Homesickness

Dawn

~ teganb ~ 4 Comments

The walk to work in the mornings is one of the highlights of my day. I set out just as the sun is beginning to make its way above the horizon. I can still see the stars and moon above, though there is a paleness to the sky as the sun begins to wash away the dark of night. It takes just under fifteen minutes to walk to the train station, and the neighbourhood is all a-hush. Twilight is my favourite time of day, and though I am more familiar with evening twilight, I discover the light of the dawn to be equally enchanting. It has a different feeling of course; the world is about to wake up, become bright and busy, instead of go to sleep under the soft sparkling blanket of the night sky. But that in-between space between day and night is the same, and it takes my breath away.

I walk through the park on my way, over a small dark creek that shines in this half-light, masking its brown city murk. The long, muted-green leaves of the eucalyptus trees create a canopy and their smooth silver trunks curve gracefully below. Ethereal fans of water spray out over the cricket ground, protecting its bright green grass from drought. I can smell that the field has been recently mown.

By now the orange glow in the east behind me has begun to creep higher. I cast my head backwards a few times to catch a glimpse, but move quickly through the brisk morning until I reach my destination. To do so I must cross a pedestrian overpass of an eight-lane freeway. It feels like crossing over some molten river of lava—frightening but fascinating. Sometimes, though, I can’t bear to look down, and simply cross with my gaze up and the rush in my ears.

Just on the other side sits the station. Sometimes as I descend to platform one I can see a small flock of brightly coloured hot air balloons in the west, that has risen to catch the glorious waking of the sun. The dawn has been very glorious indeed on my morning commute thus far. I usually arrive five minutes early for my train and I sit on a bench looking east, calmed and buoyed by the magnificent pinks and oranges and the brilliant glow added to the sky by the sun just out of sight. I feel calm, at peace, inspired.

Then I go to work.

I am grateful to have found temporary work, though it is not always an easy job. I have landed the title of production assistant at a raw vegan chocolate factory that does very well, and produces a lot of very delicious chocolate. Which translates to extremely busy, rushed and noisy days in the factory, and I have left each shift with a very achy back, sometimes a headache. But I have a job, and given I can only work six months at any one place of employment on my current visa*, I would not really wanted to have landed my dream job in the first half of this year anyway.

Production starts early, and as a natural night owl, I am seeing more of the dawn than I have in a quite a few months (Spain is a country perfect for night owls in its late dining and living rhythms, so I did not see all that many sunrises in the past year).

I have been in Australia two months now and fall is in the air. I do not yet feel settled. We do not have a place of our own, and I have found my new job somewhat challenging. And a recent bout of homesickness has hit me hard. But on those beautiful morning walks, with the sky and the leaves and the fresh, brisk air, I am at peace.

*I currently have a Working Holiday Visa which permits the holder to work in Australia for one year, on the condition that no job last for more than six months with one employer (unlike the Canadian Working Holiday Visa which allows two years and permits holders to work at any job for as long as they like during that time). For more information on the costly and wily ways of Australian Immigration, see my post: Australian Immigration Throws a Curve-ball

Hungry

~ teganb ~ 3 Comments

Last night the realisation hit me that I am hungry for nature. The narrow stone alleyways and ancient castles and churches may be fascinating, but they are no replacement for the sound of waves crashing along a rocky shore or the smell of giant Douglas firs and moist blankets of fallen needles.

I miss the mountains, the dark blue sentinels against the sky. I miss the clacking song of creeks and the wash of the sea against a patch of smooth round pebbles. I am thirsty for the rain that falls all day on cedars and hemlocks and firs and makes them grow taller than anywhere else. I am hungry for the soft grass of my backyard, the lilac and the plum tree I grew up beneath, the dirt road beside our family home leading down to a secluded corner of the beach. The sun often sets with a dramatic spill of orange and pink, spreading out across the horizon and morphing into different shapes and hues within minutes, as the burning ball of the sun suddenly drops behind the mountains, rushing to go to sleep as it reaches the finish line.

To my dismay, the river that once soothed me here in Seville has revealed itself as a murky, polluted soup of bags and bottles, unfit for swimming according to the signs in the park. The grass is parched and the trees along the river are planted in neat rows. The parks are manicured and there is no forest to speak of, and no place to get away from the throngs of locals and tourists taking advantage of spring before the deathly heat of summer hits. All the oranges have dropped and most streets are bare of greenery. I do not know where to escape from the sound of cars rushing by. Even along the river, the streets above echo with growling motors and squeaky breaks. The smell of cigarette smoke often drifts up to your nose as soon as you sit down on a park bench. I am going a bit mad these days.

I see a picture of my green home or some wild forest or beach and I begin to salivate. My soul is aching for a drink of that sweet, fresh, clean air of the country and the sigh of branches in the breeze. Finding my feet in a new country, a new culture, is proving challenging enough as I pose big questions such as what direction I want my life to go in, and how to lead a happy, productive, fulfilling life. But engaging in these human puzzles without a being able to escape and feed my spirit with the company of trees and ocean—and a little solitude to boot—feels like holding my breath. Like sleep deprivation. Like getting scurvy. This has been creeping up on me and even though the weather has cooled this week, I am feeling like a metaphysical peanut husk nonetheless.

But sometimes a thought lands in my mind with a heaviness that spreads down my body: I wonder if I will ever feel satisfied. If I lived in the cabin in the wild that I am currently yearning for, would I miss the bustle of the city? Would I miss the architectural jungles, the cafés and restaurants, the infinite variation of faces and personalities, the beauty of a bridge, the charm of a narrow street overlooked by balconies? I probably would, at least to some degree, as I seem to have a good dose of the-grass-is-always-greener syndrome. But I know it is not at the root of my yearning for contact with nature. Proximity to the natural world has always been my way of connecting with something bigger than myself, with a feeling of belonging and union, a deep sense of spirituality. I know that many people share a similar experience. I trust this need, and I do not worry that it is simply a case of wanting what I do not have. What worries me is that, wherever I go, I do not think anything outside of myself will satisfy this search, this restless search for… well, meaning. Very normal and human, I suppose. But some people appear to be a little more at peace in themselves, a little less itchy for movement, a little less antsy in their minds.

Then again, there would not be so many philosophies and practices for finding inner peace if we were not all in the same boat, more or less. I suppose that is why I practice yoga, enjoy learning new techniques to release myself from the grip of mental whirring, and also, why I write. The funny thing is, all these good and healthy practices for delving into this human condition and coming out better on the other side, are also endeavours that I resist. Even when I lived closer to nature—a ten minute walk from the beach, leafy Vancouver neighbourhoods or the idyllic Roberts Creek, mountains close enough to reach out and touch—there were times when I would feel a lack of connection, and I would know without a doubt that I needed to get out and walk along the beach or through a forest path. I would know I had been too distracted by all the things to do, all the interactions, all the thoughts, all the business of our western lifestyle. It would all start to weigh on me and I knew it could get much worse if I did not do something about it right then, and that no matter how I felt beforehand, going for a walk would help; maybe just a little, usually a lot, but either way it would help. And those were the times that I would resist it most. I would have to struggle against myself, internally whining that I did not feel like it, that it would be boring, that I was too tired, etc. But luckily, I usually pushed through, and it always helped.

These days my lack of connection has reached new levels, and I want nothing more than to find myself in a quiet green wood or isolated beach, and amble along for hours. Given the current circumstances, it is time to take the action available: hop on a bus this weekend to the Spanish coast, escape the city for a day and get some fresh sea breeze back in our lungs. One can hold one’s breath a lot better after a good dose of nature. Even writing about it makes it feel a little closer. I think I can hold out until the weekend after all.

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Wet Oranges

~ teganb ~ 2 Comments

It is Saturday in Spain, and the last day of January. We woke up to the sound of rain in the streets, and  I found that soft and familiar song of falling water so comforting. I could close my eyes again in the dark room and imagine I was somewhere on the wet west coast of Canada. Soon the rain stopped, however, and my sleepy half-dream of cabins and coniferous forests stopped too, because if I really were on the west coast, it would have rained all day long! Perhaps it is strange to be missing such a thing, when the sun is already bright in the sky again just a few hours later, and the breeze is warm, but there is something extremely soothing about a long wet day, and rain on the roof all night long… with a few conditions of course, such as a good raincoat for walks and a warm home in which to dry off and curl up.

Not a trace of rain remains as I sit looking out the window at the bright orange tree just outside. They grow everywhere here, adding colour to the stone and brick  landscape and making streets look merry. Just as there is some deep calm in the DSCF3113sound of rain, so too is there something inherently uplifting about an orange tree. It may just be the vibrancy of the green and orange together, or the novelty of seeing such bright fruit alive and growing, but at any rate, I do not miss the rainy shores of home quite so much with that lovely tree to look upon.

A week and a half have passed since I arrived in Sevilla and since Morfar died. Gently, patiently, acceptance settles upon me as the days go by and I feel my feet sinking a little deeper into this new ground. I have learned that the Christmas and birthday cards I had sent to Morfar reached him in time, that he had been happy to read them. In them I had written how much I was looking forward to celebrating with him. Last week that occurred to me as nothing but sad, but this week I see how much it means that he knew we all were excited, we all were anticipating being together to celebrate him and his life, and though it did not happen as we imagined and hoped, he did have something very important—knowledge that he was not alone, that he was loved.

Thinking of all my loved-ones at home is a similarly comforting thought; we know we are there for one another, we are connected always, even when far apart.

It seems my heart took a while to catch up to my body this trip, but it is happening. Rob and I do our best to practice Spanish, struggling with this crazy Sevillano accent, we walk the city and riverside, and balance our desires to eat tapas and drink beers out on the town with making meals ourselves and saving money by splitting a beer in the house—about two dollars for a litre! A heartening thought as well.

And I have my orange tree. There is just something inherently uplifting about the green and orange of a naranjo—rain or shine—that comforts me.

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