if i were to show you a picture of this term, it would be the cobbled streets emptying out at six, the cities lost to empty fields along the a167, the fog that settles over the cathedral at night, and nights whiled away on inter-city trains. how long, refreshing, and painful this solitude has been. i watched matilda in london two weekends ago and nearly cried from a sense of loss. i realized how much i wanted to stop my inane navel-gazing and be understood, how much i missed deliberate conversation. this year i got used to having asian communities in the white spaces i’ve found myself in throughout the year -- friends who kyoukan in shared and secret languages. now i live in some strange divide between english (of class), singlish (phone calls), and japanese (sometimes i spend too much time reading and hearing it that i end up thinking in it), but without complete understanding in any of the three.
what i think i’m trying to say is: durham seems to be some place that i can experience through being alone, in cultivating a sense of selfhood and to be seen as / to see myself as an individual able to occupy spaces, work hard, do things, and handle life on my own. not to surmount the loneliness as much as to see it as one of many ways i have to grow. apt perhaps for the second of these four winters. i don’t ask any more of this place, i think. everything else is mine to bear.
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