I would say, “Surreal doesn’t even begin to describe how weird it is that I’ll be halfway around the world in two days,” except that surreal literally means “having the disorienting, hallucinatory quality of a dream; unreal; fantastic,” so yes, it actually does begin to describe how weird it is that I will be halfway around the world in two days.
The changes compound.
I am 21 now. An age that, like the surrealistic London of the near-future, I never really imagined I’d reach. In the hundreds if not thousands of movies I’d watched, songs I’ve listened to, and stories I’ve heard, the Final Coming-of-Age Obstacle was one to mark the passing of era from adolescence to adulthood. A crowning celebration of being old and responsible and cool.
Maybe it was the ridiculous semester I had or the lack of sleep, but I kinda mostly feel the same. If I grab a Mike’s Hard Lemonade at Safeway I still feel guilty standing in line, like I’m conning the check-out clerk into thinking I’m of-age. Funny thing is, I’m headed to London, where it wouldn’t matter if I were 18, I could still grab a bottle of Oxford’s Two-Buck-Chuck equivalent and make my bitterly cold flat a wee bit warmer.
I suppose the next one isn’t really new, but it feels like it since I’ve been away for so long. I’m an auntie four times over. They’re all growing up and barely know me if they know me at all and it kills to not be a daily part of my brother’s and sister’s kids’ lives. That was a lot of Ss. But spending the last two weeks with Amelia, she’s come to recognize my face, and even reaches for me when Rachel is holding her, something that makes me Inner Auntie warm and fuzzy to no end. It’s just weird that my cousin Miles—whom I remember being born—is now hitting high school with a voice that no longer resembles that of a small and highly-excitable child. And Ayden is now a boy, with a personality and mind of his own, spilling tales about dragons and foam-sword fighting with his grandfather, my dad. It’s so odd to think how little he’s lived, and how much of that life I’ve already missed.
I suppose I must content myself with the promise that one day I will have the time—the money—to carve out space for them in my life. With my income being that of your average college student and with the distance between us all being what it is, wanting to be with someone and affording the proximity are two realities constantly out of alignment.
Which I suppose brings me to the next “newish” point. I’m leaving someone else behind, someone I haven’t been parted from for any great period of time since I met him, and especially not since he became so unnervingly important. Without getting in to any great, mushy detail, let’s just say the postal office will be selling me a lot of stamps in the near future.
And Oxford. The university of intimidating history. I know I am not Einstein, nor Tolkien nor Lewis nor Churchill, nor any of the brilliant people that have lived or studied or taught there. It seems almost asinine to let someone of my average intelligence into a university with such prestigious and world-changing alumni. However, it is their fault for admitting me, so I go with glee.
Travel plans? A few of the following:
- Easter in Scotland
- Go to Rome to visit Becky Train while she’s stdying there
- Swim, somewhere, inn Greece
- Cruise by Jesse Doland’s parents’ place in Spain
- Castles in Germany. I’m German after all.
- Marseilles in France, and Paris. Drinking some Champagne in the Province of Champagne would be cool, if dorky.
- Cathedrals. Anywhere, everywhere, as many as I can soak in. I wish we had cathedrals in the States. Not because I’m Catholic, but because there’s something about the frame of mind I find myself in when attempting worship in a place that doesn’t look like a badly converted warehouse. I like the feel of places that are old and tinged with sorrow and time and were intended to be beautiful until they fell back into dust.
- Most likely the Oxford Harry Pottery tour. Apparently one of the eating halls there is the Great Hall in the movies. I’m a dork, but whatevs, it’s friggin’ England.
- My Great and Noble Pursuit of the Awesomest Café in History. I need my coffee.
- Vintage and thrift stores. I’d love to find a crazy old set of gloves or a pipe that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle puffed away while he penned the ultimate curmudgeonly anti-hero.
- Some other stuff.
Really, I suppose I haven’t thought much about what I’ll do when I get there. Study, I suppose. I also intend to sleep at least seven hours a night. That would be awesome. I guess a part of me doesn’t really want to plan too much. I’d rather discover than anticipate. Exploration, albeit on a rather safe scale, has always been a part of my nature, and I think I’ve stifled it too much in the past half a decade. I want to just go, and see what happens to me as a result.
It is extremely weird to me to think that my mother was married and had a kid by the time she was my age, as was (I believe) her mother before her, and so on. The traditional has never been in the cards in terms of what I’ve wanted for myself, and yet there are some things that I have held on to with an obsessive grip, like the concept of family, the childish and completely necessary spirit of Christmas, knowing how to sew as well as change the oil in the car and a flat tire if it happens that way; baking apple pie with a lattice-top crust; loading, firing, and cleaning a variety of guns; stringing a bow; finding a kick-ass deal on a pair of gorgeous shoes; knitting things for people, even if they live where it’s 80 degrees; being faithful, in more than just a romantic sense; being hopeful, catching the cynicism that threatens to consume; loving something to an extreme, even when it makes no sense to anyone else; loving anything at all to a great degree.
There are such small pieces of this earth that are extremely dear to me. Things that make me feel that I am home. Because if I have a deep affection for something, it weights me to that thing: object, idea, or person that it may be. And being anchored is such a comforting feeling when half the time I feel like I’m floating away, slowly, like suddenly looking up from the surface of the water and realizing the tide has pulled you far enough that you know you cannot possibly make it back to where you started, and God, that feeling of loss. I hate that feeling and I love that feeling because at least I knew I had something worth losing, something that affects me by its absence.
Sartre had a theory about non-presence. I paraphrase greatly, but he believed that the lack of something could become a positive presence. The example I remember is when one walks into a café, looking for a specific friend. And when you realize they are not there, the absence of them becomes the most prominent presence there is.
Absence makes the heart grow fonder
as loss illuminates the way
the heart will follow to seek what its after;
ah, but so much of this pain to pay.
I wonder sometimes if I’m the only one who feels constantly lost. I wonder if all the addictions of the world were created to smother the same mundane affliction, the sting of which is so acute as to need instant and prolonged anesthesia.
So I grab onto pieces, rusted links from old anchor chains floated up from the bottom of the sea, and call them home.
2nd star to the right and off to Neverland we go.
