Ever been through the re-location blues?
You are all thrilled about the new country that you have moved to. You read about its history, laugh at its quirks, love or hate its residents, be awed like a tourist, smile at the silly signs, puzzle over the strange language, pop-your eyes out over the way people dress, go out every evening... the works.
I remember, how I used to step out of the apartment, look up at the clear, blue sky, smell the pure, unpolluted air and smile. I stop to admire the well-manicured gardens by the road, touch the lovely looking flowers ever so gently, pat the unafraid rabbits and feel the happiness filling your body. You flip over the balloons in the sky, the well-connected public transport, the people friendly traffic system... You float through the days. How lovely it is to live in a place that has the benefits of a huge city and the pleasures of the countryside. You can actually walk without being afraid of the heat and the dust, the pollution, the annoying catcalls and the unruly traffic
And suddenly, something is gone. You long to be back at your homecountry.. wake up to the smell of filter coffee, watch the glow of light streaming thru the kitchen door of the darkened house, listen to Mom cooking in there, eat home-cooked, full-fledged meals, hear parents nagging about your sparse eating habits and irresponsible nature, of Dad standing by the door to say goodbye when you leave to work, of zipping thru traffic chaos in your Scooty...
What is it?
Why am I engulfed by this sense of loss? This unexplainable lonliness?
The heart is crying. You dont' want to stay at work, hate to go home and when you finally do, you want go to your room, shut the door, drop to the floor and die.
1 comment:
I hear the beep of a horn on a car from time to time and it seems to remind me of a far flung place, a distant memory of a well loved experience.
It brings back memories, memories that are completely mixed. Each dawn a beep would be heard, loud enough to wake me from my slumber and then it would begin. One beep would lead to two beeps and on it would grow, by the time I would really wish to get up it would be a full dawn chorus of mechanised sounds; Continuous horns, the bustle of people in their cars and on their Mopeds, the noise of cranes and workmen and machines of all sorts. Full concerts at the front of shops, with each shop competing with something louder. The firecrackers of weddings firing you into the culture and the cacophony of cultural differences.
It seemed a world away from my quiet village life. And much more exciting that Beijing had been. I remember Beijing, as quiet. Massive but quiet. And My home, my village life, well it is rural middle class Scotland; a quiet little rural oasis; a place where a dawn chorus is just that. Birds singing, people chatting, dogs barking and the whirr of cars as people whizz off to work. In 30 years, I don’t think I ever heard a car horn.
In contrast, I am reminded now of the early mornings as the crows gather to a murder and fly from the woodland nearby to settle in the trees before going foraging for the day. A cacophony of cawing that was quite unsettling when I was off to school. As young school boy I couldn’t imagine greater noise, but that cacophony could not compare.
It’s Zhangjiakou’s cacophony that I write of now and that I remember when I hear the beep of a horn, and in panic and relief I flash back to my times there. That cacophony is still in my mind like overture playing for evermore. Blasting out noise from every quarter.
Aberdeen pales in comparison in many ways as does Scotland but we love places for different reasons, it’s only when we change that we can cherish what we miss.
I feel enlightened now that I have opened this out, put it on paper and read what I have written.
I feel the pains and pleasures of experience: the loneliness of being an alien and the drive to relate to others. But when I think of it, it was always like that, and it’s like that now.
Experience is that.
Embrace it when you have it and shed tears because you know you’ve enjoyed!
Post a Comment