Since the time I turned twenty one, I have lived at least a thousand lives. And yet, today I have somehow contrived to only be turning twenty two. I am not sure how that happened, or what, in fact, happened. But it did, and therefore only a year must have passed, as incredible as that is.
Last year this time, I was still in Paris, still in the throes of self-discovery that was the entire year abroad, celebrating my twenty first among people that had become so dear, often in a very short time, that it was impossible to think of leaving. But the end of my stay was fast approaching, and it all coalesced into a bright shining moment of understanding on the morning of July 26th, and less than a week later, I was on an airplane. Leaving after eleven months a city that had become more comfortable and more beloved than any other place on earth. Chatting up the kind Italian woman next to me and trying not to go stir crazy.
I spent a month at home: a month of eating salad and working out like a fiend to drop the extra ten pounds I'd picked up in Paris, a month of letting go and moving on, a month when I often sat on the couch with my mom and cried, trying to make sense of the impossibly transformative experience that I had; as with any transformation, the destruction was just as powerful as the creation.
A month of dealing with culture shock -- as I have often said, and will say again because it's so true -- it was a monster I had prepared to fight but did not even recognize its face; I knew the roads would be too big, the tables, the cars, everything too big, not enough motos and not enough sidewalk cafes, but I didn't realize that my family would have lived a full year that I knew nothing of, had changed and I didn't know it, had a full year of experiences just as I had but not shared. I didn't know about the nagging, uncertain sense of unbelonging, of displacement, of recognizing everything but being unable to picture yourself inside.
In fact, the culture shock wouldn't go away for six months, and soon enough I was on another plane, back to the city that never sleeps, where the cars, noise, and lights promptly overwhelmed me. But it wasn't just the city, but after a year of life suddenly I was in school again, turning in homework, doing research, and preparing a senior thesis. I met the King of Pop, the subject of said thesis, and was inspired, again and again. I wrote a hundred pages and played the academic and the dancer. I got to know not one but two androgynous, genius, and decidedly unstable male dancers, not only MJ but Nijinsky, and loved delving into their stunning ability to move.
Besides the academics, I spent months trying to reconcile the girl I used to be with the girl I had become, until one fine morning in December looked at myself in a mirror and recognized the girl within. Not three weeks later, I was on a plane again.
Another month at home, time to give and to celebrate being together, a time to rest and recuperate. I discovered my pixie heritage (remind me to tell you that story one day; if I finish it without you dragging me to the loony bin it will be surprising), said goodbye to my childhood hometown, and was so fully present that when I arrived back in New York, after another plane ride, I didn't recognize the apartment I stepped into.
I knew where everything was, because I had put it there, but had again the sense of displacement, as though someone else belonged where I was intruding, and it took me a good couple days to shake. By then, I was deep in the throes of my latest project of taking a group to Paris, a project begun the previous semester but left to simmer on the back burners. I put it on high heat, but at the beginning it crawled, like sailors on a beach after a shipwreck. Dancers were leaving, funds were nonexistent.
Nevertheless, because not going was not an option, I headbutted any brick wall in my path and after two intense months of preparation, the trip was funded and I was on a jumbo jet heading over the Atlantic, taking ten days off school to kibitz about Paris; a surreal experience in an increasingly more surreal life. For ten perfect, beautiful days, I was home.
By the time I returned, it was time to graduate, take final exams, and say goodbye to people I had been in school with for four years. My family was in New York, there were two stars next to my name in the program, and it was celebration and madness --
And then I had moved, and was throwing myself into the next adventure. I had already agreed to participate in the choreography showcase, but found myself quite unexpectedly co-producing it, working with dancers ten times more experienced than I, and yet somehow or another the thing got produced and performed. It was an experience that made me feel equal parts totally incompetent and totally competent, and more often than not very very young, and very very inexperienced. And yet -- as with all experiences like it, it taught me a hell of a lot.
But there would be no time to rest, either preparing for or after the showcase, because there was a move to the other side of the world to organize, and with my mom in town for a brief, lovely week, I gathered up my energy for the next big leap.
The last week in New York was filled with goodbyes and the incredibly revealing things that happen in the case when you quite simply don't know the next time you'll be back, if at all. They were all little gifts, little embers to hold somewhere in my soul, little wonderful looks into people's eyes, each separately surprising and fascinating. I spent a great deal of the time running around like a chicken with my head cut off, pausing and posing for a few seconds before fluttering off.
My July 4th was filled with fireworks, you could say, and the next night at 1:45AM I was on another jumbo jet, the lone white female in the back of the plane with a company of the Indonesian Navy, and touched down in a place where nothing at all seemed to be anything like what I had previously experienced, quite literally the opposite side of the world.
Which is where I am currently writing this post, completely baffled by how that all fit into one year, especially since I didn't even mention the half of it. However much I may not understand, though, it was in fact one year, and I am in fact just now turning twenty two. It makes me almost afraid to wonder what will happen before July 17th, 2013, but if experience tells anything -- it certainly won't be boring!!
It should tell you something that I think one of the most flattering things anyone has ever said to me was calling me "strange, or at the very least unusual"...
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