MEDITATIONS ON RETURNING

Listening to Robert Wyatt and attempting to generate a cross-breeze by keeping all doors open and the fan going, i am less than a week returned after over six away. It has all slipped back on like an old glove or an old coat. The forty degree heat seemed normal, the coffees at the new cafe up the road (hallelujah! A good cafe nearby that opens on Sundays!) felt like ones had at an old local I'd been going to for years, the catch ups with friends seemed like we only saw each other yesterday, the swims at Bronte beach seemed every day. I wonder how it is that i was away for so long and yet not away at all.

Returning is always nostalgic and full of longing and sadness for me. The goodbyes at the airport (let it be known Frankfurt airport is devoid of hidden nooks and crannies in which to canoodle with one's lover), the boarding, the timeless void you enter between customs and security check in one city and baggage collection in another, all make me incredibly melancholic. That kind of delicious melancholia that surrounds you and somehow feels like the sweet stickiness of drinking a montenegro on ice, or if i were a cognac drinker, i'd say that.

I actually longed for the flight to be longer, i needed the extra time to process the previous weeks. I wanted to linger in the air and be enclosed and confined for another 8 hours at least. Maybe it was because i was upgraded to business class and they gave me that yummy wool blanket with the stitched in cotton sheet on one side (one day i will get enough courage up to steal this away in my hand luggage). I love the blackness out the window. The sound of the engines changing gear from take off to cruising. I love the wondering what it will be like getting off the plane and seeing friends and family again. Will i have changed? Will they have changed? What have I learnt on this trip? What did i do? Where did i go? When will I go again? Because returning always brings up that question, when will i return to where i've just left?


It took me 15 years or more to return to Barcelona, so when will i next return? Will I ever walk through Park Guell again? Will i ever see the Sagrada Familia again, will i see the Placa de San Felip Neri again?





When will I see the Mercat de la Boqueria again?





Will I eat flan in a cafe across from the Jardins Doctor Fleming again?


Will I ever get to go to all the places that i didn't make it to this time? Will I return?

And the melancholia becomes excitement and anticipation as i start to plan the next trip in my head. I hear the song in my head and it feels right for this moment...
"I have my senses and my sense of having senses. Do I guide them? Or they me?"