Homecoming

it was my last night in europe. i was in a touristy tapas bar on las ramblas in barcelona having dinner at a characteristically spanish hour: midnight. over sangria, chorizo, sauteed mushrooms and albondigas with miikka, my misgivings (or were they anxieties? or just feelings?) about going home began to seep into our conversation.

miikka listened quite attentively (that's one nice thing about people for whom talking is like pulling teeth) as "seeping in" turned into "mini tirade". "but," he ventured, "don't you also want to go home so you can start putting the entire trip behind you?"

i stared at him for what felt like a very long moment. i may have been incredulous. put the trip behind me? why on earth would i want to do that?

thirty straight hours of traveling, two full workdays, one comfort meal of spanish-style century tuna and rice and one happy acs reunion-rehearsal later, i'm still in that frame of mind. it's almost as if i'm in a permanent, private fog, and i don't want it to clear just yet.

my first commute to work, a mere eight hours after landing on philippine soil, was a complete blur. around me was manila in all its smoky, noisy, dusty, insane glory, but i barely saw it; my mind was still walking the streets of barcelona.

my mind and body are joining forces to hold on to europe with all their might. i have never suffered from jetlag; now i'm up all night, putting in a token two to three hours of sleep before shuffling to the office so i can be groggy and sleepy at my desk the whole day. in the wee hours of the morning, i look at my tour photos and sort them into neat folders per stop; at the office, i turn up my speakers so that my newly acquired, endlessly looped finnish vocal music (club for five, whom we met at polyfollia, and two new rajaton albums) can envelop me all day and block out the rest of the world.

i'm not cranky or sad (i know the diff -- i went through a really bad depression after my first tour in 2000). i feel i'm still me, just... displaced. i'm neither here nor there, which is okay with me -- because it means i'm still kind of there.

besides, there's no reason to be sad: coming home isn't an ending, but a beginning. because now, the process of discovering what the trip has done to me, how it has changed me, how it has made me and my life better, truly begins.