The Internship Drops in on Me, or Jumping to Conclusions

And suddenly, the classroom phase of this whole 3-month dream has evaporated. I say "dream," and I imply something strangely dissociative with "evaporated," and this perhaps elucidates my experience--to an extent. And yet, it seems to me now that I won't know how this yet amorphous piece fits into my life's jigsaw until I return home and it condenses at its own leisurely pace, collects so I can view and feel it more reliably. It certainly is surprising to discover how easily I (we) normalize such a novel, voluntary exodus. What it will eventually mean for me, I don't know.

I've traced some stumbling, sidelong line of longitude from my birthplace to this present pole, nearly but imperfectly opposite in geography. I could have charted this flowery vision of my migration pre-departure. And yet, I couldn't have imagined the ways in which my birthplace resting entirely beyond the curve of the horizon would bend and locate the scape of my memory in imitation. I remember my mother's face, the image of my dad, but can't quite grasp the feelings of their hugs. I've kissed Natalie thousands of times, but I can barely imagine how surprising and fresh it will be the next time I do. This adventure has, on one canvas, been about the defamilarization of this estrangement. The complement to the predictable intensity of a young white American living in India is that the topography of my memory has amplified, the tops of the mountains pulled on strings by the distance from my home. But the bases stay in place. And so while some of the most common parts of my life at home, the underlying, compositional, routine pieces of my days--riding my bike, lying in my bed, playing with ruby, studying at Cupcake--seem screened by the horizon, as it were, deeply buried memories of my past stretch above that threshold (if this seems intuitively upside-down, it is; that's the name of the game). It's an incredible experience to suddenly recall myself at four years old, dressed as a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle for some Mound town parade, my dalmatian sister standing next to me. These mnemonic moments usually seem so unattached to whatever I'm doing: walking down the streets of Jaipur, sipping a cup of chai. And yet, these flashbacks feel mysteriously significant in some way I've yet to discover. Not surprising then, that this journey abroad has felt in part like a dream. In some ways, that's exactly what it is.

Pretty self-indulgent. My defense: you're reading a travel abroad blog.

Something somewhat concrete to come, that may tell you what I've actually been doing. In other words, the internship.