Home and Away

Now I am home, at least, that's what I tell myself, for simplisity's sake.

I have just realized that travel completely warps my sense of time- before going to South America I spent six weeks in Toronto, each day walking around the city, taking the subway, going to school.

I kept referring to last "last year" at school, but it wasn't last year, it was the year before- last year I was away, all over, all year. (A year was about a month too long, in retrospect.)

The point is I returned here, to this town which smells like cut grass, to my parent's house, after a relatively short period away, and for all I know another year has passed.

I wonder why so little has changed. I wonder why nothing here ever changes, except superfically. While sitting here, searching travel quotations on the internet I come across Nelson Mandela's words "There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered." Only I can't quite say how I have altered- though I am certain I have.

I am supposed to go to the store with my dad. I open my closet and panic- I have so many clothes, how will I ever choose an outfit? This takes me an hour, at the end of which I have tried on nearly twenty different things, just so I remember how they look, how they feel. Don't get me started on accessories. Not that there isn't a certain appeal to choosing whether to where the South African necklace, or the Chinese- or the Peruvian.

I save nearly 2000 pictures to my computer, going through them one at a time, reliving and telling the story. Already it is just a story, an anecdote (nearly 200o anecdotes)- I'm not sure I actually believe I have done all this.

Space and time, airplanes and luggage, phonecalls and emails, here and there, home and away- it is mostly all flexible.

I worry that I am two people (actually many more, but that's another story), one at home and one on the road. One of my goals for the coming time is to blend them, a little bit more. Must apply a little of my traveller's mettle to personal relationships, to speaking with waitresses, to school. Must not forget I have, in fact, done all these things, and not let myself forget it for a moment.

Must get dressed now, for 8 o'clock. It may take me a while.

N.