I used to think it was an affectation when people kept on using an aeroplane boarding pass stub as a bookmark long after their flight was over. It seemed to be a subtle reminder to everybody else that they were the kind of people who did this so often that they could be nonchalant about it. Maybe there was another, even more subtle message here too. Maybe it was a reminder that they could go just as easily as they had come. Another ticket, another plane, and maybe another book - and they could step right back onto the tarmac where they had begun.
I am holding rather stubbornly to my 'ticket stub' just now. Very soon it will be time to return to work. I shall swap the mental garb of mourning for the working clothes of normality and recover some of the rhythms of life I knew before. Patterns of getting up, getting out, working and returning to the house will settle around me. I can't quite let go of my ticket stub though - not yet. I need some reminder that I am a visitor here. This is not my place. My place is that other one, where the rhythms of my life were syncopated with another's.
I suspect that one day the ticket stub will just fall out whilst I move busily from one task to another. Either that, or I shall swap one book for another and simply forget to transfer it over. One day, that will happen. Not today, though.
