Pulling the Puzzles Apart

I think the seductive thing about travel is the illusion that you can pick up and go whenever you want--wherever you want. I think it is the illusion of weightlessness contrasted with the gravity of having been somewhere that really gets you and makes you want to keep on going and keep on having been somewhere. Being away for the past week has made me realize how difficult it is to get back into the routine of things knowing that you could get up and go--or rather, feeling like you could get up and go (whether or not you can actually do it is another thing). Here are some things that I jotted down on the plane ride home:

1. There is something comforting about being in a country you don't know, where the language you've taken for granted on one hand means nothing--in the same way your now-foreign currency loses its purchasing power--but on the other hand, becomes code and sets you apart. Our dialect becomes a secret. 

2. In a place where you and those like you do not belong, the context changes and somewhere the weight of social pressure gives and it is belonging to not belong.

3. Places have memory. Not memories, memory. 

There are so many things to do today--my mom is getting ready to fly somewhere and everyone is hustling and bustling and I have posters to make and stories to write and a suitcase to unpack. In this room, I can hear the incessant hum of the air-conditioner and the tack-tack of computer keys. Orange-yellow sunlight is coming in through slats in the blinds, slices of light pushing in through the gaps between the beige folds of vinyl. Drawing tablet, journal, menus, tickets, book covers, CDs. Shrapnel. Shrapnel.