Navrat: Return in Czechlish

Publish Post

Oh, it's you again....well this is awkward....I haven't called you in quite some time. Lookin good though slick, not noshing on too many holiday treats now are you?

Update: Back in Austin after the usual tumultuous time home where I nestle by the fire, go out on the town and am shoved into the past with such a velocity that I think I start to like it. But I am not alone in this, the strangeness of home and history that breathes upon you and the bricks that your little hands touched so many years ago that sit in front of you now, red and white edges, and you can't remember the girl you met and were.

Strange to think one chooses their life. Austin did not choose me, at least not in full. It was me that strapped belongings to my car, drove across country and gazed into the Grand Canyon. It was also me that saw the architecture of Santa Fe and tasted street food on South Congress where the rotating cupcake decorates the sky like stunted skyscrapers. I suppose it is strange to think I came here because I could, and there is both unease and freedom in that.

As I get older I suspect more in more that I have something in me that won't stay quiet. Sometimes it is yelling at me to run, to choose, to try all the trivial and epic things that should potentially lay dormant. Sometimes I try and slap this something across the face, just to see how it feels, and to see if it will slap me back. I have to say, it has a real right hook.

Note: Austin is still a great place to live. It still is where my room is, yellow and vibrant, and my little blue house sits with dying plants, hanging from hooks in a formal balance next to the door. People still think that Austin is an adjective, which is disconcerning, but it is not exactly avent garde to lack an ability to find yourself, now is it?

Blah: Our house is impossible to heat. There are scratches in the wooden doors as though wild dogs smelled raw meat there. I can always see the outside, or hear it, even when I try and escape it.

I suppose what I need now is some space. Going home I was pulled in every direction, delighted to be the daughter, the silly sister, and the kind of friend that is absent, so in turn has to make every moment something noteworthy and worth all the days and incidents in each others' lives that are missed. How I didn't see her band play that night when they hit a perfection of notes, how she cried on her pillow, wept for the confusion and I was thousands of miles off, two hours later, reading or watching bad T.V.

So now I just crave a delicate alone. Like, when I once traveled through Ecuador, sweating but satisfied with the looming chunks of day that could be filled only by my movements by a river. And my time in Ireland, when I experienced the rare phenomenon of being one's own sanctuary and confidante, and when I smiled out a bus window, it was for me, only for me, and how lovely it was.

But it is not so easy to do when there are people around you who make the time more exciting. For exciting is always the recipe for companionship, and my room, though lit in the night with exquisite, luminous lights, can be a lonely place when you are out of practice. And I fear I am, out of practice, with knowing my self in desperation, for life is finally easier and it is harder to chase down turmoil. Perhaps I shouldn't. Perhaps I should let trouble dance and mock me and just look away, but a part of me knows that the juicy flesh of being alive comes from the dancing with the impossibly difficult.

But I do not tempt it either, for I know how that ends.

So, for now, I look at pictures and hope the memories solidify enough to let me grab onto them when I need to, for all signs are pointing me to this lovely time of stability. (And, of course, I use stability lightly, for Heather and I out on the town can quiver the very streets themselves.)

So go on, I'm done for today, and now my coffee's gone cold.

~Kristen