Frank Goes Walkabout
Georgia · First Light
Not all dreams let you sleep
A story about a birthday, a sofa, and a man who never came back
Before you turn the page
Maybe you knew me back when I led a “normal” life. Maybe we crossed paths somewhere along the way. Or maybe we haven’t met yet — who’s to say.
If you know me, or think you do: what you’ve seen of me so far isn’t wrong. It just isn’t all of it. You can read the old entries on this site, watch the videos, listen to the music from the road — and find little of the Frank who is writing to you now.
This Frank hasn’t been around long. I can even give you the date:
Who is writing to you
There are days that later pretend to have meant something from the start. The 8th of March, 2022, was not one of them. Not at first, anyway.
It was my birthday, and I was sitting on a sofa. One of those standard furniture-store sofas that look uncomfortable until you lie down and slowly drift off. Then you wonder how a grey lump can be so kind.
The Frank I was back then was a reporter at a local paper. He had a well-earned day off. He wanted a break from assignments, editorial work, and other people’s small dramas. He loved his camera. And he loved the comfortable illusion that a person is safer observing than taking part.
It had carried him through life for years. He had arranged everything so that nothing came too close: a profession that let him see into everything and stay nowhere, and a camera he could hold between himself and the rest of the world. It worked.
Even though, deep down, he knew that nothing was right. Why, he didn’t know. He had forgotten. Still, that morning he would have told you that he knew exactly how his life was built, and that he wanted to keep living it just like that.
What happened next on that sofa that afternoon, I won’t write down here. Not because it is especially secret. But because otherwise people would appear in this story who didn’t ask to.
I’ll only write that the Frank of back then — in the moment he understood that nothing would change — thought for the first time, and meant it completely:
This will never get better
I have to leave
Maybe you know this thought. Then you know it isn’t said out loud. You only notice that it’s there.
If you don’t, I can’t explain it to you.
Two and a half months later, the reporter was sitting in his car on the motorway, heading toward Valhalla, with India as the destination. He had told the woman he lived with at the time that he’d be back in six weeks.
On paper, it added up.
For a while, I believed it myself.
What remains
The six weeks passed, and I’d only made it as far as Bosnia. Then the next ones passed. At some point I stopped counting.
I kept driving, and each day I intended a little less to turn back — until one day I didn’t intend to at all.
And so the illusion of being home in six weeks slowly became what I now call my life.
It didn’t get simpler. Lighter, yes — because I cleared things up inside.
Whether it ends well, I don’t know.
Who’s to say.
Somehow I know it will.
And if not — hey, why not?
What really counts can’t be measured anyway.
And that’s exactly what I want.