Let my just say it is completely unnerving when you realize your native tongue is an auxiliary.
Holy hell, what am I getting into?!
27 September 2010
07 September 2010
Before the move
So I'm more than a little bored while sitting at my parents' house. It's now 3 weeks from my arrival in Madrid and between scheduling and legal documents to deal with, it really begins to land home exactly what the hell I'm doing. For now I'm stuck watching dogs and having way too much time on my hands to think.
I've been re-reading Travels with Charley by Steinbeck (incidentally, everyone who's ever loved to travel or never felt quite right at home should read that book) along with the Anthony Bourdain marathon have allowed a strangely intimate relationship (separated by death and the unfortunately one sided communication of most media) with the idea of the middle aged globe-trotter.
The off handed remarks of their past exploits, which I can't help but view as my present make me both anxious and completely ambivalent about this crazy journey I know I am about to embark upon. I suppose it's in everyone's nature to want to have lived while experiencing so many of the joys of life for the first time, this doesn't make it any less frustrating. I still feel a need to have accomplished something grand before my first stone of the grand construction that I have no blueprint for.
Nevertheless the traditional anxieties of what I consider the "normal" person are still creeping fairly constantly into my thoughts. Everything from what linens my flat will need, how will I handle the medical system, can I really deal with not blowing up a refinery in my non-native tongue, how will I deal with people, dealing with sex and dating. Despite all of this, my greatest fear is feeling content in where I am. All in all, I'm content with the fears though, since what awe can one have at the world without a healthy fear of it.
I suppose I'll leave this readerless vent at that.
I've been re-reading Travels with Charley by Steinbeck (incidentally, everyone who's ever loved to travel or never felt quite right at home should read that book) along with the Anthony Bourdain marathon have allowed a strangely intimate relationship (separated by death and the unfortunately one sided communication of most media) with the idea of the middle aged globe-trotter.
The off handed remarks of their past exploits, which I can't help but view as my present make me both anxious and completely ambivalent about this crazy journey I know I am about to embark upon. I suppose it's in everyone's nature to want to have lived while experiencing so many of the joys of life for the first time, this doesn't make it any less frustrating. I still feel a need to have accomplished something grand before my first stone of the grand construction that I have no blueprint for.
Nevertheless the traditional anxieties of what I consider the "normal" person are still creeping fairly constantly into my thoughts. Everything from what linens my flat will need, how will I handle the medical system, can I really deal with not blowing up a refinery in my non-native tongue, how will I deal with people, dealing with sex and dating. Despite all of this, my greatest fear is feeling content in where I am. All in all, I'm content with the fears though, since what awe can one have at the world without a healthy fear of it.
I suppose I'll leave this readerless vent at that.
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