London
November 18th 1995
I had a bit of a hassle with getting the tickets issued and i ended up having to go to London again to pick them up. I decided that Saturday the eighteenth was the best day to do this, as the travel agents were open Saturday mornings and i wanted to see a couple of friends who were at college most weekdays.
When i got to London, i felt really depressed for some reason. I had to go to the West End to pick up the tickets - which was bad enough at the best of times - and that didn't help. Then i went to Brixton to see Sergio.
While i was in Brixton, i thought i'd call into the 121 anarchist bookshop. Their opening hours were pretty erratic and i didn't really expect the shop to be open, but it was and a South African woman called Belinda was working there. We started talking about people from Melbourne we both knew, and somehow that cheered me up completely and the depression went away. I think it kind of reminded me of something that had slipped out of my consciousnes - something related to having family (in a spiritual or community sense) all round the world. I think i'd been a bit disturbed by the prospect of heading off into the unknown on my own and spending the next two or three months away from contact with friends. It also kind of reminded me i was beginning the journey home.
- - -
That evening, i finally managed to catch up with Paula, who i'd last seen at the end of that fiasco of a bus trip in Mexico. I'd been trying for a while to see her, but had only succeded in talking to her on the phone for a while one day.
I had to go back to Maldon that evening if i was going to get all the stuff done that i had to do the next day, so it didn't leave much time. It was really good to see her though, after nearly six months. I gave her back the sleeping bag she'd given me before we left San Cristobal, as i wasn't going to need it in India and she'd be needing it in the London winter.
It was strange that i should finally meet up with Paula again, almost exactly six lunar months after we'd parted that strange way in Playa Del Carmen. I don't know where the moon was - astrologically speaking - either time, but i'd say there was a very good chance that it was in the opposite sign then to what it had been in May. The sun certainly was, and the new moons would have been of course. It would certainly have been very close.
And somehow there was the same sort of similarity of energy that astrology would probably suggest (i don't really know that much about it...) and the difference that it would involve too. Opposite signs are the same energy, but a different face of that energy. And in fact we were parting again, although on quite different terms and in almost opposite circumstances to how we'd parted six months before.