You know how you cannot remember everything so memories end up being just "moments" remembered. Sometimes when you live those moments you know you will be remember them and sometimes you are surprised to find out later that they are still here.
Last night I was working not as the geologist but as the night company-man. I was waiting for something..and it doesn't matter what...i was standing on the floor watching the kelly go round and round and down and down for hours...I standing there from eleven at night until four in the morning.
I love standing on the floor at night waiting. Everything is quiet, everybody is busy doing their thing. I have to be attentive but my mind is free to venture. There is a sense of purpose that cannot be disturbed all while I am really not doing anything.
Last night was especially nice because there was a light but warm breeze and the driller was a guy so quiet that you would think he was dead (but a smooth dead driller on the break handle!!). There are the two of us completely absorbed in our own thoughts doing something important but doing nothing. Two of us doing something together but totally ignoring each other.
I was enjoying the breeze, savouring being in the Sahara trying to imagine the desert beyond the circle of light of what I could see when I surprised myself by remembering one night in Kazakhstan standing on the mud tanks for hours like this looking in the distance. I remembered my thoughts at that moment, I remembered a brief interuption from one of the guys I really liked (Actually as I write this I just remembered that this guy and I shared the same birthday...I had forgotten) and it was nice.
I realised that I miss the steppe of Kazakhstan and I realised that I will miss the Sahara...in a way I've started missing it already.
