I am sitting in the airport, hours early. I want to see home and conifers and familiar things. I want to smell rich, wet, black dirt and inhale green, the green that I know. I want to feel the hands and embrace those I have spent years loving, not months. I want to be in that place where what I know to be true is true.
Here is palm trees and bright flowers and fruit on the air. It isn't bad, just unfamiliar, just different, just not what I know. Here isn’t home. In this place, people say good day to whomever they pass. They say hello and goodbye when they know you on the street. Here they love to hear you try to speak to them, even if you aren’t proficient.
But, here guards arm buildings and stop public busses with machine guns and skepticism. Here, the people are weary and tired and hard working. Here there are groups of young men who protect one another and kill groups of other young men, also protecting one another. . Here a man with a gun will take your camera and take your wallet and take the pictures of your family, If you ask really nicely you may get back your memory, or you may be made a memory.
Here, I don’t walk alone after dark because I know that being safe is not being independent. Here I am careful. Here fireworks make me cower under my covers or huddle on the floor.
This place isn’t an ugly place, nor a dangerous place, not anymore so than parts of home. This place simply isn’t what I know. It just isn’t the culture that I grew up in, where I learned what ‘safe’ and ‘normal’ and ‘live’ mean. It is a pace that was unknown, but now isn’t. A place that I have come to know, and love. This is a place where I have come to know that things I know are true, are not. Where things I know have different truths. A place where I have come to know that there are a kaleidoscope of truths. This is a place where I have come to find truth, have found it, and now I am going home to my truths. Maybe one day I will come and live among these again. Pronto nos sabemos, porque la vida es ir y venir.
