Get lost...

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Ever been lost?

Lost a little is quite fun. I’m talking the sort of lost where you aren’t really lost at all - just not quite sure of where you are in relation to where you want to be; knowing that you are definitely in the right vicinity, and sure that you’ll get there in the end.

Comfortable lost. A matter of time lost. Very slightly dangerous lost.

We’ve all been there at some time I guess, and isn’t it a relief when you get to where you want to get to.

It’s hard to get lost in the UK. Places are so close together, and we are such a small island, that you can’t really drive more than twenty miles without bumping into some place or other that allows you to roughly know where you are in relation to where you want to be. In the UK you pretty much always have some reference point or other – a church, a pub, a motorway service station - unless you are in a strange city.

I once drove around Edinburgh at night for two hours trying to find my hotel. I must have passed the castle at least twenty times – always from the same direction, always up the hill – but each time the minute I’d passed it I was lost again, heading along a road that I didn’t recognise towards the castle.

I found my hotel eventually though.

What a relief.

My most lost was in America. My first day in a strange city, driving an automatic for the first time, on the ‘wrong’ side of the road, with no reference points to guide me. Up and down the same bit of freeway, through the turnpike half a dozen times, paying the toll just to get back to where I started from, then paying it again, and again. At one point I could see where I was trying to get to – but couldn’t find how to get off the freeway to get there.

Eventually I asked (despite my ‘man thing’ aversion) and five minutes later arrived at my destination.

What a relief.

Asking isn’t always the answer though. Another time in America I got lost at night – well early, early morning really – in Philly, driving to the airport to pick someone up from a flight. I found myself in what I now realise was the ‘wrong’ part of town, but at the time it looked okay (well it was dark). I pulled into a gas station to ask my way. Going into the pay booth I didn’t notice the three black guys at the back of the store at first, although I did think it a little odd that the cashier was encased in a steel mesh cage, behind glass and was shaking his head as I walked towards him.

I explained that I was lost and asked him for directions.

“Just get back in your car and drive” he said.
“Which way?” I responded, a little confused.
“Any damn way you want, but out of here - fool.”

It was then that I heard the movement behind me as the three guys I’d noticed when I’d entered seemed to thaw and started to move towards me. I flew out of the pay booth, jumped into the car, started the engine (first time thank God), and drove away at speed as hands and feet slapped and kicked at the back of the car. I think I was still screaming when I realised that in my haste to get away I was ‘really’ driving on the wrong side of the road. Thank God it was so late.

By the time I got to the airport I’d just about stopped shaking… I really was very nearly lost that time… nearly but not quite.

What a relief.

Sometimes I have this dream where I’m lost.

At first I seem to know where I’m going and I’m going there in a completely straight line. I’m quite comfortable, almost content and then… there’s a very slight shift and I realise that I’m lost. I don’t know what shifts, but something does, and I’m immediately and completely lost. Sometimes I’m on foot and other times I’m in an open car, but I’m always on a long straight road that ascends into the far distance, It goes up and up, getting narrower and narrower, until I can’t turn around and have to keep going forwards. I don’t know where I’m going. I’m lost. There are no reference points. There’s nobody to ask. I’m lost.

Then something shifts again. I’m lost. I realise that I’m never going to arrive at wherever it is I’m going because I can’t remember where it is. I’m lost. Perhaps I never even knew.

I’m lost. I feel the moon pulling at the tide and I know that it is changing it as it does it - but I don’t know how it is changing it, and I can’t see it changing it… I don’t even know what it is… but as it changes I become even more lost.

My despair is so deep that I begin to look for a way off the road. I’m lost. It means climbing up onto the narrow parapet and jumping out into the darkness, off the edge of the world. I’m lost. Sometimes I climb up onto the parapet and stand there swaying as the wind howls around me, other times the parapet is too high for me to climb and I continually fall back into the concrete dust - once I climbed up and jumped out into the empty dark only to find myself being knocked back onto the road by something that felt like the wind, but was much heavier. I’m lost.

I’m lost and then I wake up or don’t… but that is all I ever remember. Thank God.

What a relief.

Lost a lot isn’t fun. There’s no way back. Ask anyone who’s ever been there…Glen Miller, the crew of the Mary Celeste, Captain Oates, one hundred and seventeen Roanoake Colonists, Joshua Slocum, Amelia Earhart, Michael Rockefeller, Lucky Lucan.

If you can find them.