"What is the meaning
Of old tongues
Reaping havoc
In new places?...
Swoop down, find a stick, preferably small, maneuverable and
strong. Take to your branch. Repeat until you have a solid, comfortable nest.
The following is a transcript of a diary entry a couple of weeks or so ago, so tenses and any notion of time has gone out the window on this piece:
"I am standing at my window, in my room, straining my eyes to
focus through the fine mesh that does its best to keep our skin from bubbling
from insects. I'm enjoying a swift, shuddering breeze; it doesn't happen very
often. Cool air glides softly over the weather-beaten puckering of my face,
fills my lungs with dry warmth, a freshness gladly welcomed, however momentary.
Strands tickle my temples and nudge thought into action; "how very odd it
is that a place once so alien and incongruous can now feel so familiar. It's almost as if I'm not afraid anymore, like I belong." Well isn't that a kicker?! Go back talk to Me three months ago, you would get only terrified babble and the belief that I will always, without changing, be an anomaly. See, the square never quite fit in the circular. The environment and I are learning to welcome each other.
I say that, the heat still swathes me in callous reams of sweat and irritable exhaustion - I'm a joy to be with on hot days - but the air tries in earnest to apologise, to soothe with sporadic, blissful rolls of shimmering breeze. These cool moments are a craving, and while they don't happen often, they arrive precisely when they mean to, when they're needed and I can sense Thailand is accepting me, finally.
One, two, three, four months have steam-rolled by; each month the highest of waves, enveloping continents and I teeter on the crest, watching in baffled fascination. Four full months of changing perspectives, growing and forceful maturing, reverting back to selfish youth, picking up the pieces, dragging yourself on through your own mistakes and running to catch up with yourself, slowing to suck in the air as your chest pounds. Reinventing, re-evaluating, reciprocating, ripening. All of that in four months, seemingly repeating and repeating, is why the breeze is so coveted.
So with buffeting, twirling, elated times I've realised what we all do eventually, but which seems to be realised too late by many; nobody, no one in the ether has a single clue what they are doing.
Not in any negative, incompetency way - though for some, that stands as very much the case - but in the way that it seems people simply fall into life. We fall into careers, fall into luck, fall into misfortune, we fall into each other. I spent my first few months here thinking "I'm far too young and inexperienced for this, I don't know what I'm doing! Look at all of these people! They've all got it sorted, they know what to do, how to do things, where to be, how to get there...what am I doing?!" These "sorted people"? Well one of them is thinking exactly the same as me whilst picking up after the kids which have suddenly seemed to materialise in their life, and the other is secretly playing Snake underneath their accounting desk.
We're always too young for life, but that just means that we have no excuse not to play on the park swings, and it is through getting out there, seeing the world and gaining that experience of alien surroundings and dealing with yourself, that we become able to do the things our past selves' eyes would boggle at.
I'm standing at my window, breathing in Thailand, the fragrancy of realisation sweet in my grateful lungs."
Right now I can hear Pe Ae chanting Japanese, the sing-song
echo rolling back at her from the students, drifting down the corridor, letting
the building rejoice in life. There’s a breeze in my hair, the birds’ wavering
songs are telling me I’m right where I need to be. This world is my nest, and I have created my
own to be proud of, to rejoice in, to feel the comfort of a country which once
felt so hostile and is now my grateful sister.
...Ah, sweet mystery;
Come to break the frozen lake in me,
Shaking the foundations of the very trees within me,
That the earth is the earth is the earth."
- Grace Nichols; Hurricane Hits England
