Re-entry: Take One

We're back in Stockholm, staying at an enormous (by Stockholm standards) 3 bedroom apt way to hell and gone outside of town.  Well, not that far out, about a 20 minute bus/train ride.  There is space out here, it's suburb-y, but all brand new apartment buildings.  Yesterday, in the new warm snow, we made a snowman, with hat.  I've felt very tired these last few days, and drinking out of the faucet, showering in warm water, cooking my own meals along with sleeping early and often is starting to show results.  But, in all, it is taking me some recovery to feel normal again, even after the relative ease of Turkey.  I'm not at home, however January is starting to feel like January - my articulation struggles familiarly from numb cheeks after a cold walk outside.

I haven't yet worked through the two inch stack of receipts, bus tickets, foreign bank notes, and other scraps of paper with little stories built in to them.  I keep threatening Corinne that I'm going to embark on a story-telling binge - or purge rather - of what feels like the extraordinary range of things that I've felt and seen and experienced.  This is part of what is tiring me out, at least that's my guess (along with recovering from being sick and adjusting to the temperature difference).  And it is dark here most of the day - we have solid sunlight from about 830 to 3 (and the sun never gets higher in the sky than an early morning shadow).  So somewhere in there I feel sleepy and a little crabby.  And I barely recognize the photos on earlier posts.  Stockholm is recognizable, but also remains quite foreign and far away - I no longer have the feeling that I am welcome behind the closed doors facing the street, but that is me, no doubt.

I Skyped the other day with PJ, who is living where I lived before I left, and the blue chair I had sat in many, many many times looked new to me.  He has done wonderous things there, exerting an ownership I did not, knowing I would be leaving in a few months.  I'm not exactly homesick, what I'm feeling is recognizable, maybe a displacement of feeling detached from what settles me.  I am re-establishing my habits of home - cooking eggs in the morning and drinking hot water, reading the New Yorker (thanks family for shipping them over!), but am missing chocolate almond milk and seeing the river.  Stockholm is a home base but not home.

I don't feel homesick in the sense of wanting to be home, but the Twin Cities are exerting their gravity and that, along with 5 hours of partial daylight and feeling somewhat listless while enjoying my time, trying to relax, have slowed my happy heartbeat a bit.  C and I are combating the winter blues with some push-ups, winter walks and the Swedish remedy for anything winter related - Glogg.  Last night we watched 'First Contact,' and are working our way through 'Arrested Development.'  

Finally, I think I am feeling the pressure of not being able to really share what has been like to travel as I have - the day-to-day stories and incidents that lack substance in themselves, but have accumulated into a somewhat difficult to manage new self-awareness.  To a startling degree I now consider parts of the world with a heightened sensitivity to the people who live there, like I have familial relationships with these countries - complicated and confusing and involved relationships to a depth that belies the extremely short amount of time I spent in each place.  For the past few days, I've struggled to pass an hour without thinking about my trip so far, and then without needing to re-catagorize my thoughts on any number of subjects (geography, energy policy, ethnicities and ethnic conflict, religion, politics, language ...).  The complexity is staggering, and under it, periodically, so am I.

Of course this is all in (or out of) balance with each incredible image or experience I've had - complexifying the world is a way to be honest with it.   I would not trade them back.  They are, like my kidney experiences, the price of admission.  Thanks for reading!