Lost in...nostalgia
Wow...Aspazia over at Mad Melancholic Feminista has just given me goosebumps. Check out her Melancholic Monday: Untranslatable Moments which has given me a Thoughtful Tuesday...
I often think back to those moments - moments when I tried to suck in my surroundings, to create some kind of internal video-tape complete with smells and tastes and emotions. Most of these come from my time in Taiwan. I knew, especially in my last year there, that I would miss Taiwan a lot when the time came to leave. I'm sure I must have looked odd, stopped in the middle of the crazy traffic, with people milling around on foot, on bicycle, scooter, cars trucks and buses; and me just absorbing, concentrating, and promising myself 'I will remember this.' I'm sure that many slipped through the cracks of my consciousness, that they will maybe emerge in years to come in dreams, or will wash over me when I least expect it. There are enough, though, that have survived, suspended in the unreliable formaldehyde of my memory:
Stopped in traffic on a hot hot hot day and smelling the oranges being squeezed by the juice vendor accross the street; piercing the cellophane lid on my large cup of iced lemon green tea and closing my eyes for the first invigorating and delicious mouthful; buying sushi at the night-market, fresh salmon and tuna and octopus boxed with a generous helping of ginger and wasabi; eating said sushi with cold beer at home after a long day teaching; the beach in the morning, unzipping my tent and running in for the first swim of the day, salt in my hair and on my skin after an afternoon swimming.
If I close my eyes it's easy to get swept away by the wave of nostalgia.
Sometimes when I think about the choices I have made I wonder what I could have achieved professionally had I stayed home and been career-focussed. Like Aspazia, I walked away from security and friends and family to follow, not quite a dream but the possibility of one.
And here I prepare to move on again with the dream finally taking shape.
No regrets.
I often think back to those moments - moments when I tried to suck in my surroundings, to create some kind of internal video-tape complete with smells and tastes and emotions. Most of these come from my time in Taiwan. I knew, especially in my last year there, that I would miss Taiwan a lot when the time came to leave. I'm sure I must have looked odd, stopped in the middle of the crazy traffic, with people milling around on foot, on bicycle, scooter, cars trucks and buses; and me just absorbing, concentrating, and promising myself 'I will remember this.' I'm sure that many slipped through the cracks of my consciousness, that they will maybe emerge in years to come in dreams, or will wash over me when I least expect it. There are enough, though, that have survived, suspended in the unreliable formaldehyde of my memory:
Stopped in traffic on a hot hot hot day and smelling the oranges being squeezed by the juice vendor accross the street; piercing the cellophane lid on my large cup of iced lemon green tea and closing my eyes for the first invigorating and delicious mouthful; buying sushi at the night-market, fresh salmon and tuna and octopus boxed with a generous helping of ginger and wasabi; eating said sushi with cold beer at home after a long day teaching; the beach in the morning, unzipping my tent and running in for the first swim of the day, salt in my hair and on my skin after an afternoon swimming.
If I close my eyes it's easy to get swept away by the wave of nostalgia.
Sometimes when I think about the choices I have made I wonder what I could have achieved professionally had I stayed home and been career-focussed. Like Aspazia, I walked away from security and friends and family to follow, not quite a dream but the possibility of one.
And here I prepare to move on again with the dream finally taking shape.
No regrets.
4 Comments:
I can't tell you how humbled I am that this post resonated with so many folks. I love what you wrote here about--the textures, smells, faces--of your time in Taiwan. Thank you for sharing this!
Welcome to the Progressive Women Bloggers webring. :)
hey - thanks so much for coming by my blog....
By the way, i really enjoyed this post too. You really captured that moment. I could imagine myself there, remembering to stop and think that one day i would be gone and this would all seem like a bizarre dream.
It does kind of seem like a bizarre dream, but sometimes in the middle of doing something in Britain, I remember peeling my sweaty skin off a vinyl couch or having to stick my entire foot and ankle into a puddle of warm water when i stop at a light during typhoon season, and many many other good and beautiful things.
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