Wednesday, June 07, 2006
亂
Seems like this hasn't been the smoothest graduation season for some of my friends. Though it's not my graduation, life hasn't been any easier on my end of the story either. With constant fluctuation b/t showers and sun shine, with the previously cozy apartment now turning into a gigantic storage space, and with an unfinished paper weighing in the back of my mind - yes, even in sleep - I can't think of anything but one word to describe my life right now:亂・Chaos.
Weather forecast for graduation day - Showers, high 55, low 54. Friends, remember to wear something black underneath your gown.
Wish time could just fastfoward so that I'd right now be on that plane heading towards Tokyo. 'Cuz by then, I will have *perhaps* finished the last final paper, packed and cleaned up the apartment, said goodbyes to multiple friends, taken and gotten over the Japanese language test/interview for the Monbusho scholarship, and had some kind of closure to Cambridge, this city that I've never come to like too much. That day will come, I just don't know what else is going to happen from now till the arrival of that day.
But that day will come.
The next time I arrive at this city again, I'll be living by myself in a new one-bedroom on the other side of the campus. There will be hardly anyone I'm close with here in the city, except a small number of girls who started life in Cambridge with me in the first year. The life of teaching as a TF will begin; hard-core study for the General Exam will begin too. I just don't know if my heart and mind would be ready to be here, all alone, as if starting life all over again, here, in Cambridge, a city I still haven't come to like much.
A friend of mine wrote on her recent blog entry that 「人生苦短，追求任何東西的代價都不該那麼高。我想不出有什麼理由要讓我和愛人父母朋友分離，在這塊土地上苦苦懷念那塊土地。」I have to say that when I first read that, I was stunned by the truth in this statement. Having left home since the age of 18 - and perhaps more importantly, cutting myself away from some kind of foundation of cultural, personal, national ID - I have always thought that a moving, transient life is what should be eagerly sought after in one's early age in life. Nothing wrong with being alone, nothing wrong with moving every 9 months. 人生苦短，要旅行跨國界見識人群拓展視野要趁早, even at the expense of cutting off ties from families and friends who are truly dear to my heart. So dear that I can't remember the last time I really cried b/c I missed them so much. B/c I thought that they are always there, and that as soon as I land on that piece of land, they'd all still be there, just like before, as if nothing has changed.
Till I realize that - no one has ever guaranteed to be there when I return - if I ever return. People move on, form their new circles of friends, families, and loved ones. All that's left with me are memories that can never completely be shared with others or knowledge, horizon, perspectives - whatever you name it - that cannot translate into a warm, heartfelt hug at times when it's needed.
Although I'm not the graduate this year and thus have no reasons for families to visit me, somehow seeing my roommate's family coming in, staying up all night packing with her, eating take-out's with her, cheering for her having turned another page in life, I've become terribly, terribly homesick. Homesick for a family member who'd also be able to stay up late with me and just pack with me, with not a word of complaint but just plain acceptance. Plain acceptance. A bond that can never be broken.
很久沒有那種感覺了。很懷念。
梅ちゃん at 4:42:00 PM