Lonesome Traveler Blues

Since returning from travelling I am really struggling to adapt to normal life. I'd described it as feeling like a caged bird, when once I was a wild beast, carving up continents in my campervan.

I spent almost every second of seven-and-a-half amazingly happy months with my girlfriend, Shannon - now I cannot afford to see her more than two nights a week. I signed on at the Jobcentre at the end of January and haven't received a penny of Jobseeker's Allowance.

Then I had Shannon and a van and we could go anywhere we pleased in Europe and Morocco - now I have a room and an internet connection (at my parents' house, for which I am very thankful).

I wonder if this is something other people have experienced on coming back from travelling?

I remain positive, however: the memories I have from our trip are still fresh and make me incredibly happy.

My current reading material too, Jack Kerouac's 'Lonesome Traveler', adds real colour to the snapshot memories in my mind.

Originally I struggled to get into it - I'd previously read Hemingway's 'A Farewell to Arms' in a week or two, and certainly wasn't drawn back to 'Lonesome Traveler' like I was with that book.

This may be because 'Lonesome Traveler' is a collection of short stories about Kerouac's various expeditions, some of which I've vastly enjoyed, some of which I haven't.

The book has had very little editing - there's little punctuation and all spelling mistakes are kept in, as are Kerouac's fantastically funny made-up words (sometimes onomatopoeic, such as the "sudden sprram of freights ramming together"). The 50s slang, too, makes me want to break out into some scat, hepcat.

Kerouac's 'spontaneous prose' - itself very much like scat singing - was, of course, made famous in 'On The Road', but in 'Lonesome Traveler' it's completely let loose. Once you get your head around it, the spontaneous prose in 'Lonesome Traveler' propels you forward at great speed and pages fly by.

Of special interest to me is the 'Big Trip to Europe' short story, which I haven't quite finished, about Kerouac's time in Tangier, Morocco, and Paris; places Shannon and I called home shortly before returning to the UK with our tails between our legs.

Another excellent short story is 'Alone on a Mountaintop', where Kerouac details a two-month stint he spent as a fire lookout, completely alone, high up in Mount Baker National Forest in the Cascade mountain range "of the Great Northwest".

It was here he wrote:

What is a rainbow,
Lord? - a hoop
For the lowly

As would happen to anyone who spent two months in solitude, Kerouac goes a little crazy by the end of it - but none more so than he already was.

So I now know that I should stay positive, watch for rainbows, and keep on thinking about travelling - there's always a next time!

This pic was taken in Berlin and is subject to copyright.