Hello Invisible Audience,
I have just added an option for automatic monthly donations
to my blog, and realized I have only written one post for August. That probably
doesn’t inspire people to want to donate, now does it?
But what do I have to tell you? So much, and not much. I am
sitting in Wenatchee, in the house where I lived before I left for Panama in
the first place, and barring the strange traffic ‘updates’ to Wenatchee’s
roads, there is little that has changed in the 18 months I have been gone. By
that, I mean that much feels the same, even as much is different.
It is both comforting and confusing. It suddenly seems like
my life has accordioned – that the two years I was gone and all I have
accomplished have become a closed chapter, and a single memory, made more
apparent at the health food store today.
“You were in Panama? How long were you gone?”
“Two years.”
“Wow. What were you doing there?”
“Uhh…I was writing a book.”
“How inspiring. Did you finish the book?”
Did I finish the book? Oh Jesus, invisible audience. I have
written novels in journal entries, gone from 10,000 visits in five years of
blogging to 21,000 in a year and a half. I have written, rewritten, edited,
sobbed, laughed, shared my book with a few people, and then, ultimately decided
not to publish it. The last time I looked at it, I found myself brought back to
a painful, stuck place that I was writing to get out of, and writing it
accomplished its task: I finished the book, accordioned my life and closed out
a chapter of daily rainbows, sweet tropical fruits and honking and whistling
when I walked anywhere, because that is how it works when you’re a woman in
Panama.
Back in the U.S., I stood for whole minutes in a health food
store, reveling in the joy of being able to find pretty much anything at my
fingertips. I have eaten spinach by the handful, texted friends from Panama
about the rediscovered wonders of Mexican food and gushing, constant hot water,
and tried in vain to summarize what was an amazing couple years that is now over
in a way that conveys the value that time deserves to have.
How was it? It was amazing some days, and awful others. The
food was often exotic, and other times mundane. The people were amazing and
also crazy. It was life, invisible audience, but a different one, with different
rules and caring people, although that rarely translated into great customer
service.
This is counter culture shock at its finest. I am enjoying
the friendships that picked up right where they left off, the new babies I get
to see in real time, the kids that have grown like weeds in my absence, the hot
dry summer days of North Central Washington and the beauty of Seattle on sunny
days. All this, and yet I still find myself thinking, “it hardly feels
different to drive down this road, although the last time I did feels like a
lifetime ago.”
And as much as things feel the same, they are different – I
am different. People have already commented on it – on this new me, who is less
rattled and less capable of being rattled; glowing, still, and not just from my
Central American tan.
I want to hold onto it, this new me that has come back to
the old me. I want to capture my happiness and hold it close to my chest, and
when people ask me, I want to let it burst out at them, without needing to
explain in words how different my time abroad has made me. Because from now on,
it’s all time abroad: all my time
needs to make me more me. I have left the old me behind, and the new me is much
more interested in staying new. Glowing, without any of the old fears I left
behind when I left here, before my now-finished time in Panama. Time may feel
like it has accordioned, but it is still there. I don’t have to be able to
explain it for it to be obvious.
Love and new old kisses
Morgan
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