“Entonces pienso en los míos… Por qué los habré dejado? Y, qué busco yo tan lejos de ellos?”
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“And so I think of my own… Why did I leave them? And, what am I looking for so far from them?”
About two weeks after I returned to Costa Rica and to my family home, my mother handed me a giant folder of paper with handwriting that I didn’t recognize. She said that her mother, who had been a writer, had left this behind after her death.
I was my grandmother’s youngest grandchild, only 11 standing at her funeral, and so never got a chance to read her art.
I layed all of the paper on my floor, trying to find a semblance of order in the edits and the drafts of what seemed like short stories.
On the first page that I read fully was the line above, and a quick translation by me.
I’ve been trying to write this blog for over a month now. Trying to piece together, much like the papers on the floor, some semblance of order.
Trying to answer questions that my grandmother also asked herself.
India always felt very real to me. From the very start.
The last week there did not.
If I had to write about what my life looks like now in this world, it would be in the literary genre of romantic dystopian fiction.
Which I hate.
By the time I got home, I had traveled a total of 39 hours since I left Pune.
I left home to enter another.
Vastly different.
I listened to the album Acid Rap on a loop after missing my flight.
Chance raps about Harlem Shake in it.
These are all different times.
My hands were chapped.
My eyes were tired.
My soul still feels heavy.
I’ve barely unpacked at all, it seems.
In the last seven months, I have fallen in love
Twice.
I’d never had this much time.
I’d never been this busy.
I’d never had such little time.
But it was never about time at all.
I suppose that it wasn’t about the cultural exchange for me, in the end.
It wasn’t about the apprenticeship,
Or the host family,
Or the language learning.
This was about clarity.
Nearly a month after being back, I find myself still burning incense.
At midday and then again at 4.
As I should be.
“I don’t know how but I’m taller”
-Phoebe Bridgers
