It’s all moving along on schedule, or what passes for a schedule in my case. I got a job last week, unbelievably, and I start tomorrow and so today is my last day of doing what I do every day. Tomorrow starts again with passwords and staff meetings and grant applications. If you’d told me the day I left that I would be back in an academic job within the month I don’t know if I would have believed you, but it’s true, I am, and the next thing to do is to find another living situation. And then the next thing to do after that is to find some sort of regular dance class to go to and there I’ll be, I guess, actually ensconced in this tiny windy city, with a commute and a kitchen and a library card, just like a regular person.
This past week has involved my coming down with strep throat, my ingesting a lot of antibiotics, a fruitless search for a semi-cute shirt to wear out on Saturday, and of course Saturday night itself, where I wore a slightly-less-than-semi-cute-shirt out to bars and clubs and things like that. Hilarious on all levels. I can always tell when I’m with a new group of people when a) they laugh at my jokes, not having had had all joy beaten out of them by my constant re-telling of my grammar joke (“But not in the pluperfect subjunctive HA HA!”) and that one time I went to Burning Man and that one time I had a stripper and b) when I have to explain that no, I don’t really drink, and that half a glass of champagne I just drank over the course of three hours is making me feel a little dizzy. And then, if there has been dancing involved, as there certainly was on Saturday, also c) I have to explain that yes, I was actually sober on the dance floor, why do you ask?
Being here is not like what I expected it to be when I was thinking about it all those months ago because I had no idea what to expect. There was just a New Zealand-shaped hole in my brain and I read everything I could find and tried to form some sort of picture of what being here would be like, but there was no way to know, however, what I would be like when I got here and not to get too personal here on my online journal or anything, but babies, I feel really weird and unlike myself lately now that I am on the other side of the world.
I keep telling myself Just Describe It. Just notice it, just write it down, just think about it every day in a different cafe with a chai tea latte (which you have purposefully not ordered rapid-fire Starbucks-style to avoid ridicule). Just look at the water and the mountains every day, begin to recognize the stores and restaurants on Courtenay Place and Cuba Mall, decipher the bus system, abandon hope for a good hair day and settle for one wherein the follicles have not been physically blown off your head by the wind. Wrap your mind around what they mean by long black and flat white and start saying “yeah” (pronouncing it “yih”) at the beginning of every sentence and “yup” (pronouncing it “yep”) at the end.
And I do do that, I guess. A little. I think about the people I have met here and about the people I will continue to meet, and I sometimes wish very devoutly not only for any type of privacy at all but also for my beloved santoku knife. I sit around talking a lot with various people about various interesting but impersonal things, because I can’t give everyone the backstory to the things Ireally want to talk about and the people I would normally talk about those things are all very far away and I can’t, somehow, understand what it would be like to talk to them about those things from here. I don’t know that it’s because I’m a completely different person or that because my friends from home wouldn’t understand what it’s like to be here…because it’s not that hard to understand, frankly.
The thing that’s difficult is making enough room in my head to fit it all in. Apparently I am a person who lives out of a bag in a shoddily-carpeted room with two Germans and a Brit who goes to the fruit market on Sundays and no real friends yet but lots of people she likes anyway. I’m someone who has traveled to the other side of the world, ostensibly for change and adventure, and has managed to talk herself into a job that is almost exactly like her old one and will probably be moving into a familiar living situation, too. I’m someone who can’t think of anything to write about in my online journal and who only wants to read and go dancing and wear cute shirts and have a chai latte, and who can’t think of any words to describe how she’s feeling except “separate” and “far away,” who loves her friends but all of a sudden hates email, who wakes up and walks around every day and who has not yet learned to give up overanalysis. It’s all familiar, all the basic components, anyway. Nothing has really changed but I still don’t recognize myself very well.
Comments
10 responses to “The Basic Components”
Oh Chiara! Your entries since you’ve been in New Zealand read just like my diary entries when I moved to London. They’re making me sad – not because you sound particularly sad – but I remember how lost I felt when I first got there. And it wasn’t sadness exactly – but yeah… just a feeling of being lost and uncomfortable. Like how it’s great that you can tell your stories and jokes again to people who haven’t heard them a million times – but at the same it sucks that there isn’t someone close who hasn’t heard your stories and jokes a million times.
I wish I could give you a little piece of how I felt when I had to leave London and how heartbreaking it was for me to leave a place where I had come to feel so completely AT HOME, to return “home”. Just so you KNOW that this might end up being the most amazing experience you’ve ever had in your life. Not because I don’t think you understand that (or because it will definitely necessarily BE that) but because I know that in the beginning it’s hard to comprehend or remember.
Big hugs to you and good luck with the new job! Congratulations!
PS I am loving reading all of your entries about your adventure so far – so don’t think you’re not hitting the mark exactly with them. Thank-you for sharing!
remember Labrynth? what would jennifer connelly do in your shoes?
Hello from across the world, England. Congrats on getting the job.
hi chiara,
i read your journal a lot and I think you are super brave for going to the other side of the world to try a new adventure. i’m a musician and i tour a lot and i totally understand that feeling of ungroundedness and feeling lost living out of a suitcase. god so many times while it is my fave thing ever to play shows in foreign countries what i wouldn’t give for 2 hours with my cat and a friend to tell me it’s okay – it sounds like you have such a great outlook though– you are going out with new pals and not judging yourself too much – just letting yourself experience it all! i really learn from you – the way that you cope with stuff. thanks for being so open in your writing.
Some things never change, you will find a living situation similar to that which you left in Seattle ’cause you’re comfortable with that. You will find a dance class to do your fancy moves in ’cause that’s what you want to do. You will figure out the bus routes (’cause you have a IQ significantly higher than your shoe size!) and you will, eventually, come round to the idea that Beans on Toast is a significant and proper contribution to the world’s collective cullinary delights! ;)
Here’s a big hug for you (SQUEEZE!!!!)
Yah on the new job! That is amazing, and I’m sure you’ll start to feel settled soon enough. Just take it all in, girl.
So, what DOES, “long black and flat white” mean?
Let go, and enjoy, Chiara. You’ll find yourself soon enough.
Oh… I am so behind (dratted power outages that limit internet access)… yay on the job! I went to my first real dance class last night, what a difference it made. I felt so good (but it was sooooo different, lots of hooting), so I know that finding a dance class will help with certain emotions.Getting my research project established is having ups and downs, so I am trying for patience. The fact that you got a job you will be perfect for gives me hope. My new friend told me that Heinz beans are the preferred variety here, but I have yet to order them.
I want to know what long black and flat white means, too!
Other than that, Melanie said everything that I would have wanted to say in this comment so very perfectly… so you could read that again, and pretend that I could have said that as eloqently. ^_^ Take care, girl. Hugs to you, and congrats on the new job!