Saturday morning I had a study picnic at the park with some friends. Naturally, it ended up being more picnic than studying. I could never give up the eternal Californian sunshine, but spring is so much more precious after a long gray winter. The city comes back to life when the sun stops being shy.
As the day went on, people arrived with their blankets and bags, claiming spots untouched by the creeping shade. Children kicked around yellow footballs and young couples lay side by side, their cell phones raised skyward as a bizarre offering. The wind rustling the tree branches sounded like the ocean, so when I lay my head down on my bag and closed my eyes it was almost like I was at the beach back home, surrounded by giggling children and friendly conversation. But the voices around me rang with foreign phonemes, and I became acutely aware of my presence in a foreign country.
Clearly, every day I walk past signs that this is not America. But those sort of momentous epiphanies don't occur as you go about your everyday life. And that lack of contextualization is what I haven't been able to explain about being here. It just doesn't feel all that different, until one day I happen to look back and realize just how much I've picked up. One day I'm lying in a park on chalky grape-growing soil listening in on conversations that have nothing to do with the world in which I've spent most of my life. And in that moment, that world ceases to exist.
No comments:
Post a Comment