Right now I am sitting in Bloomington, Indiana drinking a cup of rich black coffee after a relaxing night with friends. 24 hours ago, I was sleeping in a tent in Tennessee at the famed and wonderfully weird and unpredictable Bonnaroo music festival. Some 2 weeks before that, I was in Canterbury, England saying ‘Good-bye’ to everything I had known for 9 months – tearing out a part that had become well attached to my other lives, just a little piece of soul fed to the dogs of distance. So I have procrastinated dreadfully. Here’s a numerated list to help me explain why:
1. Although I wrote about the trip in my journal almost everyday, I felt that posting to this blog would solidify my experience as memories. A Journal is in the moment, but the blog is an afterthought, an analyzation, a ‘now that I’m home and safe and warm and have this great big cup of coffee, I can finally put this into words and leave it behind me.’ It’s like burying a dead horse on the trail. I didn’t want to give it up quite yet. I wanted to hold onto the experience as moments that still buzzed around with other daily moments – I was not ready to assign them a place in the past.
2. The last couple of weeks in England were REALLY hard. I was upset pretty much everyday, packing and cleaning and throwing away the little trinkets that I had collected during my walks to and from campus. None of it really mattered, there was no inherent sentimentality in these objects. (If you didn’t know, I am quite the collector of unimportant things). I was in this multidimensional headspace where I desired to move on while still wishing I could stay firmly planted for a great time longer. I had an entirely new life, with new friends, a house, a pair of Wellingtons (rainboots), secret routes to my favorite places, a coffee maker, and most importantly – a boyfriend. One day I wake up and my room is empty – stuffed unceremoniously into two bulging suitcases and a backpack. The taxi is late and Dan is holding on desperately for me to stay. And all I can think is that I never want to leave his comfortable embrace, his prickly brown beard and Blueblocker sunglasses. His jokes and tangents about British comedy and the solar system. His lukewarm sugary cups of tea. His trainers and jumpers and ‘mess-head’ nicknames. His devotion. But then the taxi is waiting, knocking ferociously on the front door, and the driver is throwing my bags in the boot. And I hold on so tight and I’m crying uncontrollably. As we pull away, I get one last look at him, walking between the houses on a path we’ve walked together a thousand times. He’s holding my lamp in one hand and a small brown envelope with my house keys in the other. He lifts the lamp up slightly in a final wave. He’s gone.
There’s this tight little ball in my body right now. It’s full of things that I have molded together to sort out later. It’s kind of like that drawer in the kitchen where you throw everything that doesn’t really have another place, batteries, rubberbands, Christmas cards and screwdrivers. It always takes a really long time to muster the courage to go throw and organize that drawer. Who knows what could be in there? It’s exciting, but also frustrating and long, and sometimes a little melancholy. That ball is still in there, in my heart, my head, my limbs, my soul. I haven’t quite coaxed the strength out of hiding. So I’m not quite ready to write it out yet. Not ready to catalogue and redistribute all that junk. For now, it will remain a tangled mess.
Waaaaaaah Sagan come back, Canterbury needs you!
- Aideen