Archive for August, 2009

But then I probably haven’t changed the date and time in this thing, so it’ll look like I was writing this in the middle of the work day. Hmm.

Yesterday being awake early apparently spurred me to play Boy Philosopher, for some reason. As you can tell, a life-changing event like emigration can turn the most reasonable of men (yes, me) into some sort of navel-gazing fluffhunter. However, today, let me give you the right answer for the rorschach test; you know, the one you spout at parties.

We’re both fine, and settling in, just about.

Ahem…

Well yes I could go into a lot more detail than that, but there’s a limit to what I’ll say on an open page. I will say that we’ve almost done everything we knew we were going to need to do before we left, and now we’re down to discovering things that are all-new. By that I mean we’ve moved into our apartment, we’ve bought a new TV (woo!), we’ve set up a bank account (and one with a credit union), we’ve gotten registered with all the right people, and I’ve even been paid a few times (as it’s happening ‘semi-monthly’, ie twice a month). We have a couch, a cat, a dining table, a couple of chairs, and a whole new series of incoming bills.

In other words, it feels like normality, albeit an always* sunny, surrounded by America normality.

And I have to say it’s pretty darn nice, at least in a superficial way. Life is treating us well. We have a bountiful choice of fresh produce and product whenever we go to one of the many local supermarkets. We can see all the movies we want when they open here. We have many choices in restaurants, which of course usually serve massive portions for reasonable prices. Oh and everything is open late. In fact shopping after work is a norm, not something you do on a Thursday.

What’s the one thing we’re missing? Oh yeah. You lot.

At first, our minds were both so occupied with what we have to do now every day that not being amongst people we know and love didn’t really phase us. Every day we were both busy with settling into a new home, dealing with new challenges and trying not to get killed merging on the 101 expressway. Now, that we’ve been here a while, it’s starting to nag.

It’s not so much that there aren’t nice people here, or that I feel we can’t make new friends – I think we have already, to be honest, and that feels great. It’s just that every now and then, someone pops into your mind and you think “Oh, I haven’t seen them in ages, we should…” and then reality intrudes, and you remember that no, they’re not just a mile or two away and all you need to do is pick up the phone. They’re thousands of miles away, and even if you did pick up the phone, the likelihood is you’d wake them up. This is how being homesick starts.

That only really follows if you assume home is where the heart is, which I guess is true right now. I lost my heart in Brighton as opposed to 30 minutes up the road (Sorry Tony Bennett). This doesn’t mean that we’re ready to move back, literally or figuratively; we made our choice and we move forward. Doesn’t mean I don’t think of you though, and past moments, and great memories.

Did I mention we have a guest room?

* Except for this morning! Where it appears to be raining for the first time since I got here. I knew that those big grey fluffy things in the sky meant something.

I figured I owe you this, whoever ‘you’ might be, even if you’re just a section of my subconscious or a figment of my imagination. And I’ve been trying to concoct what I want to say in my head for a while, but, honestly… it’s been hard to decide.

There’s a lot to say, and simultaneously, not very much at all.

In case you’re wondering, I can say with some certainty that moving countries (even to a country where they generally speak English) is a bit of a bitch. Mostly just because of the ties that bind. The emotional ones, the physical ones, and not-so-physical, but still very real bureaucratic and political ties that prevent us from wandering this Earth like free people, man, free to do what we wanna do, even if that’s just sitting around playing our guitars and singing – kum-ba-ya, my Lord… ahem.

That, if I so choose, would be the ‘lot to say’. I could tell you of the swift break I experienced with friends and family, the lack of real feeling because I didn’t know how to feel, which gradually day by day is turning into a void in my heart which… I guess I’ll just have to tread carefully around. But I won’t.

I could bore you with tales of almost monk-like acts of charity as we gave away all our stuff – and then reversed that karma by buying almost everything again, here. I could try to convince you that the process of spending money can actually get quite boring, even depressing – that I actually heard the words “I don’t think I could spend my life shopping” from my wife, that I found myself resenting the fact I had to spend another evening researching electronics or cars or both. But I won’t.

And I guess I could summarise the tricky, but not insurmountable obstacles that we faced in getting here, but honestly, they were just tricky… not insurmountable. If you ever have to face the same, feel free to ask me about it, but I won’t enrich the world by recounting here.

Which brings me to saying not very much at all.

I’ve been going back to basics, like prehistoric man. My primary concerns have been with the most basic of things: shelter, food, safety, money, transport. Now all of those things are accomplished, I ask myself, what’s next? Discover fire? Invent the wheel? Even those have been done, so really when it comes down to it – what is there for me to say that hasn’t been said a million times before?

Everyone’s story is unique of course, a beautiful delicate snowflake etc, but I’ll tell you; there’s nothing like detaching yourself from family, friends and familiar surroundings to make you sit back, look at your own life, and go: woah. Is this it?

Too philosophical? Well I haven’t had breakfast yet.