My parents are getting more and more insistent upon spending as much time with me as possible, which I understand. My parents only had two children--my sister is almost 14 years older than I am and so I've really always been the baby of the family. I was their second wind at parenthood and I'm the one who has never not been home for Christmas, never even been in a different state from them for more than a few weeks. I'll miss them terribly, but as I've realized over the past few months of living at home...I need to flee the nest soon anyway. I'm going a bit [a lot] crazy after having lived alone in college. I have this theory that life makes things more unbearable right in time for leaving (i.e. as much as one can love high school...who isn't ready to go by the end of it? Or college, for that matter...and in order to successfully leave home, it has to be a little bit aggravating towards the end: cue overprotective parents and an itch to travel).
What's strangest, perhaps, is meeting new people and knowing I can't get attached...and knowing I can't stir up old relationships either without adding to my sense of loss in leaving. I'm sort of tentatively approaching life...living in a kind of limbo in which I know nothing I do now will matter quite as much as what I'll be doing in 18 days. Which is also bittersweet as I've happened to have met some great people recently. But all the while, I spend my time trying hard to imagine what my life will look like in Korea.
I've been rereading this excerpt from Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman recently, always a favorite of mine...especially pertinent now:
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[46] Song of Myself
I know I have the best of time and space, and was never measured and
never will be measured.
I tramp a perpetual journey, (come listen all!)
My signs are a rain-proof coat, good shoes, and a staff cut from the woods,
No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair,
I have no chair, no church, no philosophy,
I lead no man to a dinner-table, library, exchange,
But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll,
My left hand hooking you round the waist,
My right hand pointing to landscapes of continents and the public road.
Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you,
You must travel it for yourself.
It is not far, it is within reach,
Perhaps you have been on it since you were born and did not know,
Perhaps it is everywhere on water and on land.
Shoulder your duds dear son, and I will mine, and let us hasten forth,
Wonderful cities and free nations we shall fetch as we go.
If you tire, give me both burdens, and rest the chuff of your hand
on my hip,
And in due time you shall repay the same service to me,
For after we start we never lie by again.
This day before dawn I ascended a hill and look'd at the crowded heaven,
And I said to my spirit When we become the enfolders of those orbs,
and the pleasure and knowledge of every thing in them, shall we
be fill'd and satisfied then?
And my spirit said No, we but level that lift to pass and continue beyond.
You are also asking me questions and I hear you,
I answer that I cannot answer, you must find out for yourself.
Sit a while dear son,
Here are biscuits to eat and here is milk to drink,
But as soon as you sleep and renew yourself in sweet clothes, I kiss you
with a good-by kiss and open the gate for your egress hence.
Long enough have you dream'd contemptible dreams,
Now I wash the gum from your eyes,
You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every
moment of your life.
Long have you timidly waded holding a plank by the shore,
Now I will you to be a bold swimmer,
To jump off in the midst of the sea, rise again, nod to me, shout,
and laughingly dash with your hair.
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P.S. Sorry for all the meandering, self-examining, internal posts...more exciting adventurey things will come soon!
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