As the days slowly grow cooler - well, the mornings anyway - I again ruminate on escape from my everyday self in the Deep South. I juggle in my head images of warm places. It's clichéd, but islands in the South Pacific come to mind.
Warmth means indolence, time to dream, letting the outside in, unlocking all those doors to rooms in the mind where musty thoughts have gathered. But where to go? There's a danger in making choices.
I remember asking a local in Port Douglas once why there were so many FOR SALE signs around town. "Well, people love it here", he said, "so they move here. Then they discover that, although they love it, they don't want to live here at all." Exactly. It's a terrible mistake to confuse your favourite place with the place you'd like to live in. It's like thinking you ought to marry your best friend.
Making wrong choices has never troubled me. I made many, and some even turned out all right. As Patel says in the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, "Everything will be all right in the end. If it’s not all right, it is not yet the end."
