As I pack up all my belongings accumulated during a year abroad, I feel more and more rootless. What has this year done for me? What’s it taught me? Do I have anything left at home waiting for me? No progress was made in my absence… but then is life about progress?

I’m really wondering what it’s going to be like when I get back. Everyone I know that came back from a year of living abroad found it extremely boring and felt like it was a mistake to come back.

I’m to try and settle down again. I feel like I should be moving still… always moving, and traveling and meeting new people. What’s going to happen when I get back?

As I sift through the mounds of accumulated nonsense in my “undergrad” folder on my computer, I stumbled upon this random poem that I wrote that must have been for some course, or perhaps for the school newspaper (what, The Strand, publishing poems? Never!). I’m shocked that I wrote this, probably for its amateur nature, or maybe because I don’t remember writing it at all.

Evelyn

The cluster of jonquils waved in her loving shade,
fed and fostered by her unrelenting, never-ending care.
Every morning she knelt on the living soil,
close to their whispering trumpet-faces.
Coming back every night to their bed she did the same,
their coronae brushing against her milk white cheek.
Sighing sweetly into her attentive ear,
each receiving a planted kiss time after time,
for she knew that they would never leave her.
Their roots reached down, down, down,
And embraced his loveless heart.

So, I’ve been seeing Joshua’s pictures around on ffffound and other parts of the net for a while now. I was finally able to track him down and email him to ask him how he did it. He very kindly explained the process to me and I experimented with it a bit in Hong Kong. My results are definitely not as sublime as his, but there you have it.

Check out his blog here.

During the most mundane of activities (hanging my laundry) I realised why I was nervous about my family coming to visit in 16 days: I feel like I have something to prove.

I have to show my parents (well, my mom) that I’ve survived and that I haven’t fallen apart without her watchful gaze.

Note to self: you will do it