So, I gave this blog the title "going home again" for obvious reasons - but of course at one point I had to get pensive about it, and today is the day. There is a wikipedia entry about the phrase "You can't go home again", its origin and common meaning. Over the last few weeks, the impossibility of going home again has become clearer to me than ever before.
After the busy times in the last months I am back to where I was before Christmas: I don't feel at home. Even though I am what most people would see as "back home". Not only did I return to the same country, I
returned to the same workplace, to some of the same friends, to my
family, so in some ways, everything feels "completely normal". But I still don't feel at home. Tucson was home. I miss the place, the people, the social structures I was embedded in, the functions I had in them, the culture I identified with, and all the smaller and larger things I did that had become important to me, that just aren't the same here.
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| My home (a.k.a. "cabin") in Tucson. |
It takes a long time to build up a social structure, to grow roots, to really get
to know people, and to feel an integral part of things. Not weeks, not months, years. And then to abandon it all... It is tough, and sad, and people know it is sad, even the notoriously mobile Americans. One commonly expressed comfort is this: "You can always come back." It is a heart-warming sentiment, but it can also make me despair, because I know that you can go back somewhere, but you cannot go home again. I just went "home again", for the second time. Seeing how much has changed, how much I changed, and how few traces are
left of the life I knew 6 years ago, I cannot fool myself into thinking
that I can ever "just return" to that Tucson life that I miss. The time is always "now" (if I want to go all-out philosophical here, I'll say that it's the only time there ever is), and when it is gone, it is gone. My Tucson life is gone and even if I returned now, even if I could, for whatever impossible reason, it would not be quite the same life. Should I, by some twist of fate, return in a few years, it certainly won't be.
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| Out for the last desert hike in October 2012 |
Or course, I know that one thing I can truly always return to is individual people. People who really matter won't forget me, and I won't forget them. I returned to people like that here and I am lucky and grateful, because heaven knows, it would be hard without them. But they cannot relieve me of having to re-construct much of my social life, growing new roots and going about the business of "embedding myself".
It is so much work. I just worked so hard on it for years, and had to give it all up. I am trying not to despair over having to do it again, especially in light of the fact that I am still a "scientific vagabond" and not all that unlikely to have to tear it all down again. With the clarity of seeing what remains after 5 years, I am having a
very hard time letting go of my Tucson home and building up a new home here.
I am aware that I have to do it, and that my my only true choice is to have a positive or a negative
attitude about it. And also, that my current attitude could be a lot better. That instead of wasting time being sentimental about Tucson life, I
should be "out there", energetically looking into the future, establishing the 3rd
installment of Vienna life, and consider myself a lucky bastard for
living in what is arguably the best city in the world to live in. That I probably should stop whining and look at all the Americans who pack up and move across half the country and just deal with it. (They do, however, tend to not go through quite as big of a cultural transition.)
But.....I also know that I am currently trapped in a useless waiting position ("Once Steve is back, we'll look for an apartment/play chamber music/visit that friend in XYZ/invite people over/hike...."), which does not help with the attitude, or anything, really. It will get better. Once Steve is back....there will be two of us constructing a new home. Now, that does not sound too bad.
