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garranI'm back.
I saw Keely the Friday before I left, by happenstance on Commercial Drive; she had just come back from Cuba, and she was really tanned, which may have predisposed me to think about this in terms of tans. I have not physically tanned this trip, but I have a tan of the mind, a strange cultural surface colouration that will take a while to fade. It will be at least a day or two before it feels natural to thank someone for a service in english, without bowing.
I thought that there would be more of that; that the not-Japan in Vancouver would be more sharp and shocking for me. But the plane ride provided a kind of liminal decompression, a ritual transition, so that by the time I was here the familiar shapes, colours and language seemed almost natural. Here I am, then. It's the first time I've ever come back to my city from a place that made it look drab.
My moustache is too long (though not unsightly, just uncomfortable), and my mind and prose are stumbling a little from the lack of sleep, and I haven't listened to music of my own choice in three weeks, and I kind of smell. I'll correct all of these, eventually, as I grow generally less tanned.
This trip was huge; I feel like I only wrote about the barest outlines of it, here. There wasn't time; the rest wouldn't fit. I feel like I should apologize for that. I wish I could have given the whole thing, in exacting detail.
There will be pictures.
I saw Keely the Friday before I left, by happenstance on Commercial Drive; she had just come back from Cuba, and she was really tanned, which may have predisposed me to think about this in terms of tans. I have not physically tanned this trip, but I have a tan of the mind, a strange cultural surface colouration that will take a while to fade. It will be at least a day or two before it feels natural to thank someone for a service in english, without bowing.
I thought that there would be more of that; that the not-Japan in Vancouver would be more sharp and shocking for me. But the plane ride provided a kind of liminal decompression, a ritual transition, so that by the time I was here the familiar shapes, colours and language seemed almost natural. Here I am, then. It's the first time I've ever come back to my city from a place that made it look drab.
My moustache is too long (though not unsightly, just uncomfortable), and my mind and prose are stumbling a little from the lack of sleep, and I haven't listened to music of my own choice in three weeks, and I kind of smell. I'll correct all of these, eventually, as I grow generally less tanned.
This trip was huge; I feel like I only wrote about the barest outlines of it, here. There wasn't time; the rest wouldn't fit. I feel like I should apologize for that. I wish I could have given the whole thing, in exacting detail.
There will be pictures.
