Displacement
Something that's been happening lately for no discernable reason is I've been feeling displaced, at random times, with no connection except only when I've been in my new as-of-six-months apartment. I've never felt anything quite like this, where I close my eyes and so innately believe I am somewhere else, for just a moment.
So far, it's just been while lying in bed, trying to fall asleep or trying to wake up. My bed, where the wall is out of reach to the left, but sometimes I think that if I roll over, my arm will press snug against the cool wall that's there, because I'm convinced in a momentary lapse of reason that I'm in my family's house, in my twin bed wedged in the corner under a skylight, wall to the right.
Then just now, I turned off the water of the shower. I wrung the water out of my hair and stood, trying to drip dry a little in the warm before opening the curtains to grab a towel let the cold rush in. I pulled the towel over my head, holding it there taut to soak up water from my hair, and for a single moment, I was so so sure I was in Spain.
Not even the Madrid 6-bed/2-bath where I lived for five months, with the little glass cube of a shower in a tiny room separated from the rest of the bathroom, where the lights were on a timed button switch that was never long enough so that halfway through, the lights cut out, and the little room was lit solely by the cerulean guide LED on the switch. Not that one.
It felt like the first time I went to Spain, my first time out of the country, my longest time away from home, staying with a host mom and my friend for two weeks in an apartment that just felt structurally different from the buildings I knew in New York. It was all warm eggshell and tangerine orange and dandelion yellow, with not much light reaching the narrow hallway, and the kitchen a small steel-blue pale thing in dented aluminum that contrasted the rest of the residence, tight balcony cluttered with things and looking out at the manmade stuff between apartment complexes. I don't remember the bathroom.
I don't remember the bathroom, but for a moment tonight in Boston, I was sure the Salamanca of March 2013 was outside of the darkness behind my eyes.
Needless to say, I will be keeping an eye on my apartment for gas leaks, disruptive frequencies, and the like, but still. Very strange. I will be seeing my friend again in two days, but I haven't thought about Sra. Marga in years. I wonder if her son came home after finishing his degree in California. I wonder if she got another dog after Pucha died.
