Through the Looking Glass Again

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....I wake up, once again having to shake the disorientation out of sleepy eyes, eyes that just can't seem to get enough rejuvenating sleep and are perpetually drying out, and remember that I am in fact in my parents house. This is my room, the room I wanted with all my heart at the age of 12 and was denied, unfairly, so my brother could have his "own space" in the basement. Apparently this is still a sore spot for me. Only had to wait 13 more years, and travel across the world, to get it.

The floor is strewn with books...journals....receipts for more recent vaccinations that will aid the next leg of my journeys. It is evidence that I am struggling, as I always have, with simply being here...at home....content. There are adventures awaiting, and the grass in other countries is always seemingly greener.

But, as expected, I have most definitely undergone a "reverse culture-shock", a re-adapting to the familiar. Back at work, the same job I was at when I left for Korea, the same people I was working with (literally, in that big building, there are maybe a handful of new staff, and all the old smiling faces...and with turnover in the bar and restuarant world, this is impressive and incredibly jarring to my frame of reference of time and reality), serving the same regulars and hearing the same stories is actually imensely comforting. That's the strange thing, the things you worry about the most- that everything will be the same and you will be frustrated and lonely because of it- are actually the things that make coming home worthwhile. The beauty in looking at yourself, once again, in the exact same context is that the differences are so opaque. And fortunately for me, the things about me that have changed have been welcomed with open arms, and the things that have remained the same have been fortified and given new weight and value.

It has snowed, literally, at least half of the days I have been back. Within a week or two I was in the ditch in my car, shaken up and shaking my head at this ridiculous Canadian weather. When my brother and I were in Disneyworld only weeks ago we went to see the newly edited 360 degree panoramic video of Canada in the Canadian pavillion in the Epcot world showcase. Once upon a time it was a beautiful display of aerial footage of Canadian landscapes....breathtaking, but a little dry for Disney. It is now a comedic tale of Canadians, their land, and their lives, hosted by Martin Short. The opening scene is a blizzard, and a epic cinematic voice proclaiming Canada to be "Snow all the time! Igloos! Dog sleds!...." etc., to which Martin Short is quick to correct the sterotypical 'American' mistake.

Today is May 10th. The snow from yesterdays blizzard has yet to fully melt from our front lawn. Awkwardly, I relinquish all judgments both now and in the future to any American who believes my house to be an igloo. In all fairness, maybe it should be.

I took one of my journals that I found serendipitously only half-filled with words from my closet and drove into the city. I decided the best way to get downtown for my Hep A and B vaccination appointment at the travel clinic would be to take the LRT (also, parking in downtown Calgary is the most ridiculous thing I have come across yet....and the fact that I actually PAID 20 bucks to park for 3 hours the other day is even more embarassing). Sitting on the C-train, looking out the window at passing buildings and site after site of construction gave me an overwhelming feeling of the fleeting quality of life. Calgary, the city I have known and loved for so many years, has grown and changed without me. This thought only progressed into a series of thoughts, mainly reflecting on the fact that most of my friends have houses, and babies, and families, and STABILITY, and I have become almost utterly transient. I can't even get health care as I won't be in one spot for long enough in the near future to have it actually take effect (I have no regrets, or doubts, that this is absolutely the way I want to use these years of my life....but time plays tricks on you when you let it, and it is sometimes hard to fight the fear, as a woman, of ending up an old cat lady, or a crazy aunt with tarot cards and big multi colored skirts and stories of places from all over the world that start to sound like maybe, in her crazy aunt-like wormy brain, didn't actually happen). And during this time, this time 'away' to 'find myself' and my place in the world, I have missed important developments in lives that are dear to me. I missed my best friend's wedding, two other best friend's children giving birth to new members of their respective families. Another one opened his own radio station and has been running it in town for a year, and other's have purchased dogs and houses and brand spanking new vehicles and I have missed it all. And although facebook, as a phenomenon, has changed the face of relationships in a remarkable way (I feel now that I have close relationships with people I have not seen since I was eight), it has not given me back these moments, these rites of passage, that I feel I should have been present for.

There are sacrifices in every decision we make. I know my friend's understand why I was not there, and though I know I am important to them, they are doing just fine without me physically present. I would have loved to have been there, instead of experiencing weddings and births secondhand through photoalbums, that is what photo albums are for. And in all fairness, they are having to experience the past few years of my life in the same manner.

I went for a night out in my "small town" (amazing how hard it is to find genuinely SMALL towns anymore in this era of population expansion) that felt very much like a high school reuinion. It was a serendipitous gathering of people that had not seen eachother in a long time, in a bar that many of us would have never been seen in in our 'day'. I chatted up people I hadn't seen since highschool hallway sightings or bush parties (trainbridge parties to be more specific), and it was awesome. But there was notably something missing that used to be there before- the urgency and anxiety to 'stick it out', to be the last man standing, to expeirence the whole night and collect all the stories for the retellings that would inevitably occur around a campfire at a later date, or a bar, or a house party. The need to be present, to be part of it all, to be "accepted" had faded, and in its place had grown a genuine appreciation for the people I was talking to, their life stories, their personalities, that had, in all honesty, fallen as a second priority many times in the past to the need to know everyone and be in everything. In other words, it is no longer about "the group". There isn't a group, really, anymore to be a part of. There's history, and always will be, but as adults, even in a small town, people become people you know, that you may or may not have anything in common with, and finally it feels completely fine to admit that.

Contrary to my extensive facebook friendlist. "Friend" has become a somewhat flexible term in this exceedingly complex information age.

On the other hand, no one can have too many friends. The more the merrier, even if it means catching up in biker bars and learning about marriages and moves and mishaps on a cyber "feed".

I digress.....the last few weeks in Indonesia to come....eventually.....

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