I've been in LA for six months now, and my departure is looming on the horizon, sunbeams through a dark cloud. Three months from today I'll be boarding a plane for South Africa. The bittersweetness of this winds me like a jab to the gut. It seems that it takes me roughly 6 months to settle into a new place, which is both a short time and long time. But here I am at the 6 month mark: I know my spots in LA, I know who my friends are, I'm beginning to feel comfortable in my own skin again - it's been a long time - I love school, I love the sunshine and the sea. LA is beginning to feel like home, and South Africa feels far away, foreign. Don't get me wrong, I miss it terribly, and I am so excited to come back, but my heels are prematurely digging in at the thought of leaving this new home and these new friends and places. I am stuck in the amber of the moment, bittersweetness crystallized, wanting to be in so many different places at once.
Rolling stones gather no moss. Rolling stones gather no moss? That is so sad. Maybe we do gather moss, or maybe we're not stones, we're more pliable, imprintable, and the people we meet and places we've been are imprinted on us, imbedded in our beings, and we'll find ways to keep coming back to them somehow. I hope so. I don't like loss, so I'd prefer not to think about it as loss. Part of me wants to find a spot and stay there forever so that I never leave anyone behind again, but that's impossible, and it would be sad never to have new adventures, see new things, meet new people. Imagine all the connections that I/we/you would never make if I/we/you stayed in one place? As afraid as I am of goodbyes, I am more afraid of forgoing new hello's.
“What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? - it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.”
I also know that I'll come home and I'll be a different, I'll have grown in new directions, and I won't fit in the same way that I used to, and that scares me a bit. And everyone else will have grown too, maybe in directions different to mine. It's like going for a twilit walk, when the sun has just sunk and left th sky bruised with its departure, and everything is quiet, deliciously cool, and almost eery, and then you come back to the warm, brightly lit house, to the people who stayed in the warmth and the light, and there's a disjunct between you and them, a bridge that has to be crossed, and will be crossed of course, but initially, there's the Gap.
And then as soon as I've put down some roots and grown comfortable again, my bones will start to strain under the weight of all the lives I'm not living, in all the directions that I'm not going. I feel like a flock of birds circling around and around chained to the sky, wanting to stay but needing to go. There is just so much to be done, in so many places. How do we squeeze it all into one lifetime?
"I’m restless. Things are calling me away. My hair is being pulled by the stars again."
But for now, I'm not feeling very nomadic. I want to find a space and stay there for a long time, build connections, grow some roots, and not feel as though my departure is imminent. I suppose where I land up for the next couple of years will depend on the Court.
Roots. Now those would be a fine thing. However, so would flight. (It's funny how humans are not binaries, we are capable of containing a multitude of contradictory sentiments. Learning to be okay with this is a slow process though.)
Short news update (since this is probably what anybody reading this actually wants):
1. My PILP friends are amazing and varied and beautiful and I'm so fortunate to have met them, and to be liked by them!
2. I've decided to go to Chicago even though it will result in a hole of debt, albeit a small hole. Screw it, why not, right? How often am I going to have these opportunities. Also San Francisco WILL happen. And Big Sur. Not sure how or when, in light of school madness, but it will, it must happen.
3. School is insane. Clinic + independent study + public health class + IJP + Right to Food Symposium = madness.
4. Rosa is away for the weekend, so I intend to hunker down and work in a quiet empty flat. There were rumours of rain, but alas, I think they've faded.
5. I left my keys in Wholefood last night and had to stay over at Zina's. Most comfortable futon I've ever slept on. And best company (shout out to Zina, David and Trevor: You GO, Glen Coco).
6. THREE MONTHS UNTIL I COME HOME!