Peter M Howard ::

My Snow Coloured Dreams

15Dec2005 [personal]

The year in France is coming to its end, and Reims is getting quiet. The five Aussies just had a week of 'lasts' - our final week all together in Reims. Two of the girls have now left for their Christmas holidays, one leaves tomorrow, and one Saturday. I've now done coffee out for the last couple days; everything is feeling very final. One day left and I'll be left here alone, with another five days here before I'm off to England for Christmas.

The finality is really sinking in now, provoking a rash of introspection. My head has emptied and been refilled multiple times in the last week -- some of the results I've put online, a lot is jotted on paper and in notebooks all over the place. The other night I couldn't sleep; got up and wrote out three pages of notes.

I'm sitting here listening to (and looping) Linkin Park's My December, with an overwhelming urge to find meaning in song lyrics. Should say that linking December and 'snow coloured dreams' finally makes sense... not that it's snowed, but this has become a month of introspection, something I find extremely unusual in comparison to the summer months back home.

And I'd give it all away
Just to have somewhere to go to
Give it all away
To have someone to come home to

This is my December
These are my snow coloured dreams
This is me pretending
This is all I need

***

My sincere apologies

***

Every time I try to sleep I find myself thinking about going home.
And thinking "This is It."
But what is It? It exists within a void. My mind runs over the same scenarios: figuring out what to do with my stuff, packing, the airport, leaving the girls and continuing alone from Hong Kong. Then I arrive home late, stay up for a couple hours on the buzz, and crash.

And that's it. There is nothing between now and then. And there is no tomorrow. It is as though I am aware that that short period of time is so important, but cannot see past it. Those words of the Oracle: "we cannot see beyond the choices we don't understand".

While awake, the only time I do think of the 'tomorrow', I see myself sitting at the table, with family around: I'm not sure where, just so much more around than they've been all year. And I am unable to speak, unable to relate. I tell them, silently; I need time to adjust before I can begin to be a part of a family again.

« Mysterious Packages Part II :: Public Schooling, Religion, A Manifesto »

Related [personal]