Nasty Conjugation

Apologies for the lack of entries, but the bee hive has just been a-buzzing with activity on account of Holly’s parents arriving in Japan. Holly is currently in Tokyo with them, at their posh hotel, and I am living the bachelor life for a night (which, of course, means that I am just wasting a night sitting on the Internet). Life has settled into a normal routine here. I am behind on responding to e-mails because that, truly, is one field where I consistently excel. Since I am alone for the night I am naturally thinking lonesome thoughts, so here is a short meditation on homesickness I wrote on the train last week.

I always have a little notebook in my pocket so that I can write down my thoughts as they happen. I’ve found it to be tremendously helpful when trying to keep track of ideas I have throughout the day. Flipping through it just now, I noticed that I used the word, “terror,” twice, within two pages of each other, each time referring to a feeling that’s washed over me since arriving in Japan. Here’s what the notes said, lack of punctuation and all:

“Sometimes I am caught in a brief moment of terror at my job”

“Travel – unholy terror of feeling time passing. When I get back, will my mom be old”

There have been times since coming here – very brief, no longer than a spark or a breath – when I feel seized by this monstrous and shapeless fear. It grips me at the base of the skull, and for that instant I feel the enormous gulf of miles stretch out between here and home. The feeling disappears almost immediately, but it leaves me momentarily stunned. The realization is sharp every time.

I am in Japan.

I am impossibly far from home.

I am separated from friends, family, birthplace, everything I’ve known by the gap between today and tomorrow.

These flashes of distance lead me down new thoughts, ones I’ve never had to deal with before. When I return to Florida, will my parents be old? Will my dog still be alive? Will anybody I know still live in Orlando? I hear stories from my friends about things changing, problems, difficult times through which I would have stood by their sides. Even when I do return, will I ever be able to recover this growing distance?

I know that all these questions are inevitable parts of growing up and nothing unique to me, but my first real travel experience has aggravated them. I wonder if adventure exists only to be enjoyed in retrospect, or if perhaps I just haven’t made the proper adjustments yet. After all, I am still just a hometown boy, a sheltered Floridian suburbanite baby only just taking my first tiny steps out of the safe shelter of home. I can’t expect to transform overnight into a seasoned world traveler, calloused with experience.

A topic that has come up many times in conversation with various people is the futility of traveling to escape yourself.

“Surely if I move to Japan I will escape the problems, the boredom, the insecurity of life as I’ve known it.”

Not so.

Travel only throws all these things into bright, stark relief. It removes all the comfortable distractions, the dust of home that settles on and obscures our thoughts. We take it all with us, only when we step off the plane we find all of the insecurities waiting for us at the gate, smiling and clean, refreshed by the trip, ready to greet us even though we thought we left them in our parents’ garage. The only difference is that now we are forced to deal with the old and the new all at once. This, I guess, is the ultimate adventure of travel: to leave home, to arrive in the unkown, and to find yourself already there.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 22nd, 2006 at 11:37 am and is filed under Japan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.