Published on 01 May 2012
I’ve been incredibly homesick the past few days. I think that is a legitimate use of the word ‘homesick’, although I don’t refer back to a single place, least of all to Connecticut, where I grew up and lived for some 14 years, nor to Edinburgh, which was my base of sorts for five years during my undergraduate, and lastly not to Saarbrücken, where I currently am, anyway. No, I’ve been homesick in another way - the topography of my mind doesn’t match the longitude and latitude of the physical world. Home is where my friends, beauty, and adventure collide.
Back within the valley.
Down from the divide.
No more flaming clouds about,
O! the soft hillside.
And the starry night,
And my cottage light.
Wallace Stevens
My homesickness manifests itself in several ways. For one, I have an inability to focus on anything. I’ve never been good at focusing in the first place, but when I’m low, it’s much worse. If I am focusing, it’s on a friend, or a lock of hair, or a journey, or a tumblr. The cycle continues. I even had a party last night which should have broken the monotony. Alas, it didn’t.
At 5:00pm today I realised I wasn’t going to get better, so I watched Game of Thrones while eating dinner, and headed out with my new slackline from REI to the river. It’s 120 feet - I managed to build a slackline that was around 70 or 80 feet, and walked around half of it. I put it at 5 feet off of the ground, so it was a bit high up, but it still had a bit too much slack in it. Not really a problem, just makes it harder to focus in the middle, when you’re dropping down another four feet. Some German kids tried it out, and a man helped me tighten it and let out a great laugh when I fell with my legs on either side.
But then I am back to the computer. I’ve been trying to get a Github to work, checking out and updating social networks (I actually updated my Tumblr, for once), and that sort of thing. Mostly, though, I’ve been contemplating this mental map I have. The porch in Portland is tied in with the beach at Truro, the Swiss alps, the midges along the West Highland Way, and all of these other places I’ve been to and savoured. Distance doesn’t hold any barrier to reminiscing. But this world is peopled, with friends. There are around 10 of them, and I’d give a lot to have any of them in Saarbrücken, or to be elsewhere. Since that isn’t the case, I must be content with blogging half-assedly, trying to map out the topography of my desire, listening to the same songs on repeat, hoping to bring into my night that little bit of wideness that comes from good friends - that feeling that the world is gilded, that opportunities are real, that we’ll always have enough money for another coffee, that all wrongness is fleeting, etc.
If I had a friend here, what would I be doing different? I assume little. Slacklining, surfing the net. Staring at sunsets and smoking my lungs away. Well, I guess I’d settle for that. For now, I have to settle for work. Let’s hope this semi-rant will break the endless beat.
Tagged: