Everything hits at once

I’m into month six here in Sri Lanka and now, just now, am I beginning to understand.  There will be a story that emerges from this experience.  What it will be, where it will come from, I still don’t know.  And it’s not out of laziness that I don’t know, that I haven’t figured it out.  But instead, it’s out of confusion.  Yes, in the simplest terms, confusion has kept me down.  I’ve spent countless hours in the sort of low-level function state that your brain slips into when you watch television.  It’s just buzzing snow up there in my head.  But tonight, as I stare at my screen, my eyes glazed over from too much internal processing, I realize that my time here is going to end more quickly than I’d like. I realize it’s time to get to work.  I know what you’re thinking.  “Now?  Just now you’re realizing this?  What have you been doing all this time?  It’s been six months!”  Well, I sympathize with you because I say the same thing to myself.  And if I’m honest, the six months have involved quite a bit of floundering, but also a bit of successful soul searching, some research, and too much Indian food.  Wait, can you eat too much Indian food?  I suppose not – so scratch that last one.  There have been other things – a brief trip to Puttalam to see the Kaffir people I’m trying to learn about, a week in Kolkata, India (lovely city despite the rumors), a swing around the island with my family, Singhala classes (yet I still don’t speak the language), and, of course, I’ve made time to make friends.

Sometimes it feels wasted, my time here.  But of course it’s not.  And will not be, especially in these last few months.  Everyone should spend nine months somewhere that knocks them flat on their ass.  Well, knocks them down as it teaches them bit after bit about the world – this great and horrible planet Earth we trounce around in.  (I think there would be more of the ‘great’ and less of the ‘horrible’ if everyone could have this opportunity.)  But back to my point: in all the floundering one does in a foreign place – and I mean ‘foreign’ in the fullest sense of the word – there are endless lessons learned that go nearly unnoticed.  And there I think might just be where so much of the value of my time here lies – in the mildly subconscious, in the trampled details, in the layer just below the surface.  And well, I’ve finally stopped to recognize their existence.

I guess what I’m saying is there is a lot that’s happened in the past 6 months – so much internally and externally that I felt frozen, a deer caught in headlights.  And now, with a blink, I realize I need to run, because I’ve got plans for the next 3 months.  So I’m off now, running into the dark, much the same as when I first got here.  The world never ceases to be unknown – fortunately.

///FIN

5 Comments so far
Leave a comment