Day 0140

I have an unflattering risk-aversion and fear of uncertainty. I go to great lengths to make sure that I always know what is going on and where I am. I'm currently carrying around two phones and a laptop; between them I have two entire copies of wikipedia and offline maps of where I am. I'm never cut off from knowledge and if I anticipate that I'm going to be in a novel situation I research it extensively to remove as many elements of uncertainty as I can.

In many ways this tendency does actually make my life significantly easier, but it also means that my expectations are constantly being met. I usually have a fairly accurate idea of what it is I'm going to see and how I'll react to it. This is a recipe for becoming jaded.

"A constant air of refined, supercilious ennui"Leo Tolstoy, Youth

Today, however, I experienced for the first time in months the pure, simple and overwhelming feeling of wonder, childlike enjoyment and excitement of something new and unexpected. I was in the faerie-world gardens of the Quinta da Regaleira in Sintra. I came upon a cave tunnel hidden behind some fountain or grotto, partially lit and going off in to darkness. I went right on ahead into the darkness, with no idea of where I would end up, or how long it would take me to get out. I found a waterfall in an opening and pressed on through the dark, damp, dripping corridor (resisting the temptation to turn on my phone's torch) until I came out at what I thought was ground level (having neither ascended nor descended). But instead, I was taken completely by surprise and found myself at the bottom of a great cylinder of dark stone, dripping water from the circle of white light at the top, far overhead. I had walked straight into the hillside and now the ground was way above me. Here I was at the bottom of a great well, with a stone staircase spiralling through the rock to the ground above. Uncanny, unsettling, sinister and sublime. How wonderful to meet the unexpected! To have no prior knowledge or hopes or mental pictures and to find yourself somewhere wholly new.

Now I've described it, and now you've read it, you can't have the same experience.

The feeling lasted only a few minutes, and those few minutes of true, unpremeditated joy were precious, and I knew it. No sooner did I feel it than I thought about it, and began to analyse it and so destroy it. Further attempts to be awed and wondered by the other delights of the garden were unsuccessful imitations, unsuccessful because of my consciousness of my own desire to feel and react in a certain predetermined way.

I dashed this off on the train to Lisbon, and subsequently missed my stop. My mind was occupied by the pretty girl opposite me, who also missed the stop.