‘The means are endless’ I read these words, and many inspiring others, in advance of stepping foot in South America or onto a plane or into a travel agent even. The idea of endless possibilities was too hard to resist and Guevara’s diary was too tempting a trip, so here I am- arrived and unpacked. Well, sort of.
Re-reading Che’s words (hastily scribbled in my travel diary before we left) got me thinking about the idea of commandments and of living your life, or a part of your life, according to a set of rules or philosophies. There has to be some advantage to having a certain degree of your life determined; is it easier perhaps? Although, isn’t it a trait of laziness to follow someone else’s design? Isn’t it part of the fun of “life” to rule your own route?
I already have certain notions in my life that I like to abide by, tit bits I’ve picked up over the years, such as: always do the thing that scares you most, always accept a compliment even if you don’t believe in it, always check your walls for spiders before bed just in case one decides to take up residence in your mouth while your asleep. Admittedly these aren’t the sort of philosophies that will guide me onto the sacred path for the next 3 months but nevertheless they are effective in their own way.
Of course there is a more definite plan, courtesy of Society, that all of us children inherit and most of the adults assure we follow. The expectations and competitions begin at birth with determined skill to age ratio’s; then the terrible two’s and teens follow where trouble is expected, and thus explained by such labels. Nursery and school, and school and college, and then university: these are all institutions that fit the mould society has secured for each individual. England is not a prison, but England has a heavily gilded structure, and one girl is not permitted to fall from the frame it seems.
We don’t notice the demanding nature of everyday life until it catches up with us: it’s an inexhaustible wave that either engulfs you or pushes you in one sweeping motion to shore.
I can’t help but feel lucky that, on this day, I landed on the shores of South America.
I caught my first glimpses of Peru as my new home tonight.
Lima is full of lights, it looks like New York but smells like Spain; it has that same baked smell all Mediterranean cities have. As we reached home at 8pm my travelling Partner ‘B’ and I were unlucky enough to hit rush hour full force; “Rush hour” our taxi driver shortly informed us was from 5pm until 10pm so not so much “rush hour” as “rush-half-the-night”. It took us two hours to get to our hostel, and in those long two hours we witnessed two grand vehicle pile ups: I’ve undeniably decided I’m not a fan of the erratic Peruvian driving system. Our taxi driver was like a magician, the whole time he navigated us through the traffic like we were one lean piece of spaghetti; it was extremely impressive but enormously scary. We passed the traffic-induced time by talking with him; luckily he spoke very good English and seemed to enjoy pulling random Peruvian facts out of the crisp night air for us to relish. Tonight I learned that there are nine million people living in Peru at the moment, of all different descents, and of these Japanese, Chinese and Italian are prominent, and furthermore two million of these Peruvians live in a slum like district behind Lima’s airport. It humbled me to know that I was sitting in traffic with the luckier ones of the population; they had cars and they had money, and money it seemed was a scarce possession in Lima.
Almost at our hostel for the night we asked our new friend about Lima as a tourist destination, and about the accommodation within the city, he told us, “Yes Lima has lots of hotels and hostels, all kinds, 1*, 2*, 3*, 4*, 5*, even 1000 stars!- These are the ones with no roofs!” Both B and I chuckled; we had been told our first Peruvian joke! In our shared chuckle there was a sense of warmth spread: a feeling of contentment that we had firmly arrived, and inspired by Che the commandment we agreed to adhere too for the next 3 months was “To live.”
“ ‘The first commandment for every good explorer is: An expedition has two points, the point of departure and the point of arrival. If your intention is to make the second theoretical point coincide with the actual point of arrival, don’t think about the means- because the journey is a virtual space that finishes when it finishes, and there are as many means as there are ways of “finishing”. That is to say, the means are endless.’
Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara
In school we are taught that zero is the equivalent to nothing; it means nil and adds up to exactly that. Zero can’t even change or create the value of another number, Zero is neutral; it is limbo…it’s a nonentity.
However, in life, zero represents the beginning. To start anything, whether it be a literal or metaphorical climb, you must first begin at the bottom with nothing. Naught therefore represents opportunity and hope; it’s the long standing single digit behind the phrase “things can only get better”. Truthfully, with zero, the only way is up.
This promise of hope and good fortune is what I’m clinging too today, the day before day 1 of my trip. Today is the last safe day; it’s the last day to back out of this radical adventure, the last day to pack my overly optimistic and undersized travel bag, and the last day to medicate my increasingly unstable mind.
When the Ancient Greeks described the status of zero as a number they posed the question, in a slightly sarcastic tone I imagine, “How can nothing be something?” Now, as a modern day writer/ soon-to-be adventurer I have the humble opinion that to create something great you have to begin with nothing; you have to begin with zero, because only when you have nothing can you appreciate the something that follows.
On that note, today is the first day. Today I will begin with the optimism that however radical the trip I’m about to embark on is it’ll be the incredible type of radical, I will believe that I will be able to fit 31 pairs of knickers and socks into my perfectly sized travel bag (one for each day of the month!) and finally, I will promise to put the medication away and trust that I’m strong enough now to take on new challenges without doping myself up to within an inch of sanity.
Therefore, even though in cultures and education around the world it is drilled into us that zero isn’t a number worth counting, in our lives or on our fingers, today zero means something.
Because after nothing there’s everything, and after day zero there’s day one.
This is my trip, my diary, and my 94 days of life…
-Elena
A single question echoes in my mind from my childhood; one question that I was asked many times in different contexts, by different people and in different manners yet my answer always remained the same;
“If you could be an animal, what would you be?”
…“A bird”
Always a bird.
You may have expected a more significant sounding question, something slightly more relevant or foretelling about my future, but this question and answer set foretold every movement I was to make from that moment on- if only I had recognised it at the time. Unsurprisingly, to the children around me at that moment, my automated response seemed insane as they were the usual suspects who would rather spend their days as an exciting spider monkey or beautiful dolphin. Yet for me, it was always a bird.
As a little girl I harboured a slight fascination with birds: I spent hours watching them outside my window, I would sit at my desk and draw them in all sorts of crazy unrealistic colours and I even pressured my parents into joining the “Royal Society of Protection of Birds” which at a monthly fee of £10 they did not appreciate.
In hindsight I realise that my interest in birds when I was young stemmed from the jealousy I felt towards them being able to fly. It frustrated me that due to some evolutionary genius they could take off in a second and make a home anywhere in the world; sometimes in my world, other times not. I envied the fact that something I shared the earth with had that much freedom, yet I was stuck feeling a sort of entrapment into my city and my home.
My name is Elena Rigby; I’m 20 years old and on my way to South America for three months-Three months on a continent I know exactly nothing about, yet I am distinctly excited about. My parents, my peers and my friends all think I’m crazy, they all ask me “Why?” and then proceed to answer their own question with words such as “unsatisfied” and “floaty”.
I’m not sure whether the aim of this trip is to lose myself or find myself, but older and wiser now, if asked the same question, I’d still choose to be a bird and I like to think my decision is a sign of my untameable spirit, rather than my alleged unsatisfied nature.
“ All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
–J. R. R. Tolkien
“Dear World,
Dear Mother,
Dear Father,
and to those with the expectations:
You are probably all already aware of what I am about to write but I shall write it anyway for the sheer purpose of seeing it in ink and on paper.
I don’t know what I want.
The one thing I am certain of is the need to get away; I must go to South America. I am hoping for clarity and looking for answers. When I return I know I must finally begin to settle down and be responsible, but for now I only have one aim…
I am determined to prove to myself and everyone else that three months is all it takes to fall in love, to live life and to fall in love with life. And in my case, three months is hopefully all it’ll take to actually get a life.
I promise to find what I’m looking for and return.
Yours in hope,
Elena Rigby; 20 years of age, just about to depart from the United Kingdom.”
“I know I’m destined for greatness; my existence is to make a difference. I’m just not sure how.”- Elena Rigby 7.1.09
If a place can suffocate you, then that is what Birmingham was doing to me.
I beg you not to misunderstand me: I love my hometown, but it just…knows too much. Living in the same place for 20 years, growing up with the same people, and each of you having the same experiences can be a help or a hindrance, and to me it was the latter. I couldn’t go out without seeing someone I knew or someone who thought they knew me: unfortunately I did things at 15 years old that people shouldn’t do until they were legally adult and this in return, as I got older, created a cloud of boredom. Bored of Birmingham and bored of seeing my past when I walked down the high street. I felt like Birmingham and I didn’t fit together anymore; if we were in a relationship it would have been a case of “its not you, it’s me”.
When I eventually hit 18 years old, I realised I was different to everyone else (no I didn’t have a 3rd nipple or an abnormal skin condition) I just didn’t want the same things, I wanted more and it took me a long time to realise that this was okay: this was normal, good even. When everyone else I knew was getting drunk with 20 friends they’d just met, I choose to grab my few close friends who I could trust with my life (just not my white carpet after one too many vino’s it would turn out) to have a quiet girls night in. I cherished the nights in rather than out, the nights where we’d talk about the future, watch movies and declare “that’s what I want”. New York soon became our spot; the place to aim for, with its bright lights and bustling streets. I couldn’t imagine anything being wrong in the Big Apple: I couldn’t see myself ever feeling out of place or lonely. My mom would always say to me ‘the grass isn’t always greener on the other side’ and I’d reply ‘that’s the point of going to the concrete jungle Ma’.
So, at 18 years old when I was still working out who I was and what I wanted, I made all the wrong decisions; I partied hard, applied for university, and did everything that I thought I should, “the norm”. It was only when I had a life changing trip to China for 6 weeks over a summer holiday that I came home and realised how wrong for me “the norm” actually was. I steadily began to make some decisions for myself and hastily switched things around.
So here I am, 20 years old, every one of my classmates is at university two years into their degree with plans for the future that would impress IKEA’s DIY department, and I am still undecided. Elena Undecided.
The only direction I am being pulled in is towards a completely different continent. More than 3000 miles apart from my home town, at least 501 verbs away from my language and over 7000 species of bug out of my comfort zone…
Welcome ladies and gentlemen to South America.
“ In the name of the best within you, do not sacrifice this world to those who are its worst.
In the name of the values that keep you alive, do not let your vision of man be distorted by the ugly, the cowardly, the mindless in those who have never achieved his title.
Do not lose your knowledge that man’s proper estate is an upright posture, an intransigent mind and a step that travels unlimited roads.
Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle.
The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it’s yours.
Ayn Rand, ‘Atlas Shrugged’
