Reverse Culture Shock
and the Realisation that
Everything Changes
Everything Changes
Hello again readers,
It's only been a few days but all I have the urge to do these days is write. A lot of my scribbles have been creative - I restarted a well-loved story during the Fringe. I first wrote it years ago but a new friend reminded me of it and I've been puttering about on plot etc ever since. Similarly, when I first came back from the States, I jotted out a new novel that I hope might one day sit next to your Grishams and James and Christies and such. Yup - I decided to turn my hand to crime, probably all that Criminal Minds I watched in ADPi.
Anyway, this isn't really about any of that. It's not about the continuation of ideas or their coherence. It's about the beginning of the return, the start of comparisons and critiques, reverse culture shock as my beautiful, wonderful, Jeykll and Hyde city comes under the scrutiny of Post-America-Me.
I love Edinburgh. I fell in love that warm, bright day in March 2009 when I stepped out of a taxi with my overly concerned mother and saw the city framed by Arthur's Seat. The sky was so blue and clear and the wind had the hint of winter still in its touch, but the sense of spring, of possibility and adventure was tingling in my fingers. Or that could have been the chill. Either way, I was hooked. Oxford and interviews and the heavy bleakness of IB seemed distant, unimportant next to the fact that I had an offer to this place - Edinburgh. You can read about my first reactions to Edinburgh here. It might make a good opposition to this addition. The other comparison might be my Carolina Culture Shock after being asked if I wanted to go shag by a perfect stranger.
During the Fringe and even before the Fringe when I was dreaming of Edinburgh, there was hardly a fault I could find in anything related to it. Even the weather has always been my favourite weather - you know the kind when it tangles up inside your clothes and you feel the thrill of a chill on your skin? And it still is. But there's something: a niggling, wiggling, wriggling something that tugs at my sensibilities. It's not that I miss Chapel Hill. I don't, not even when I think of the balmy nights spent on Franklin Street. But I miss the people. I miss Jay and Foxie and the hours spent moaning over deadlines and planning to go to Coffee Shop and failing. I miss Coffee Shop on a Tuesday Night when every international descends on the bar. I miss 304 Pritchard and everyone in it. I miss lunchtimes in ADPi with all the girls. I miss Rebecca and calling her up to swap silly stories about ridiculous nothings.
I could hear people upstairs before I went to Stella's houseparty tonight. They had plenty of friends over and I could tell, from their voices, that at least some of them were friends of mine as well, friends that I left behind when I went to America. I think most of all I miss them and I miss the feeling of being part of a group as I was before I left. I'm scared to start my fourth year, terrified of the lack of familiarity that I feel when it comes to university in the UK. The societies I was apart of, especially MUSOC, is now full of new faces that look at me with puzzlement and curiousity.
"I was one of you," I want to say, "I've only been gone a few months..."
I can feel the approach of that all too recognisable sensation of oddness, of not quite fitting in, of being uncertain in a world that's both similar and different to what you know or, in this case, remember.
Some of this I chalk up to restlessness. This is the first time since I left Chapel Hill that I've not had a new adventure up my sleeve. Going up to St Andrews for the day or nipping up to Glasgow for a show only seems to encourage my all-consuming want travel and travel and travel. Funnily enough, I don't want to leave Scotland, but I'm now hyper-sensitive about the fact that I've never been up to the Highlands or gone to the coast or seen a loch. It's utterly barmy.
Of course, some things never change - our little holland house crew is pretty much exactly as it was, meeting up and everything picking up where we left off. The boys are back from France/Melbourne, the girls are returning for their fourth year and even though the absences of Madeline and Mineta are far too keenly felt, there's the sense that if you put us all in a room we'd just leap straight back into conversations about dodgy men on the meadows, how to creep each other out and/or tea.
 |
| I reckon that right now I'm moving out of the Honeymoon period as reality (dissertations, classes, work) sets in. |
During the Fringe and even before the Fringe when I was dreaming of Edinburgh, there was hardly a fault I could find in anything related to it. Even the weather has always been my favourite weather - you know the kind when it tangles up inside your clothes and you feel the thrill of a chill on your skin? And it still is. But there's something: a niggling, wiggling, wriggling something that tugs at my sensibilities. It's not that I miss Chapel Hill. I don't, not even when I think of the balmy nights spent on Franklin Street. But I miss the people. I miss Jay and Foxie and the hours spent moaning over deadlines and planning to go to Coffee Shop and failing. I miss Coffee Shop on a Tuesday Night when every international descends on the bar. I miss 304 Pritchard and everyone in it. I miss lunchtimes in ADPi with all the girls. I miss Rebecca and calling her up to swap silly stories about ridiculous nothings.
I could hear people upstairs before I went to Stella's houseparty tonight. They had plenty of friends over and I could tell, from their voices, that at least some of them were friends of mine as well, friends that I left behind when I went to America. I think most of all I miss them and I miss the feeling of being part of a group as I was before I left. I'm scared to start my fourth year, terrified of the lack of familiarity that I feel when it comes to university in the UK. The societies I was apart of, especially MUSOC, is now full of new faces that look at me with puzzlement and curiousity.
"I was one of you," I want to say, "I've only been gone a few months..."
I can feel the approach of that all too recognisable sensation of oddness, of not quite fitting in, of being uncertain in a world that's both similar and different to what you know or, in this case, remember.
Some of this I chalk up to restlessness. This is the first time since I left Chapel Hill that I've not had a new adventure up my sleeve. Going up to St Andrews for the day or nipping up to Glasgow for a show only seems to encourage my all-consuming want travel and travel and travel. Funnily enough, I don't want to leave Scotland, but I'm now hyper-sensitive about the fact that I've never been up to the Highlands or gone to the coast or seen a loch. It's utterly barmy.
 |
| Somethings Never Change. Opal Lounge 2012. |
Of course, some things never change - our little holland house crew is pretty much exactly as it was, meeting up and everything picking up where we left off. The boys are back from France/Melbourne, the girls are returning for their fourth year and even though the absences of Madeline and Mineta are far too keenly felt, there's the sense that if you put us all in a room we'd just leap straight back into conversations about dodgy men on the meadows, how to creep each other out and/or tea.
I love Edinburgh. Every day I walk through Marchmont and across the Meadows and smile and I let the absolute joy of being here sweep over me. Relishing every moment that I can say belongs in this city, I walk and I talk and laugh with my friends. But there is the constant catching up and not even the knowledge that they also have to catch up with me can appease the fact that I left them and now I have to come back and build my world up again.
Je serai poète et toi poésie,
SCRIBBLER
No comments:
Post a Comment
Scribble Back