The lights go out
I haven't showered in five days. I just got back to Melbourne (took a bus from Noosa to Brisbane, flew from Brisbane to Melbourne).
I didn't see as much as I would have liked to, but I did have some interesting experiences and an overall awesome time.
It was strange coming back to Melbourne. It really felt like the end. Even though I knew my destination, a city I loved brightly, I felt like I was heading somewhere cold and empty. Everybody's gone. There was a brief moment while I was walking through the terminal to the airplane where I had this sense that I was going home--home home, not Melbourne home. It startled me thinking about it and it startled me more when I came to my senses and realized that I was heading back to Melbourne. But the Melbourne I thought of was a shell.
I walked into my room on returning and it seemed emptier than I remembered leaving it. It's strange how long three weeks can be.
Carmi saw me off at the bus station, and it was all I could do not to cry; that was the final goodbye, and it made all the earlier goodbyes with the others who left before into something real. He said at one point in the blunt way he tends to say things, "Katlyn, that's weird! This is the last day I'm going to see you ever!" I think the ever struck me harder than I thought it would, harder than he presumably meant it to. The reality of the situation and of the experience materialized with that word and it rolled over me like boulders. I felt my bones become dust.
I have a hard time letting go. I met some really amazing people and made really great friends and now it's like I'm losing them all, one by one, to another reality. Of course we'll stay in touch and everything, but it's very strange to have someone so close and constantly present in your life and then to suddenly find they've been removed. I think I'm also afraid to let go of the experience, though. I don't know what going back home means for me and that scares me, and it seems like somehow staying will keep things in tact--it will keep the people I met here somehow closer and it will keep the harder decisions, the heavier decisions at bay. I also really like it here as I've said a million and one times already.
That feeling of having your heart in your stomach and your stomach in your throat, the feeling that is terror and joy--it is the best and the worst feeling in the world.
It's a strange thing to be halfway around the world surrounded by strangers and still searching for a familiar face. A strong bout of homesickness hit me on the road. In Brisbane, in fact. Soulweary and withdrawn, walking the streets of yet another unknown city, I found myself desperately yearning to see a someone familiar, someone back-home familiar. No matter how I searched the sea, how intently I endeavored, no one appeared. I felt crazy, but was really just hopeful. Sometimes hope and insanity might be the same thing. I knew my pursuit was bootless, but the hoping helped somehow. I think Carmi was feeling it, too. He seemed relieved when we finally befriended some other Israelis staying at our hostel. Except I didn't want to meet other Americans or talk to them or anything like that; that provided no relief. I guess it's different, though, when even the language isn't your own.
This afternoon, one of my fillings came out. First half came out while I was eating a bite-size Vault (a cheap equivalent of a Snickers bar) and I most certainly swallowed it without realizing until sometime after what the strangely gritty thing I'd bitten down on was (I thought it was a scorched peanut or something). A while later, while (rather foolishly, I know) eating another, the other half came out--this I managed to recover from beneath my tongue before consuming it as I had its counterpart. I was trying to chew only on the right side of my mouth but that requires more attention than I was thitherto aware, so when I let my concentration shift from chewing to the ongoing conversation in the car at the time, which I think was probably incomprehensible to me as it was most likely being conducted in Hewbrew, my tongue mindfully shifted the contents in my mouth to the other side for chewing thereby allowing the caramel to steal away the second half of the filling. The tooth had been strangely sore the off and on the past two weeks or so, but I attributed it merely to an excess of sweets and cold. Anyway, now I have an unsettling chasm in one of my upper left molars. It actually makes me nauseous exploring the emptiness with my tongue, which I of course can't help but do every five seconds. Needless to say, I've spent the rest of the day feeling kind of queasy. I hope you are all equally disgusted.
I wish sometimes that when you send someone a message you could have a glimpse, just for a moment, of their reaction to it, see their face in a flash behind your eyes.
Well, I have so much I want to say, so much to express (I've finished relating dental issues, I promise), but I'm tired and dirty and rather cold (it was a lovely 8 degrees Celsius when I stepped off the plane here in Melbourne. Noosa, today, I think was somewhere around 20 Celsius, which is not sweltering, but it was bright and sunny and warmer than Melbourne's been in some time. And it is winter here, after all). Plus, I have to get up relatively early tomorrow morning to greet a familiar face. Six months can be a long time.
So goodnight for now, all.
Cheers.
I didn't see as much as I would have liked to, but I did have some interesting experiences and an overall awesome time.
It was strange coming back to Melbourne. It really felt like the end. Even though I knew my destination, a city I loved brightly, I felt like I was heading somewhere cold and empty. Everybody's gone. There was a brief moment while I was walking through the terminal to the airplane where I had this sense that I was going home--home home, not Melbourne home. It startled me thinking about it and it startled me more when I came to my senses and realized that I was heading back to Melbourne. But the Melbourne I thought of was a shell.
I walked into my room on returning and it seemed emptier than I remembered leaving it. It's strange how long three weeks can be.
Carmi saw me off at the bus station, and it was all I could do not to cry; that was the final goodbye, and it made all the earlier goodbyes with the others who left before into something real. He said at one point in the blunt way he tends to say things, "Katlyn, that's weird! This is the last day I'm going to see you ever!" I think the ever struck me harder than I thought it would, harder than he presumably meant it to. The reality of the situation and of the experience materialized with that word and it rolled over me like boulders. I felt my bones become dust.
I have a hard time letting go. I met some really amazing people and made really great friends and now it's like I'm losing them all, one by one, to another reality. Of course we'll stay in touch and everything, but it's very strange to have someone so close and constantly present in your life and then to suddenly find they've been removed. I think I'm also afraid to let go of the experience, though. I don't know what going back home means for me and that scares me, and it seems like somehow staying will keep things in tact--it will keep the people I met here somehow closer and it will keep the harder decisions, the heavier decisions at bay. I also really like it here as I've said a million and one times already.
That feeling of having your heart in your stomach and your stomach in your throat, the feeling that is terror and joy--it is the best and the worst feeling in the world.
It's a strange thing to be halfway around the world surrounded by strangers and still searching for a familiar face. A strong bout of homesickness hit me on the road. In Brisbane, in fact. Soulweary and withdrawn, walking the streets of yet another unknown city, I found myself desperately yearning to see a someone familiar, someone back-home familiar. No matter how I searched the sea, how intently I endeavored, no one appeared. I felt crazy, but was really just hopeful. Sometimes hope and insanity might be the same thing. I knew my pursuit was bootless, but the hoping helped somehow. I think Carmi was feeling it, too. He seemed relieved when we finally befriended some other Israelis staying at our hostel. Except I didn't want to meet other Americans or talk to them or anything like that; that provided no relief. I guess it's different, though, when even the language isn't your own.
This afternoon, one of my fillings came out. First half came out while I was eating a bite-size Vault (a cheap equivalent of a Snickers bar) and I most certainly swallowed it without realizing until sometime after what the strangely gritty thing I'd bitten down on was (I thought it was a scorched peanut or something). A while later, while (rather foolishly, I know) eating another, the other half came out--this I managed to recover from beneath my tongue before consuming it as I had its counterpart. I was trying to chew only on the right side of my mouth but that requires more attention than I was thitherto aware, so when I let my concentration shift from chewing to the ongoing conversation in the car at the time, which I think was probably incomprehensible to me as it was most likely being conducted in Hewbrew, my tongue mindfully shifted the contents in my mouth to the other side for chewing thereby allowing the caramel to steal away the second half of the filling. The tooth had been strangely sore the off and on the past two weeks or so, but I attributed it merely to an excess of sweets and cold. Anyway, now I have an unsettling chasm in one of my upper left molars. It actually makes me nauseous exploring the emptiness with my tongue, which I of course can't help but do every five seconds. Needless to say, I've spent the rest of the day feeling kind of queasy. I hope you are all equally disgusted.
I wish sometimes that when you send someone a message you could have a glimpse, just for a moment, of their reaction to it, see their face in a flash behind your eyes.
Well, I have so much I want to say, so much to express (I've finished relating dental issues, I promise), but I'm tired and dirty and rather cold (it was a lovely 8 degrees Celsius when I stepped off the plane here in Melbourne. Noosa, today, I think was somewhere around 20 Celsius, which is not sweltering, but it was bright and sunny and warmer than Melbourne's been in some time. And it is winter here, after all). Plus, I have to get up relatively early tomorrow morning to greet a familiar face. Six months can be a long time.
So goodnight for now, all.
Cheers.