3: November 2003 Archives

When I said, "I miss you like summer," I was thinking of the sweltering heat that day that I took Feith to Taniguchi, and how we sat on big limestone rocks under the tree (my tree) and looked down at the water until our cheeks turned pink. I was thinking of a night spent under the stars with friends, watching a musical at the hillside theatre, and of the sweet tea we poured into a plastic jug to drink, and of the spicy salsa into which we dipped crispy corn chips, and how it was both cold and hot on my tongue.

And she got that, all the nuances of those five little words, translated into cilantro and tequila and the flavor of her personality, spicy and passionate like that salsa, and mine calm and warm (and maybe a bit muggy) like the night air.

And it all makes me miss her more.

I feel sometime like the one bird left in someone's backyard when the rest of the flock has taken off on its usual migratory path, and there's nothing to eat but birdseed, and nothing to do but wait, brave the winter, and hope they'll make it back at the end of the season

It's the hazard, I guess, in living in a transitory town and knowing transitory people. Nearly all my friends from college came to Austin, got their degrees, and then left. And though I thought it was a college phenomenon, it has stricken my coworkers, too; my friends leave one by one, chasing jobs or love or better lives, and I stay here to hold the fort and hope they'll return (someday), once the winter has passed.

It is only at the end of a long and winding trail that one can stop and look upon the path trudged upon so long, upon the hills and valleys scaled and the rocks and roots stumbled over on the way. And it's only upon the looking, there at the end, that one gets a sense of perspective. When a path is taken one step at a time, it is hard to measure exactly how long it might be.

The process of reflecting upon a life is much the same. While there is beauty in the day-to-day minutiae, it's hard to gauge one's progress on a day-to-day basis.

Sometimes, I feel as though this is all I ever write about. Is there more to life than this?

For today, I can content myself with minutiae.

I had been in London for all of twenty minutes when it started raining. I wasn't exactly surprised -- London is, after all, known for its rain. It was warm that day in early July, though welcomingly cooler than the scorching afternoon I'd spent in Romania the day before, and the rain fell softly like kisses upon my hair and my nose.

I was exhausted that morning. A twelve-hour bus ride on poorly maintained Romanian roads had brought me to the Budapest airport at 1 AM, and I was working on very little sleep as a result. Anything requiring the most basic skill in concentration becomes an order of magnitude higher when I've had no sleep, and figuring out how to get to my hostel near the London Bridge by navigating the complicated Underground system, which I had never ridden before, was nearly impossible.

Carrying my over-full backpacks, I trudged to the Heathrow station and rode the Underground for nearly 45 minutes before I found the London Bridge stop. Then it was another 15 minutes of trying to find the street I was looking for, and the address on the street I was trying to find, and then waiting to check into the hostel, which was closed in the late morning, so I couldn't take a nap. I paid for my bed and stashed my heavier backpack at the hostel, keeping the smaller pack with me, since it held my digital camera and other meager valuables. Then I trudged in the rain again, finding another tube entrance, where I took the Underground to the Elephant & Castle stop and continued to a free museum located nearby.

I found out later that Elephant & Castle is known for its colorful shopping district, but I managed to miss all that, as focused as I was on getting to the Imperial War Museum. It's hard to explain (or remember, for that matter) what (other than free admission) drew me to a museum of war, but I spent hours exploring the place. The museum didn't celebrate war, though it did, unsurprisingly, present a decidedly Anglo-centric view of the subject, and though its Holocaust exhibit was the third I'd seen during my trip to Europe, repetition of the topic made it no less moving.

The majority of the rest of my time in London was spent sleeping. I couldn't really fight the exhaustion any longer, so I took a long nap, and then went to bed very early in the evening. Really, I spent just enough time in London to know that I want to spend some more time there.

My travel bug is itching.