Before coming home, I was in a state of disbelief that the time had finally come for me to travel back to this continent. And now that I’m here, it’s still hard to grasp. It’s especially hard to grasp the idea that I’m going to be heading back to that world of mine in just a few short days and that I need to make the most of every second I’ve got here.
There were some massive changes to my life here while I was gone and I’m still in the process of wrapping my mind around them. I’ve seen my father’s empty parking lot, gone to his “not-really-retirement” party and spent the days with him when he’d normally have been at work, but the reality of it still hasn’t really sunk in. And I’ve seen my friends, talked to them like I always did, tiptoed around the fact that this’ll be an especially difficult Christmas and even seen the place where she died, but it’s still got the air of having been an arm’s length away all this time — and it probably always will.
I’ve been thinking a lot about what is going to happen between this Christmas and next. Barring extremely unusal circumstances, I won’t be sitting on this couch again for almost exactly one year; in that same amount of time, this world has become in many ways just as foreign as Laos was when I first arrived — what will happen before I get back to it again?
Still, it’s so comfortable. At least half of Maggie and I’s conversations this week have been along the lines of “I can’t wait to live here with you again and make this our home.” It’s been great to eat the foods I’ve been craving, to see the people I love so much and slip back into the driver’s seat of my car just like no time had passed at all. Time has passed, though, and that inescapable fact colors pretty much everything I’ve been doing — not to mention all the time that will pass before I get to do it all again.
I haven’t been documenting things nearly as much as I’d said I would. Before I got home, I kept saying that I wanted to take pictures of all the “normal” things that surprised me, to look at myself and to show to my students. It’s the same sort of effect that keeps me from photographing too much in Laos though, I fear — it’s too Normal to think of it as novel, even though I know full well just how novel it’s going to be a few days and a few thousand miles from here.
So here’s my plan: today is Christmas Eve and I head to Detroit on the 29th — that gives me 5 days left in this funny little town of mine. I’ve done a good job of buying the things that I want to bring back to Laos with me, so I’m now going to focus on the images that I’ll bring back with me. My camera and I are going to be inseperable and, even if it seems excessive or silly, I’m going to try to document as much as possible. I know I’ll thank myself for it later and, if nothing else, it’ll give me something to reflect on this time next year when I’ll again be returning to alien territory.
Yuu Laos 