The day I've been dreading finally came: I woke up, and my first thought was, "I want to go home." I did not feel like getting the guard a bottle of ice water. I did not want to take a cold shower (usually, we have hot water -- just not today). I did not want to think through and then audibly confess to a driver where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do. I did not want to wear long, loose-fitting clothing. I did not want to unpack the huge boxes, fresh off a freight plane, cluttering the lobby of our house. I did not want to open a kitchen cabinet to find a 2.5-inch cockroach centered in my wok, his antennae shivering. I did not want to discuss the future of Musharraf. I did not want to work on my Fulbright application. I did not want to arrange meetings with university deans. I did not want to feel like a walking spectacle or a walking symbol (be these designations real or my own fictions).
We have now been here about ten days -- the length of a vacation, really -- and I suspect this is that inevitable moment when my life begins to feel like my own and not one I've assumed or borrowed. My costume has become my clothes. The set has become my house. I do not live on a map, but instead in a city. Here I am, and now I have to find what here is and how I might best occupy it. Change, revelation -- I think they are born of this discomfort, this visceral, peevish, and, frankly, embarrassing resistance.
If you relate to this, I would love to hear about it via comment or email. I promise my next post will be funny, most likely involving a "running machine." And there will be a photo. Now back to wearing my loose, full-length black turtleneck and contorting my face in self-absorbed angst.
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