crippling wanderlust

by jolina demmings

@jolinademmings on instagram

I am overwhelmed by the need to be elsewhere. 

The need to exist in a hundred different photographs at once. 

I want to be decorating a christmas tree. 

I want to be wandering the streets of a dead town, huddling against the invisible cold,

finding beauty in the drearily ordinary. 

I want to be on a porch in the south, soaking in the orange sunset, 

savouring the humidity of the summer evening. 

I want to be on the east coast, running from the flat sands of the beach 

to seek shelter from the rain in a house with many windows. 

I want to walk through venice, taking pictures in a daze. 

I want to be on an airplane at midnight, watching the city lights fall away, 

drifting to sleep knowing I'll wake up and be home. 

I want to trek through a foggy abyss towards something exciting. 

I want to be in Italy, in the summer, eating fresh fruit and basking in the dappled sunlight.

I want to eat Thanksgiving dinner in somebody’s home town. 

I want to sit on a balcony in greece, marvelling at the colour of the sea. 

I want to explore an unforgiving desert, feeling the heat protrude from every inch of space, watching lizards dart among cacti. 

I want to gaze upon a city skyline from a hilltop at night,

fuelled only by the excitement of those around me. 

I want it to snow. 

I want it to snow so badly. 

I want to watch the snowflakes flutter violently towards the ground, 

I want to see the world around me utterly transformed, see the energy in everybody’s eyes. 

I want to drink tea in a skyscraper, observing every texture in the sky on a cloudy day.

I want to sit in a warm field, gluttonously drinking in the last of the unearned summer day. 

I want it to be christmas eve in a city, joy brimming out of nearly every person. 

I want to wade in the ocean in Hawaii as the sun sets into it. 

I want to ride a train through europe, hoping my next destination is as spellbinding as the last. 

I want to blearily load suitcases into a car in the early morning light, 

too tired to be excited for what is to come. 

But most importantly,

I want to wake up and wonder ‘what next?’

a note from the artist-

"i wrote this after looking through the pictures i’ve saved from photography accounts on instagram. i desperately wanted to exist in every one of them"