune as the realities of our nomadic existence began to dim. All these thoughts and fatal aspirations would whir ferociously around my head at the end of the world but for now the fairytale was still being written.
Gazing at the stars from our balcony the evening was a happy blur of Lion (beer) and laughter. The kaleidoscope of possibility had been turned and its pattern was most pleasing to the eye but so wretched to the heart. This was love spelled with a U, an S and a T but it drowned reason and choked reserve. And when the moment came I.....retreated. The fairytale could not be unwritten, my hands could not fashion what my wild imagination had conceived. I plunged from the precipice, rising fog obscuring the impact below. No half measures would tarnish the purity of my desire. Who chooses discomfort and deafening silence over warm embrace? That person, dear readers (optimistically pluralised) was me and I shall ever wonder at its logic. I suppose, in the final analysis, my questions were better left unanswered and my wants unfulfilled. It is a long life and it would be foolishly detrimental to allow myself to dwell in Nuwara Eliya, all things must pass you see.
I could only reflect back on the length of my grasp and the shortness of my reach as we departed the place. The thickened air cleared my head and somewhat restored my appetite. Most profound apologies for the alluding and fawning but this is the truest account I could give of an unexpected time. We were again 2 as the tea receded into the distance, the colours around seemed a little less vibrant, but only a little.