Today is March 9, 2011.
It's been exactly six months since I got in a car with my parents and my sister and drove to JFK airport, met the 17 other students on my IFSA-Butler program, and got on a plane to go to Egypt.
Half a year ago, I had no idea. About anything. Really, it hardly seems like an overstatement to say that I was innocent and ignorant.
In six months, I've been to six countries, countries I had never been to before. I've done and seen things - good and bad - that I could never have imagined myself doing 6 months ago.
I really can't even begin to list, catalogue, organize, or plumb the depths of the experiences I've had this last half-year...is it possible to have done so much, grown so much in just six months?! And has the time gone so fast, or does it feel like I've been away for years? Is home Philadelphia? Kenyon? America in general? Or have I crossed over that line - is my home mine to make now, wherever I can land on my feet? It feels most like the latter. I love Philadelphia, love the people in it and the place itself, but it's my childhood and my loving comfort zone, not my dreams and my future. I love Kenyon, but it was never going to be more than temporary home anyway - though some of the people will surely be forever. When people here ask me where I'm from, I say America and I know now how lucky I am to have a homeland, but there's no way that anything as vast as America can feel like a home. Yet somehow, the whole wide world, which is so much vaster, is beginning to feel like home. I can go anywhere, alone or with friends or with strangers, and make a world for myself. I can learn from anyone, can talk to people without any common language, can risk things without any safety net except my own courage. Where can't I be at home?
But with all this rhapsodizing about my independence and my great learnings about the world, one thing has to be said. It has been exactly six months since I have seen my sister. Liz, I know you're reading this - and I miss you. I saw my mom for a shining and precious and restorative week in Dublin, and the three weeks I had there with my dad were so amazing they could only be topped by the week we had together in Beirut. But Liz - I haven't seen you in six months, and that's the longest time ever since I was born. You were with me so often in Egypt, as memories bubbled up and stories to tell you formed in my head, and you're still with me here in Beirut. I can't wait to see you next, whenever that may be. Wherever my home is, I know that it's close to you.
It's also been exactly two weeks since my last post here, and I have so many stories to tell. But a friend in Egypt told me to try harder to live in the moment, not to make judgments and not to worry too much about overall understanding. I've been trying to do that, and having a surprising degree of success, but the other thing is...this is Beirut, and I mostly have other things to do! I'm so busy here! With mountains of work, thousands of really cool fellow students not to mention the Beirutis, a city that sleeps even less than New York, and a country whose wild places are among the most beautiful I've ever seen, I'm having too many adventures (and reading too many books and articles and assignments) to write about them. You'll have to be patient with me, but I promised myself I'd keep this blog going to the end of the year, and I will keep that promise.
So. From September 9 to March 9, I have been out of my own country, living with strangers who have become friends, in foreign places that have become familiar and learning a difficult language that has...stayed difficult (not everything about this experience has been dreamy!). Egypt is a very different country today from what it was when I arrived, and I really do hope someday to go back and see what has changed. The people I have met have filled my life with richness and growth and inspiration, and I cherish each and every one of you. The people I miss continue to sustain me with their care and attention and all the funny youtube videos they send me.
I began this blog with Walt Whitman's "Song of the Open Road," and that poem has strangely and mystically guided and echoed my own thoughts and feelings as I have lived in the world these past six months. I treat myself to a re-reading of it now, and find to be more true and resonant than ever.
Now I reexamine philosophies and religions
They may prove well in lecture-rooms, yet not at all under the
spacious clouds, and along the landscape and flowing currents
---
Still here I carry my old delicious burdens;
I carry them, men and women - I carry them with my wherever I go;
I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them;
I am fill'd with them, and I will fill them in return.
---
I inhale great draughts of space;
The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine.
I am larger, better than I thought;
I did not know I held so much goodness.
---
---
Happy Anniversary, to my traveling soul. I'm glad we're making this trip together.
It's been exactly six months since I got in a car with my parents and my sister and drove to JFK airport, met the 17 other students on my IFSA-Butler program, and got on a plane to go to Egypt.
Half a year ago, I had no idea. About anything. Really, it hardly seems like an overstatement to say that I was innocent and ignorant.
In six months, I've been to six countries, countries I had never been to before. I've done and seen things - good and bad - that I could never have imagined myself doing 6 months ago.
I really can't even begin to list, catalogue, organize, or plumb the depths of the experiences I've had this last half-year...is it possible to have done so much, grown so much in just six months?! And has the time gone so fast, or does it feel like I've been away for years? Is home Philadelphia? Kenyon? America in general? Or have I crossed over that line - is my home mine to make now, wherever I can land on my feet? It feels most like the latter. I love Philadelphia, love the people in it and the place itself, but it's my childhood and my loving comfort zone, not my dreams and my future. I love Kenyon, but it was never going to be more than temporary home anyway - though some of the people will surely be forever. When people here ask me where I'm from, I say America and I know now how lucky I am to have a homeland, but there's no way that anything as vast as America can feel like a home. Yet somehow, the whole wide world, which is so much vaster, is beginning to feel like home. I can go anywhere, alone or with friends or with strangers, and make a world for myself. I can learn from anyone, can talk to people without any common language, can risk things without any safety net except my own courage. Where can't I be at home?
But with all this rhapsodizing about my independence and my great learnings about the world, one thing has to be said. It has been exactly six months since I have seen my sister. Liz, I know you're reading this - and I miss you. I saw my mom for a shining and precious and restorative week in Dublin, and the three weeks I had there with my dad were so amazing they could only be topped by the week we had together in Beirut. But Liz - I haven't seen you in six months, and that's the longest time ever since I was born. You were with me so often in Egypt, as memories bubbled up and stories to tell you formed in my head, and you're still with me here in Beirut. I can't wait to see you next, whenever that may be. Wherever my home is, I know that it's close to you.
It's also been exactly two weeks since my last post here, and I have so many stories to tell. But a friend in Egypt told me to try harder to live in the moment, not to make judgments and not to worry too much about overall understanding. I've been trying to do that, and having a surprising degree of success, but the other thing is...this is Beirut, and I mostly have other things to do! I'm so busy here! With mountains of work, thousands of really cool fellow students not to mention the Beirutis, a city that sleeps even less than New York, and a country whose wild places are among the most beautiful I've ever seen, I'm having too many adventures (and reading too many books and articles and assignments) to write about them. You'll have to be patient with me, but I promised myself I'd keep this blog going to the end of the year, and I will keep that promise.
So. From September 9 to March 9, I have been out of my own country, living with strangers who have become friends, in foreign places that have become familiar and learning a difficult language that has...stayed difficult (not everything about this experience has been dreamy!). Egypt is a very different country today from what it was when I arrived, and I really do hope someday to go back and see what has changed. The people I have met have filled my life with richness and growth and inspiration, and I cherish each and every one of you. The people I miss continue to sustain me with their care and attention and all the funny youtube videos they send me.
I began this blog with Walt Whitman's "Song of the Open Road," and that poem has strangely and mystically guided and echoed my own thoughts and feelings as I have lived in the world these past six months. I treat myself to a re-reading of it now, and find to be more true and resonant than ever.
Now I reexamine philosophies and religions
They may prove well in lecture-rooms, yet not at all under the
spacious clouds, and along the landscape and flowing currents
---
Still here I carry my old delicious burdens;
I carry them, men and women - I carry them with my wherever I go;
I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them;
I am fill'd with them, and I will fill them in return.
---
I inhale great draughts of space;
The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine.
I am larger, better than I thought;
I did not know I held so much goodness.
---
| Allons! to that which is endless, as it was beginningless, | |
| To undergo much, tramps of days, rests of nights, | |
| To merge all in the travel they tend to, and the days and nights they tend to, | |
| Again to merge them in the start of superior journeys; | |
| To see nothing anywhere but what you may reach it and pass it, | |
| To conceive no time, however distant, but what you may reach it and pass it, | |
| To look up or down no road but it stretches and waits for you—however long, but it stretches and waits for you; | |
| To see no being, not God’s or any, but you also go thither, | |
| To see no possession but you may possess it—enjoying all without labor or purchase—abstracting the feast, yet not abstracting one particle of it; | |
| To take the best of the farmer’s farm and the rich man’s elegant villa, and the chaste blessings of the well-married couple, and the fruits of orchards and flowers of gardens, | |
| To take to your use out of the compact cities as you pass through, | |
| To carry buildings and streets with you afterward wherever you go, | |
| To gather the minds of men out of their brains as you encounter them—to gather the love out of their hearts, | |
| To take your lovers on the road with you, for all that you leave them behind you, | |
| To know the universe itself as a road—as many roads—as roads for traveling souls. |
---
Happy Anniversary, to my traveling soul. I'm glad we're making this trip together.
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