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In-between time
I have been steeping in nostalgia the last few days. Like the first sip of tea the start is sweet, a sense of relief settling as the warmth of stories I had forgotten until now resurface, reminding me of the wonderful life I’ve lead so far.
It feels like a lifetime ago that I sat watching sunsets in Zadar, summited mountains in Salzburg, wandered cobbled streets in Strasbourg. It is only when I scroll back farther in my memories that the lifetime between then and the five years since I studied abroad, seven years since I graduated high school and twelve years since I moved from one side to the other of my home state sinks in. Time is a funny thing in that at some point the time between doesn’t feel as significant as the person I have become since I lived those stories.
These cycles of steeping in how the past has shaped me almost always follow the changing of the seasons. Green leaves and summer breeze being traded for crisp eves and crunching under feet. New memories getting put into retrospect with the past.
If I steep on the past for too long though, the taste becomes bitter as I remember the mistakes, mishaps, what if’s. Each memory acts as a fresh cup, filling me up until I take the last cold gulp. Forgotten for another year, until social media resurfaces moments caught in time, the reality malleable in my mind.
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Home is where the Heart is
Overlooking the San Diego skyline one last time before I fly, five days from now. It’s strange, to have my heart in so many places. The pull to see faces in all the corners of the world I’ve made home and the want to meet so many more for me to miss.
Sunshine in December meets rain in July meets the end of summer in February. These collisions of worlds that will only ever meet through me, the want for them all to be the same so that I may never have to say goodbye to the people who make them home. Alas it is the temporality that reveals the soul of a place and its people so quickly and is why I always roam.
It rained today. Reminded me what I have in store for the next six months: cozy, quiet, contemplative days with a healthy to dose of chaos to round out the reason and rhyme. The temporality of the rain is what makes it bearable, the memory of sun all year round reminds me of all the colors I would miss. Always searching for the perfect inbetween, but I live a life of extremes and so always have to choose.
Between sunshine and rain, Guinness and green, contentment and curiosity, staying still and never stopping, missing and finding, feeling and seeking, forgetting and remembering all over again that to be alive means for my heart to break a thousand times so that love may find its way in between the cracks, filling me up until love is the only thing left.
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Home
I am back in the USA after a year and a half away. I felt no shock waves course through my body when I landed back on the soil I come from. I felt no sense of homecoming or horror, just familiarity from a distance.
I crave the lack I had less, now that it is in my grasp. Corn, bread, chips, tortillas, burritos, beach days with bare feet in December, talks with my mom with no time limit.
I am quickly reminded how far apart everything is. Freedom can only be accessed by car, therefore there is none. But the bigness still envelops me in familiarity. The skyline I pondered my most important thoughts over, has stayed the same from this distance.
I find familiarity in second nature, which way the light switch flips, green and white street signs, accents I don’t have to decipher. I appreciate how this place raised me and recognize how others changed me, and am counting down the days till I fly home.
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Forty Seasons from Now
Back in Alsace, ten years later, dix ans worth of change to remember. The season is different, but that’s about it. I have gone through forty seasons since I last left here, but my soul stays the same. I feel it in the comfort of being back with the same friend who has seen me through all that change.
I know more than Merci now, though not by much. I still smile at everything I can’t understand, but want to learn. Progress has been slow, but still there, it gives me hope that anything is possible, being here.
The food makes me moan. I have survived on what the world considers mediocrity for the last year, so I rejoice in perfectly seasoned soup, meat that melts in my mouth and dessert that disappears in tears of disbelief that anything can taste this good.
The rain I have tried to escape from follows me here, makes me realize it is not so much the sunshine I desire to chase as it is a version of myself I miss when I have seen four seasons pass in one place. Most call it escape or running away, and maybe they’re right, but is it so bad to want to escape to new landscapes for a little while? To run towards familiar faces in new places? To remember what I have missed and make more memories to reminisce?
I can only hope the next ten years treat me as kindly as the past. That I may look back 80 seasons from now and still laugh at mistakes I made when my world was a little more green. May my future be as full as my stomach is here, surrounded by barriers of language, but laughing all the same at what we understand between translation.
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Dichotomy of Being
My temperament is changing with the temperature. I am clinging to the little bit of light soaked up in-between rain riddled days. It feels like a week ago that I was enveloped in the excitement of spring, color coming back to the world after so much grey and now I watch it fading away with the light of day.
My optimism is falling each time I face the world outside my window. I hide in hope, walk down streets invincible in this skin I was born in at the same time that millions lose their kin to sin that does not belong to them.
My patience is pulled back and forth between being present, paranoid, grateful, gutted, happy and hopeless. The constant dichotomy of being human. We replace empathy with anger, connection with competition, tragedy with overconsumption and more destruction.
My wish is for creation myths to be passed down by generations, not genocide. That we create more than we break, behold beauty instead of burning it down. If the fear is being forgotten then remember the only way to win is to take the game away and start over again.
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Come and go, ebb and flow
Another room emptied, walls laid bare, beds made for the new bodies that will make this space their own. I have lost count of how many rooms I have created in my image and packed away again and again. It’s always strange but no longer sad to let go of these temporary places that I call home for periodic points in my life, this time ten months.
My lack of attachment to things makes the habitual purge a point of relief rather than regret or anxiety. It still amazes me how much one can collect in any period of stillness. I started my travels with one pair of Timberland boots and somehow found myself faced with ten pairs of shoes to choose from. The Tims didn’t make the cut for the next stage, the sandals from Florence did though.
The rotation of objects I choose to keep or release reflects who I have become and the parts of my past I cling to for recognition, remembering the parts of me I want to hang on to and the parts I am ready to let go. Plaid has been replaced with flower print, corduroy taking place of lulu lemon. These choices are largely influenced by the places I call home, decidedly wanting to fit in and finding myself preferring how I feel when the fabric matches the phase I am in.
I look forward to seeing what parts of myself are added to the collection and what is ready to be let go as I ebb and flow through more temporary spaces I can’t wait to call home.
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Goodbye, Hello
The goodbyes never get easier, and I hope they never do. The sadness acts as a reminder of how much the memories mean. I used to steep in the sadness, name every last up until the final hug, wave, glance back at the place and people that made me new.
Now I let the sadness sit with me, the nostalgia sweep over me, fleeting moments of appreciation rather than a longing for it to never end. There are times when the pain is so unbearable that I question why I repeat this pattern and then I remember the hello’s.
There are people out there that I don’t yet know that I can’t wait to get to. I look forward to understanding the person I have become since my last hello, a cycle that makes it easy for me to always grow. I am a migrant bird finding home everywhere I go.
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Monopoly of Media
It is easy to get lost in the politics of the place I’m from, especially when separate from it. When all I see is mass shootings, book bans, trans bans, abortion bans, all in the name of “safety” for the people who act out of fear of losing their white privilege it is easy to forget about the people who make it land of the brave, home of the hopeful. It is in the separation that I forgot the multitude of cultures that make the country I’m from a melting pot of arts, food, culture, revolution.
The more of the world I see the more I notice there is fear of loss of progress everywhere and good people everywhere, it’s just that everywhere doesn’t have a monopoly on the media. I come from a place where people ask if I am Canadian first, not wanting to offend if guessed incorrectly, a place where people roll their eyes at the joke that my country has become in the last few years. The place that they still want to visit but never live, myself included.
When people ask what I miss about the USA my initial reaction is to scoff, to be in on the joke. I have gotten better at taking pause before I answer, to realize that there is a list of things I miss. This list includes but is not limited to tacos, Trader Joe’s, the affect felt while listening to live music with others, freedom of expression, light switches inside of bathrooms, 24 hour everything, friends, family, the fast lane on freeways.
As the world seemingly falls apart around us, these steps back become increasingly important. It is when I look at what is worth saving that I can move forward in hope instead of despair, so that maybe one day I can state my State proudly instead of with an awkward laugh and an apology.
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Collecting Habits
Always being on the move has meant learning to create rituals that encompass comfort. These rituals come in the form of collections and habits, brought on by a necessity for stability that I never find in place, at least not permanently.
My collections include art made with me in mind from people I love, light enough to never have to leave behind, small enough to fit inside a 8×11 file folder and impactful enough to make any space feel like home.
Clothes come and go like the places I inhabit, some staples have stayed with me since I arrived, but who knows how many more closets they will survive.
Half written journals hold fragments of myself, which when put together create an ever changing whole, though I know I could, and should, consolidate myself into one bound book for the sake of space and sanity I can’t find the will to narrow myself down to one cover.
My habits come from compilations of curated choices, some chosen consciously, most coming from ideas brought on by millions of interactions over my lifetime that have culminated into patterns I often don’t acknowledge.
My habits are infinite within the finite constraints of my mind and body, taking up more of my day than I would like to admit, but most of which I am learning to accept. The most notable of these infinities are the written word and concocting tasty creations with whatever is on hand wherever I am.
To make my passion of writing into a habit is harder than I thought. The consistency hasn’t made me love it any less at least, like cooking, it is a necessity to remember how to come back to me.
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Changing of the Seasons
The beginning of June brings sun burns and salty water. The heat is bearable here, but the sun is strong. The vitamin D motivates me to observe what is around, even the smallest things excite me like the first ripe strawberry and sitting in the shade with no jacket on.
75 degrees is what I was raised on as the status quo, I learned quickly by leaving that this is not so most places. I learned what cold felt like for the first time when I was 18, caught up in the price of coats and snow shoes, I had no idea what I had coming. I grew up taking 75 degrees for granted, looking forward to the contrast rain made. Now I know the despair that comes with wanting to be outside but not being able to bear the sting the wind made.
I have found my happy medium in rainy places, surviving on sunshine that comes unexpectedly. I still wouldn’t trade what I left behind, there is too much joy found in the changing of the seasons. To see the first signs of spring still leaves me in awe. I never knew that flowers grew overnight until I changed my view. The cost of coats and darker days seem a small price to pay for all the colors that change each day.
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Taya’s Travels 