I've been here for a bit over a month now, seen loads and thought more, written some and lived mostly all of it. A general mantra I've been mindful of during this period is the notion of "this too shall pass", which a little research tells me originated in an ancient Sufi poem, repeated by Lincoln and countless others. It's both happy and sad at the same time, but a stronghold in difficulties as well: everything you've got going on right now will change in the future, both good and bad, so enjoy the positives while they're here, and don't fret too much about the negatives, because they can't last forever. :)
One of my biggest (and most time consuming) projects here right now has been mapping out the rest of my weekends, attempting to really suck the marrow out of this trip and make as many moments into memories as I can. Homesickness, which comes in mostly unpredictable waves, seems to be easier to hold off when I keep busy, and really I've always been happiest when I'm occupied, which makes sense. I finally set up a big old Google calendar and enjoyed filling it up with different colored lines of Things To Do, and have been plodding through pages of potential RyanAir and AerLingus offerings for hours. Next weekend I'm headed to London for three days (ahh!), and just yesterday I booked a flight to Austria directly on the tail end of the Ireland tour with my dad and Maggie- while seeing my bank account steadily deplete is a little sickening, I know it'll be worth it, and I'd rather spend money on doing rather than having.
When the homesickness does manage to poke it's horns through to me, I like to think of what people might be doing at that time, as well as recalling fond memories, and doing so generally takes a little bit of mental math to work out the time zones. I always remember the first time I really had a sense of the world's size and the arbitrary nature of time, watching the sunset in Spain at sixteen and realizing that as it moved away for us, it was still going up towards home (yes- I know it's the earth that's actually moving).
Another time-musing I've had stems from the basic idea that we have just this one life; it's a timeline where we're always moving forward. Mine now is filling up with travel excitement, new events and people, but I do have a very limited period in Europe: three and a half months, and counting. It's a weird contradiction of that sometimes feeling too unbearably long before I can see home again, while simultaneously far too soon of a deadline to experience all that I want out of this trip. I'm enduring and embracing, and that's good. Through a lot of the books I've been reading for class (and there have been many), as well as conversations with one woman in particular at the elder-care center I visit, I'm reminded that people are all people, with stories and fears and histories and futures, and that this is only one chapter in my own life saga which must eventually conclude. So I'm trying to write a good one.
This past week was 'Musicailt' on campus, a celebration of the performing arts. As part of it, I went to a poetry reading of the Writer's Society, a group who's email list I've been on for weeks but never managed to get to, and it was a great experience- I didn't get up to read anything, but I think I'm going to go back to more of their meetings...it seemed like a really welcoming and accepting environment. Reading anything I make out loud to a group of strangers is a scary prospect, but probably a worthwhile one. I met up with a few of the students from that group tonight for a production of Rent by NUIG students. It was moving and wonderful, a story I hadn't really thought too much about since I first watched it freshman year at La Salle. And from that show comes the title for this post, an anthem of life and action and dreaming. So I'll just leave it here, goodnight to all and thank you always for reading. ♥
(I also went to Limerick today- I'll maybe write about that soon. Socialist protest, 900 year old church, another Harry Potter book, chocolate cheese, and no poems.)
No comments:
Post a Comment