Realizations on a staircase (back in the US of Ah)

So I’m back on native soil (or soiled natives, to quote the eminent Steve Purcell). Been back, in fact, since Thursday evening at about 9, but this is the first chance I’ve had to sit down at a terminal without jetlag and the bustle of important pending chores clouding my mental skyscape.

Astute readers will note that I’ve been less than diligent in my updates, as I promised I would be shortly before leaving Wien three weeks ago. You’ve heard about my scorn for the Italian organization system in all its many manifestations, but the other countries I visited have gone completely unchronicled. You’ve heard nothing of the harrowing taxi ride from Frankfurt to the airport in Hahn, nothing of the 40-ish gay man in Barcelona who nearly seduced me, nothing of my indelible hatred of the Mona Lisa and the drooling cretins who crowd around her little pen like cattle, holding digital cameras aloft and snapping hackneyed pictures as if they were the first to do so. You will hear of all these things, and more, but not at the moment.

I’ve been reluctant to write, owing to pressing “back-home” tasks as well as the weight of all the words, unwritten and beckoning, piled atop every keyboard I clap eyes onto. It’s going to be a lot of work to get back into the habit of daily updates, but I intend to. Why else would I have patchwork web space otherwise? The next week is dedicated to spinning fantastic yarns about my adventures traveling on my lonesome across the pond; the first installment, entitled “RyanAir: the things that went wrong,” will appear sometime tomorrow evening, God willing and the creek don’t rise. For today, however, I’m just glad to be back to the place I call home, and I feel pressed to describe a much more immediate experience than backpacking like a vagrant across the EU before that feeling effervesces: reverse culture shock.

Various brochures distributed at orientation by the IPE warned me of the strangeness of returning to the United States after studying abroad for a long period – we even saw a performance of a short play warning us of the dread perils of Reverse Culture Shock: depression, disorientation, and the risk of alienating one’s friends and family with a deluge of stories and photographs that hold not a tenth of the importance for them that they do for you. Since nearly everything else within the many, many paper propaganda packets that department gave me proved to be feckless, hollow advice (“try to be tolerant of your host family, even if their customs seem strange to you. Remember, you’re there to learn how they live, not to teach them how!”), I was tempted to shrug this piece off like the rest, only to discover that they got it right.

I’m not depressed, not by a long shot; been too busy rushing from one social appointment with estranged loved ones to the next to have time for that, to say nothing of battling the ever-present wet blanket of jet lag. So far, no one has conspicuously tired of my stories abroad – I’ve been keeping them to a minimum as much as I can bear – but that may change over time. But being disoriented? Man, they hit the nail on the head, to lapse into cliche. Ironically, after spending so long travelling between unknowns, after three weeks of wilfully throwing myself into difficult situations, of daily worrying about where I would next sleep or eat, and how I would make it to the airport in ten minutes after failing to wake to my alarm, after finally getting used to the routine of no routine, being surrounded by the familiar and easy and well-understood coddlings of convenience have thrown me off base. I’d forgotten how much I love this soggy little down, and that love has hit me in the face like a fistful of pinecones – one at a time, in rapid-succession, all spiny and fragrant of rainfall.

Hearing strangers speaking English (who aren’t tourists) was a welcome change from the moment I set foot into Washington Dulles International Airport at 4:30 pm on Thursday, but that doesn’t mean I’m used to it. Walking from Bryan’s apartment, where I’m staying for the moment until the sublettor in mine flies the coop at the end of the month, to my own, down the familiar staircase on 52nd Street, I came across a couple men working at landscaping. They said, “Hi,” and after a moment’s thought, I mumbled something noncommittal and walked on. They’d said “hi”; not “hola”, not “gutentag”, not “bonjour”. It was such a small thing, but I couldn’t wrap my head around it. I felt like they’d done something wrong. Had they?

The smells are another thing – leafy and green and wet and completely unique to the Pacific Northwest. Walking down the staircase, surrounded by a swab of greenbelt on both sides, I realized I hadn’t smelled that odor for three whole months, not even in the lush, verdant paradise of Slovenia, which came as close as anywhere to rivaling Washington’s temperate rainforest climate. I love that smell.

The clouds are yet another – the way they streak across the sky in wispy little strands, layered on top of one another in complex patterns. Nowhere in Europe has clouds like in Seattle, and although each country had their own beautiful take on the theme, I hadn’t realized how much they say “home” to me. The sunset last night was the most beautiful I’ve seen in three months, even better than the blushing oranges and purples of dusk at Heldenplatz or the nearly cloudless palette over the Mediterranean in Barcelona.

I arrived at my apartment (although “Nathan’s apartment” is probably more appropriate, given who lives there at the moment), and surveyed what was left of my room. It’s completely recognizable, really – none of my stuff has actually been disturbed. Chris, the sublettor, has arranged his belongings on top of my own, like he superimposed his room on top of mine. There’s a big screen TV and surround sound speakers placed like a transparent overlay on top of my dresser, a new computer in place of my own sticker-covered tower, and alien sheets on the bed, but my stuff is always underneath and behind, still there but adapted to a conscientious visitor’s needs. It was unnerving. I went to the fridge to prepare myself something resembling breakfast, and found another thing I’d forgotten about: bagels and cream cheese. Hadn’t eaten one in three months. It was delicious.

Walking back up the staircase, going to visit UrbanSim before the busy Monday morning, I paused and checked out the mossy alcove on 21st. Sure enough, in the three months I’d been away, the words “Another Lonely Day” had faded into the vegetation, with new graffiti on top of them. You could still read them, as I had nearly every morning for the last two years, but you had to squint and sort out the message from underneath the new additions. I didn’t pause to think about what that might mean.

So much has remained the same, but a lot has changed: social spheres shrinking and ejecting previous members; graduations and job searches among persons I can’t yet think of as real adults; Bryan in South Africa, Dash in LA, and various other members of the Old Guard unreachable by phone or a search on foot.

I’m still adjusting. It took me three weeks to come to terms with the fact that I lived in Wien; hopefully it doesn’t take that long to drum into my skull that I live in Seattle. I’ve missed it.

For those people who think I’m ignoring them, my cell phone broke Friday afternoon. It won’t even turn on. You can leave messages with Nathan or on my apartment’s answering machine until I get it fixed in the next few days. Or you can e-mail and we’ll work something out. Either way, we’ll speak again real soon.