delicious strangeness

Monday, November 27, 2006

"All this - the river and flowers, running, which was something she rarely did these days, the fine ribbing of the oak trunks, the high-ceilinged room, the geometry of light, the pulse in her ears subsiding in the stillness - all this pleased her as the familiar was transformed into a delicious strangeness."

-ian mcewan from atonement, pg 20

mcewan writes this of cecilia, one of  atonement's major characters, as she returns home from recently finishing university.  i read this while i was in vienna just two weeks ago...and i thought it was beautiful. 

i lived in the same room of the same house for 18 years of my life..i guess you could say that i was used to consistency.  i have friends who have been nomads since the womb jumping from one city to the other attending approximately 47 schools - their definition of home tends to be the most interesting.  i have come to realize recently that this fact about my childhood is the major reason i have been restless/wanderlusty since i was 18, but also why i've always had this great tension/anxiety about change. 

if you know me at all, you probably know that i am guided too often by my emotions..this could be manifested in a sense of adventure, a pursuit for identity, the need for new memories...i think i've become addicted to the collection of interesting experiences; i haven't decided if this is a bad thing or not...yet.  in any case, since i left memphis some six years ago, i have somewhat hopped from the familiar to a new familiar, and so on.  so whether it was moving to nashville, working at a sports camp in missouri, studying in vienna, living in hong kong, leaving nashville, or being in glacier, i have been given this sweet blessing (and i don't take that word lightly) to experience community, to be anxious, unsure, explore, and suck the marrow out of those homes (and i still partially blame the influence of watching dead poets societyat the age of 13).

i imagine that those friends of mine who moved every 9 months as children were trained to not take so much emotional baggage from one city to the next, and learned in a very healthy way to make friends, leave friends, remember them, and know that they were in their lives for that time and that time only for a reason.  like a language, it's much more difficult to learn this as an adult.  i can't help but think that i can't live without a place, a group of people, a sense of familiarity when i am in the midst of them. 

but then i leave the familiar and life continues to reencarnate community, peace, adventure, knowledge, awareness...and when i have the sweet opportunity to revisit those once familiars, like cecilia, it has been transformed into a delicious strangeness. 

and so i ventured to vienna, the greatest period of my life as of yet, to reacquaint myself with one of those places i once thought i couldn't live without and be with a best friend.  i spent lazy days in coffee houses, reading about cecilia, strolling past old men that still run the same cafe, sitting in front of klimt, caravaggio and bruegal's work, wrapping scarves around my neck, running up the stairs of hotel t, sneaking a peek at vineyards, sneaking a drink of ottakringer with beautiful company, staring at cute waiters, educating my memory in an old classroom, purchasing kinder chocolates and manner wafers, breathing in the culture from the cobble stoned paths, lighting candles for a prayer remembered...

revisiting old homes to find something less familiar but just as sweet has been like an invited dream - your heart is convinced that it still exists, your mind is a little more doubtful of its consistency and placement, and your emotions are completely content and just a little sad that it's impossible for life to always remain the same.