Just this tonight.
Perspective, focus, from a favorite photo taken the other day. Waiting to hear this week about that fellowship I applied for last October (they said by end of April). A chai latte from Starbucks on the plaza in the sun (my first time in Barcelona). Wandering through the late spring afternoon, arms linked with my husband, wondering about what comes next for us. Reading the newspaper in Catalan and understanding it. Debating language politics while eating tapas, perched on high stools in a Basque place near our house. Now, dusk falling over the courtyard out our bedroom window, stillness falling across the bed. The muffled voices of neighbors arguing above us. Two weeks left in this apartment, this city, this space of our lives.
April 25th, 2010 at 10:16 pm
2 weeks left! It will go so fast. This kind of moment-noticing is just perfect for packing up memories for when you’ve moved on. 😉
April 27th, 2010 at 8:57 pm
lovely, willow. you capture the strangeness of at once leaving home and going home. the mixture of relief and nostalgia. the uncertainty and plans and the whole nebulous world that hasn’t settled back into solid moments yet. the way time and space are elongated and a little strange.
once after long months of travel in mexico, I took the bus all the way back to the border and across into san diego. three days, I think, day and night, mostly awake watching the country go by, and at night when there was nothing to be seen, sitting up front talking to the drivers. it felt like the perfect transition – three days in that liminal space between places, time zones, selves . . .
April 30th, 2010 at 9:12 pm
I can’t believe you’re just about to leave. Following your work and travels there, it seems to me that you only just arrived!
Just as Rose said, you’ve perfectly captured that strange place between “leaving home and going home”. I felt the same as I readied myself to leave Montreal last year after only a year and half of living there. I had just begun to feel that it was home, that it was my community, that I was part of it just as it was part of me, and then *poof* off to a new place. What a strange feeling to have such nostalgia for a a temporary home.