The Novelty Wears Off
There is a moment that comes when one is in a foreign setting where the novelty wears off. You get tired and frustrated. And it might just be PMS, but for whatever reason, on that day, you just can't handle things. I am sure I had these moments in Nicaragua, but I was badgered by the strict rule of "thou shalt not make any cultural judgements until you have been here six months" and so learned to accept things enough that now those moments have been fairly well erased. Heck, I've even had them in Vancouver, but its Vancouver - like a silly goose of a girl: you want to smack her, but she is so naive and ditzy and pretty that you can't help but dote on her.The problem this week starts here: Things are moving at a glacial pace in so many areas of my life. My work is one day forward and four back. This week has felt like a board game, one turn is awesome and you have landed exactly where you want to be and then the next roll you are sent back to the start square. Even on one day at 3pm I was giddily lining Boardwalk with hotels. Hours later at bedtime I was tottering between Baltic and the Income Tax square.
But still mornings are my favourite, and so now that I have one, I should be thankful. I should be thankful now that its all such a "leisurely ride," because 'they' tell me that you hit a point where you want to stop growing and moving forward and go back and just sit on a particular moment. I have a few in mind already - that evening on the beach in Omtepe with Jessi, that day that I finished my last term paper and then watched 5 episodes of the OC in one sitting, that phenomenal steak dinner last week - Each a moment made up of a few hours when I could have stayed days.
But these are also moments where, even if it's not easy and it's lonely, something has been given to make it good - droplets of God's presence and signals of that divine breeze. Just look:
Wednesday morning, the dust that is not my dust and the noise that is not my noise were so infuriating. And I wanted to flip off the truckers that unreasonably laid on their astoundingly loud horns (because it's been SO effective every other time in your life that you've honked! But keep trying, maybe it will work this round!) SO LOUD. Louder than any sensible horn ought to be be under normal circumstances. I steadfastly hold my ground that there are somethings in our globalized, matieral-infested world of offerings that we simply don't need -industrial-strength car and truck horns being a prime example.
The dust kicked up by endless wind and construction - constructing a road by deconstructing the never-existent sidewalk, storing the dust and dirt to the left so we can move it to the right and reveal more gaping hopes that will be filled in with the dirt and dust that must now be added to the dust and dirt. It never ends and it gets in your eyes and sticks to the bug that flew in there the day before and has built himself a hammock to lay in peacefully. Stuck-on just like the stick-on stares that are glued to your pasty foreign skin. Curses on whoever invented paste! And damn that fly!
So I sit on a cement stump to wallow in the moment that shows me that the honeymoon is over, that I am genuinely a crabby, mean, awful person and that I just might not be cut out for this.
And then I are reminded by a wisp of insensible, delectable breeze - so wholly different from the blustering physical wind, that in the midst of this wretched street corner that he is present: that it is the same God, different dust. And not just with me - but with them too, while they stare, honk, sit on cement stumps and look blankly out of the dust.
It doesn't necessarily make it prettier, but it makes it good to be there.
posted by Kiki @ 7:26 a.m.
1 Comments:
I have certain cultural iss-yous with Vancouver including, but not limited to: LEGGINGS AS PANTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home