This day of all days

This is a story of a day. A Tuesday to be accurate. Not necessarily more or less interesting than any other day. A day is an image. It's a blink of an eye.

I woke up at 6:30. Or well, my mobile telephone did, while I managed to haul myself out of bed at 6:55ish and since I had no class in the morning, let myself read Vihreä Lanka (the renoved version is just mesmerizingly interesting). As every morning, I did my morning excercise: 160 abdominals, 50 backs, 20 pushups and 40 downs. Though I forgot about the downs as I sometimes do. I went to the ground floor for a shower (there's another shower at the first floor but Patric was occupying it).

I had breakfast which consisted of the following:

• 3 Wheat Biskits with milk and blackberry jam
• a glass of squeezed orange juice
• 2 pieces of sunflowerseed bread w/ roasted garlic hummus and brie
• a nice cup of Turkish apple tea.

Alongside the breakfast me and Michael tucked the trash neatly and properly into their black plastic bags, put on appropriate stamps as payment for collecting the trash (we had bought them with Robin the day before) and Michael took them out to the street for the garbage collectors to take care of (Tuesday's trash day). I hadn't finished my breakfast when the property managers came in for a visit. I received them and presented them with a nice happy list of things that weren't quite right in the apartment, such as our keys not working for the bikeshed (theirs did however), the wallpaper hanging loose on one wall, the shower spraying water on everything else but the showeree, and the wardrobe and bed in my room needing some repair.

At tenish I finished cleaning up my room some and made my way to the Salvation Army Family Store to get us some glasses to drink from (there were very few) and a dish rack and brought them back to the house. The next thing was to get my calendar (my Production Design class piece) bound and it would be all set for final submission. Yey, happiness. I went walking this time (still somewhat afraid of biking in the carway). I took like 20 minutes of the girl's time at the print house but she only charged me $4. So now it's done and ready for display (it's Open Day on Wednesday so everyone can go wow and eww over it).

After that I had lunch (Saag Alu) at an Indian place called Bollywood Stars for the first time in Wanganui. It was reeeaally good. And somewhat expensive to Wanganui standards ($13.50). They took longer than I had thought to prepare the food so I was late (as usual) from my twelve o'clock Animation class, but arrived just in the nick of time for animation storyboard group evaluations. This time I was the one to present our work to the other group (which would judge on it). They chose my suggestion and complimented it as being "complete and well thought". We're supposed to have the graphics and sounds ready by the end of vacation — and, in case it would get too boring, I'm still to submit my first Pacman animation assignment since I got sick at that time.

On Poster Design class at 3pm I was supposed to have 10 ideas for discussion. This came to me a surprise as I hadn't received the brief but the discussions we had were fruitful. We are to present 5 black and white poster mockups for a series of two posters after the holidays. The class ended early (fivish) and I was left surfing, chatting and doing e-mail (mostly TOKYO stuff) which magically devoured some four hours of my life (it has a tendency to do that but it always surprises me).

I walked back home, which this time was a bit more frightening than biking, it being dark and not very well lit and all, but especially because two of my schoolmates had been attacked by gangsters on Sunday (a water balloon had been thrown at them, go figure) (there's something of a gang problem in Wanganui). We were given voucheurs by the school on Monday to take (free) taxi rides from the school to the student flats but I didn't feel comfortable calling up a taxi.

When I came back home I had some rice (Robin and/or Patric's) with a ready Indian meal. I forget the name (Pav Bhaji or something) but it, too, was soo goood. Makes me want to not try to avoid ready-made meals so much. The dish rack had been taken into use. On top, a cup of apple tea.

I went back to my room to notice that the bed and wardrobe had been repaired very nicely. The doorknob of the wardrobe door was still missing but I found the screw on the floor and attached it into place. Yay, room perfectness. Next mission: To find some neato posters somewhere (in addition to my Margaret Thatcher one which I'll bring from school when the exhibition is up). Why did I leave that mirror with the Salvation Army?

Now it's half past ten and I'm listening to Sigur Rós and wondering how on earth I could conjure up a finished illustration piece for tomorrow's class (I'm supposed to illustrate an article on the savant Kim Peek), and why am I writing this instead of doing that. Aw flip it, I'll just do it tomorrow. I'll need crayons from Whitcoulls at any rate. Tomorrow's a new day...

And so, in what afterwards seems a blink of an eye, a day has passed, like sand flowing through fingers. I watch it flow, feeling it, altering its downfall, never trying to stop it, resolutely conscious that gravity knows no defeat. I enjoy the crumbs, one after another, tickling my skin, briefly, then they're gone; and after that, I thankfully think, more of it.

A Home at The End of The World

(Partly as a response on Heikki's comment on my previous post since I was about to write about this at any rate): It's not just loving and longing for stuff back home. There's more in the emotional basket than the varying degree to that. It's also about not having them here, having lost them. They're replaced – or not exactly replaced as much as substituted – by something unfamiliar, something that unmistakeably is a home, but whose I can't tell; by people that are undoubtedly friendly but with a friendliness that stubbornly fails to drop my force field of uneasiness. Be it temporary, it still feels like dying.

In the basket there's also feeling and not feeling as if you have no home. And there's feeling and not feeling you're surrounded by people you are afraid of like Virginia Woolf was afraid of her servants. I most long for not only my own home, but to have a home here at the end of the world, a home to miss when I do get back. As it stands, I feel like there won't be one for me here, despite all the effort.

So I have a boyfriend back home, always comforting and supporting; I have my mum; I have a couple of friends that actually do keep in touch; I give my most sincere thanks for all that. There's friendly people all around, and all day long, every day, I do what I love the most: create. Someone told me I shouldn't have anything to worry about. And I did try comparing my situation of anguish to that of Guantanamo prisioners or Palestinians and Lebanese that have lost their homes under the crushing foot of Israeli terror (yes, God bless those heavenly missiles, each & every single one of them). Needless to say, I'm totally out of scale. This, me coming here, it was my decision, my urgently resolute determination to leave everything; to start again, in a sense; then return, hopefully victorious, having conquered not only the world but myself. Being enough, then.

Being able to settle.

Yes, longing for things is what drives us on. At least I look forward to returning to a home that is more a home than when I left it. I shall settle to it. Settle to the arms that envelope me; the arms that I perhaps would have been unable to settle to before. Settle to my roots. Settle to my size, myself. Settle as I am trying to settle here, now.

How lucky I am to have even the smallest portion of my friends send me their regards that seem to miraculously reduce down these 17 000 kilometers, these 11 months.

"We want so much, don't we?"
"I suppose we do."
—Michael Cunningham: The Hours

Footnotes:

• Got me a bike. Pretty damn good one, too. Bikers go on the carway so I should probably learn me the road rules before a crazy Kiwi turns me into pulp (I already witnessed a car crash).
• Mom must have been right when she said you get used to everything since 'everything' seems to include left-hand traffic and wearing shoes indoors.
• What at first seemed to be a requirement of 45 hours of work a week turns out to be more of the 80h/week sort.
• I'm starting to get the hang of the "Eh?" Kiwis stick to the end of the sentences. It's somewhat the equivalent of "isn't it?".
• I fell in love with a greyhound named Turbo.