With one of my former adopted homes currently in a state that makes it even more unliveable than normal, another still under the jackboot of martial law and Basildon being, well, Basildon, you'd think I'd feel a little more well disposed towards both my hometown and Bucheon, my city of residence over the last eleven months. But I have my reasons for not being all that crazy about either of them.
I'm set to return to Calgary within the next four or five months and, beyond the excitement of seeing my niece in person for the first time and spending plenty of quality time with both my family and friends, the pervading feeling is one of dread (not an all-encompassing feeling, mind you, more the kind that knaws on you at the back of your mind). The two previous times I came back home from Asia I found myself lost, not short on things I wanted to do, just at a complete loss on how to do them. It's made me resentful of Calgary and all its money and the feeling that I was being shut out. Only recently did I begin to think that maybe I wasn't entirely blameless for my problems.
As much as I want to redeem myself for my mistakes, I can't seem to get past the fact that I'm from a scary place. Paul Heaton was probably singing about London in his song "Bow Down" but I only hear Calgary in it:
Mother, Father, I think that I would rather,
Stay at home with you for another year,
That building's so tall and it makes me feel so small,
That I might get lost and simply disappear.
As for Bucheon, the overall feeling is one of ennui. Kristina often remarks on how much she'll miss it here but I can't ever imagine missing a city. I'll miss certain things about it, particularly the people, but it's just a city. Maybe this is the Buddhist (or the Jedi) in me but I no longer feel attached to one place. That what all this travel does. And that's definitely what living in Basildon does.
So, then, where do I go next?
