…and worn out in the service of the muse…
Back from Bs. As. … feels like I’m already losing my sense of that place, as if my memories, that immediate sense of “being there,” is already slipping from my memory.
When I got here I was tired, but once I saw my mom and Dave, I was happy to see my family again, to see my cats, to see Jesse, to experience a place that was familiar, realising that Calgary would always be home, no matter how my heart wanders. I greeted everyone familiar with a new kind of fondness, I appreciated them in a new way. The house, the stereo, my room, everything felt “just as it should.” I’ve arrived, changed but still grounded in this place.
When I awoke from my nap, after dreams of flat topped roofs, Jony’s family, the transplanted European architecture of el centro, after experiencing all my photos replaying in my dreams, it really sank in that this was it. I was home, and with it came a profound sense of missing all that Buenos Aires was, and all it represented in my thoughts and heart. I greeted real life again with a profound sense of lonliness, but not the kind I had experienced in Bs. As., which stemmed from my inability to communicate anything but the simplest of thoughts and requests. This kind of lonliness stemmed from a deep sense of loss, of realizing that the trip was over and my immediate sense of connection and identification with the place and the people I met there was severed, and would I become increasingly detatched with the passing of time. Each subsequent moment represented a loss of memories, and with it a loss of my experiences, lessons and connection with Bs. As.
When I had left on the flight, I’d cried a little as left Jony’s family, wondering if I would ever see them again, acknowledging how deeply they’d imprinted themselves on my heart. Yet at the same time, I felt that the reality of leaving had not completely sank in. I knew the real sadness would come later once I could fully comprehend what leaving really represents. What I felt at the airport was a sense of loss, a sense that, “this is it,” but also an anticipation that the full acceptance of the implications of this would come later.
As I acknowleged the start of my severance from this place, that this would only accelerate in the loss of memories, I recalled a quote from Wendell Berry. He had said our transportation technologies had made it so easy to travel from place to place; yet the mind itself was not attuned to keep up with the rapid progression of physical experience that rapid travel allowed. Our bodies are keyed to 100 km/hr, but to fully experience a place we need to walk in order to allow our minds to fully appreciate and experience where we are, to fully account for the progression from place to place as we travel. Our modern travel leaves us with a sense that our minds are still stuck in the places of the past while our physical senses are already elsewhere; this is a part of jet lag, and even culture shock. We simply just can’t keep up because our minds, the way we process sensory information, haven’t kept up with the pace of travel. So I knew that on the surface I knew we were leaving, but I knew that at this time I would not be able to fully comprehend the profound sense of changing from one reality to another, from the reality of life as it had come to be in Bs. As. and the reality of life in Canada.
Nonetheless, as the plane left, Jony handed me my camera, and it felt by now so familiar and strangely trustworthy to me, as if it were an old friend. I took pictures out the plane’s window with a new kind of urgency, as if it was my camera’s responsibility to forstall the inevitiable forgetting of this place, and I needed it to create as many tangible records as possible. I watched a film on the plane that was set in Buenos Aires, only to see what had become my second home one last time. I wasn’t ready to lose it yet, and I’m still not ready, though I know by now I am losing B.A.
It wasn’t until I woke up with memories of my dreams of Bs. As., of photos, people and life there, and the accompanying sense of sadness, lonliness and loss, that I recognized that at this point, my mind and heart had finally caught up, that I was starting to accept and process my new reality. My new reality was grounded in Canada, grounded in my family, my old friends, obligations and responsibilities, grounded even in the appearence of these familiar surroundings. What had been a welcome sense of “being home” when I first saw my old house, was after my nap also a source of profound sadness. I made mate and drank it the Argentine way, as if by establishing in Canada what had become a familiar routine over there, I could also maintain my psychological sense of conenction to that place, as if I could cement my memories of that place for good and prevent what I knew would be an inevitable forgetting.
Already I can feel that the reality and demands of here are already replacing my connection and identification with that place, and it feels like the part of me that really connected with Bs As is already slipping away; hence as time passes I’m losing a piece of myself as memories fade. I experience this right now almost as a mixture of acknowlegement and sadness, as my mind is now accustomed to home and all its trappings and familiarity, I inevitably mourn for the loss of reality as it had come to be over there. After all, my routine over here is much more worn, experienced, well-trodded and tenacious than the life , routine and connections I’d established over there, and simply by being in my familar surroundings, this place almost accelerates the forgetting of Bs. As. And yet I still know that this is home, that I need to be here now, that my trip wasn’t always fun, to say the least, and I was ready to leave. So what would I like to write now, how can I recall all that I’d learned, experienced and felt as I was over there? It will be impossible to record it all, but is there a place to start?
