Chronicles Of The Return

My mom just shook her head back and forth.

Her cousin, the current patriarch of the family put his head in his hands.

“Cool,” said his renegade quasi-reformed hippy wife. “It’s all downhill with Benedict anyway.”

My nieces both smiled. The youngest, Francesca, sat up straight and said proudly, “we’re Pastafarians now.”

“You’re devoted to the God of noodles now?” I asked her.

“No,” said my sister, “Rastafarian.”

“That makes me feel sooo much better,” said my bewildered mom.

“Mom,” she said in a defensive tone, “Rastafarians believe in the Trinity. And that god, whom we call Jah, will provide.”

Our ninety year-old matriarch chimed in.

“But what about Baptism for the girls?”

“Oh, we do that,” my sister said.

“What, with bong water?”

I know, I know. I haven’t been about much lately. I’m trying to put a book together. I think I’m over the shock of return. At least I think I am. I wake up every morning, write in my journal–it’s not a travel journal anymore I suppose–and then sit down at the computer to write–or organize. Battling through organizing a book is no easy task. There is much more to it than just simply sitting down and banging some shit out on a type-writer, erm, keyboard. I’m not staying out in suburbia any longer, either. Got my own place now. The cave, I like to call it, where I can blast the AC, hunker down with coffee and beat my digits to a pulp every morning.

After that I try and get out. Getting out is critical to my sanity these days. Before I left for Singapore I spent far too much time at home, on the internet, inside a book, etc. . . than was healthy. After a year away I’m fitter than I have been since I was 25. And so, freaks of nature, I’m actually running a bit. My back is still sketchy at times, but I don’t push it too far. But I resent having to ‘jog’ for my exercise. I resent not being able to walk out into my city and just live. I miss walking. I miss the ‘near misses’ and serendipity of the world. So, I go out and try to make some of my own. I smile. I chat people up. (They probably think I am crazy.) When I am at my favorite coffee shop and all the tables are full, I invite people who need a table to sit with me. No better way to make new friends. I’ve carried the world with me and in my own way I hope I’m making this a better place. “The little things,” I tell myself. And I am learning, like Iyer that “epiphanies, after all, are the easy part–it’s the acceptance of the everyday that comes hard.” Yes, Pico, it does. But I haven’t given up.

Every now and then a thought pops into my head, “maybe you ought to get a real job.” I explore the thought. “Why should I?” The answer: “Maybe to buy a new car? Get a nicer place. Some flashy new clothes?”

Doesn’t take long, does it? All those old messages, same habits. I’m resisting. Although, I do need new clothes. They are all so huge on me. Sometimes it looks like I am wearing a burka. (And I’m also fleeing down to Mexico for two weeks, also.) Funny, a year ago today I wrote this:

The sun shines all morning.

But then, the barometer plummets, all motion, movement is sucked from the air.

The wind stops.

All is still but the clouds above swirl, growing dark, angry as the humidity rises. Air and water congeal like gelatin or melted cellophane.

The clouds grow darker yet, while sweat glistens at your temples, behind your ears, dripping down your forehead. Then, and only after heat and humidity enervate everyone and everything around you does the rain start.

Only a few drops at first sound off on the eaves and canopies across the city but slowly, remorselessly the sound builds like a crescendo.

Alas, one is always caught without an umbrella: wet, sweaty, humid and hot.

After what seems like forever the rain dissipates. The winds kick up again, sending the showers south, or east, or west or north and soon the sun is shining through heavy, tropical clouds, shining as it ever was, as if nothing had ever happened.

We could use the rain here. Couldn’t we?

I’ve given up fighting the whole, “I refuse to Twitter thing.” I created an account and will be doing so from here on out. It seems a pointless thing, for the most part and most of the time. That being said, I had a long conversation with a guy who runs an SEO/internet advertising shop here in Austin. His reasons for doing so–twittering–were compelling. The reasons he gave me for doing so, at the time, seemed to be as well. We’ll see.

Austin culture is so extremely hyper-connected, but so disconnected from reality sometimes I have to laugh.

But I relent all the same.

My first week home was, while not exciting, pleasant. Hanging out with my Mom, seeing my sister, old friends, catching up, all a part of the return. After staying at my Mom’s the first week I headed out to Williamson County to stay with a buddy until my flat is ready. He’s got a wonderful house, spacious, with two dogs that are sweet–if one is a bit to exuberant in the mornings, you know, I just don’t like being licked (cue the peanut gallery)–but it’s out in sub-urban hell. The last several days after waking up and eating breakfast I drive into town to spend my day writing in a local coffee shop. I greet each morning with a smile, the promise of a new day. But the moment I pull the car out of the subdivision onto Anderson Mill Road, my mood sinks. I look around me. I see blue skies, a warm sun and concrete big boxes in all directions. Home.

“Where is the wonder,” I ask myself? I know it’s silly. Austin isn’t Istanbul. It’s not Muscat. It’s not even Singapore. And so I drive thirty minutes into town, sit down at a table and fire up my Mac Book Pro. The blank white page and the blinking cursor reflect back on me the emptiness I fell.

“How can I have gone from being so full of life and feel so empty now,” I ask?

Perhaps I expect too much. But as I drive around, I see, keenly, painfully, what Guy Forsyth sings about: “[our streets are] clogged bumper to bumper with stinking SUVs and two-story pickup trucks that can drive over anything except the two-story pickup truck right in front of it. Not even the highways look the same, Starbucks and 711s and Walmarts jam the feeder roads. We don’t live around this mess, we live under it.”

And so each day is a struggle to climb out of the rubble. A struggle to see the beauty, the wonder here. After a year away I expected to come home with ‘new eyes.’ And I did. They aren’t jaded eyes. But they aren’t happy eyes, either.

And there is an uncountable measure of beauty in Austin and the surrounding Hill Country. Clear streams tumble down the limestone hills, Cedar trees, Live Oaks, Pecan trees, and the skyline of Austin? The city has changed. It’s a lovely city, now. If I knew nothing of this place and were visiting for the first time I would find inspiration here.

And there’s the rub. Each day has been a struggle to find some kind of inspiration. I know my expectations are out of line, unrealistic. After the daily barrage of stimulus I had traveling I should know better. And I do realize I’m ‘coming down’ from a magical year.

I stare out the window into the glaring sun, wondering, my mind wandering back East. These are the first words I’ve written in two weeks. A writer who doesn’t write?

“Settle down,” the voice in my head says, “it’ll come. It’s only been two weeks.”

I miss the world. I knew this would happen. And I’m glad it is happening.

I just have to remind myself to document it. Too many people write excellent books about the journey and yet forget the most important part is the return, how it shapes us, how we adjust and sink back into the compromises that set us off into the world in the first place.

“Patience,” I hear, that whisper on the wind that followed me from Toba to Sivas, Istanbul to Nyborg.

Patience is trait I never acquired. Probably never will.

Today I might be able to make peace with the changes. I can feel it, bubbling up, but it’s dropping slow. The sinking feeling in my stomach isn’t a strong as it was yesterday, and less than the day before. Blue skies and the warmth of friends surround me. I’d forgotten how hard it is to be alone.

Home does have it’s rewards.