Dear Memory:
Today I set out. My bags are packed; They are heavy.
My body is tired, my way long since decided.
Before me there is only to go a long way for a very long day,
full of pulling heavy bags and full of waiting.
But I come today, across land and sky, across the sea I come toward you.
What will happen now?
~~~~~
At London Greyhound: 1:18 PM
Cabin bag 12 kg or 26 lb: 35.75 lb
Checked bag 20 kg or 44 lb:
I packed too much for my voyage. Both my large bags were beyond the weight allowance my flight would grant me, and one was too much even for the bus. Feeling numb and imperative more than regretful, I ripped content out of the heaviest bag, and gave it over to a lady at the Greyhound counter, to be brought to lost and found, and eventually to be donated away. My D&D books, the first I ever owned, were thus sent away. I had decided against selling them, in a fit of sentimentality. Two swimming suits; and my old laptop, now replaced; and tablet seldom used. There is enough personal information on the one, probably, to steal my identity, if poor luck put it in hands that would. But it was with only the grim swiftness of a decision that must be made without hesitation, even if it must be made in error.
My wrist aches from writing on this pad, but I will to tell the story, so I write. I must pull more weight again from both my bags before I fly. Clothes, mostly, I will prefer to consent to abandon. Perhaps a book, and some toiletries if need be. The bus sets out, and I sit in it, as quiet and grim as an inevitable. I do not grieve. I follow my course.
At Pearson International Airport: 5:14 PM
The airport is confusing to navigate and lacks enough available information assistance for a traveler to find someone at hand to unconfuse it for them. However, I have taken this path before, and in the place where visual cues call back to the former experience, I remember enough to make my way more confidently. I left myself ample time, which helped. I did not need to hurry.
In a little heap behind a check-in gate, I left an array of belongings which I have cherished in their time. A stack of old CDs including the game Wolf was left along with clothes laboriously repaired and fondly worn. My broad hat. My grey rain jacket. The faceless rabbit, my companion since before London, when I rescued it from a Christmas drive it was too handmade to serve, was left there on the floor to be tidied away where the airport staff might put it. Perhaps to landfill. My box of dice stayed in my big suitcase to go with me.
These choices may sting, but in truth, I would go and leave everything if I must. It would likely even be easier than choosing which and what to consign away to the blind world which knows none of the stories of these things. Most of the elements of my shrine were left at home, to whoever would live there after me. The musical jewelry box and the fierce red bull sit on a bookshelf to be adopted or admired or discarded, and an empty waxen skull sits on a dead mantle long closed to any use of a real hearthfire, grinning over a basement den, for as long as it is left there. I kissed its crown one last time in reverence before I left. I go, seeking my dreams more boldly perhaps than ever I have... or then, maybe not, given the many journeys I have taken. But I go, and fulfil the promise I made by that candle gloriously.
I treasured these things, but mostly I treasure the memories carried on them. I leave much behind, but it is with a heart willing, and the abandonment of old relics helps me to feel new. They are only things, and I would give up more than I have for the sake of my friendships, which are greater; or just for my freedom, which is also greater. If I had to.
My flight should board soon.
At Keflavik Airport: 4:33 AM local time
My phone's clock reads 12:33. My headset has begun, while on the flight, to lose its strength in the wires by the speaker jack. Like the last one, the bundle of tiny wires inside must have twisted enough to sever almost all of them. I sit and write in a beautifully white bathroom where every stall has its own sink, and a door with no substantial gap underneath it. I was driven there largely by a keen and self-conscious awareness that I smell of menstruation. Probably, it is mainly a function of having worn the same clothes for so many hours in succession, having had to sit still in one spot for so long.
I remember that I meant to look up the phone number of my contact at the house where there is a room waiting for me on Ashfield St. A repeated announcement calls out in some English and some Icelandic for someone with a name that, to me, only sounds a bit like "alien saucepan".
I am tired. It has been too much dull restraint now to feel any glory, or at least any but slight occasional flickers, at my imminent and ongoing return. I did still enjoy the thrill of my last plane building up speed for the great rush that would lift it off the ground, after so long being teased by occasional accelerations that were only to taxi out to our designated runway.
I am tired from sitting still. From enduring the child behind me kicking my seat. From turning aside my thoughts when they wandered to the emergency door near me, and the long scream and fatal drop that could lie beyond. Or contemplated death in a crash, or in the sea in some emergency. I am more than half way through the part of my journey involving flight. I look forward to sleep, on a soft bed somewhere distant. After that, I will be able to begin to take on the tasks of my return and settling in.
At Ashfield, Carlow: 4 PM, Thursday 16, August 2018
I am here. The cool air greets me welcomely. The trees in their robes of ivy and all the walls and farmland look beautiful to me. The wind blows rain like seaspray and clouds like quickly passing crowds. All smells of sea and soil and, slightly, horses. My host met me and tried to help me see where things were. Gave me my keys and a lift to town, to Aldi where I bought some pillows and food.
Saturday 18th, August 2018
I type up the handwritten notes of my journey. It is about a quarter to four in the morning, in my little bright bedroom on the second floor of a neat little house in Ashfield. Not Ashfield St, for that is not quite how things are here. Ashfield is a neighborhood. A little expansion of duplex houses, pretty much all looking the same, and with a little road winding between them.
I am tired, and think I may sleep after this typing. I have slept mostly in evening, up until midnight, so far, and then again in the morning after an interim few hours of midnight activity. So shall it be today, although I mean to rouse myself earlier today than yesterday from my morning nap. I'll hope to seek out some place to access internet, post this blog, talk to my friends... and see whether I have yet any word from my Dear Memory, to whom I left a message: "I am back".
Perhaps I will ask my housemates to take me into town. Maybe to the library, or the grocery. It is hard, but I must constantly remind myself that during the morning, those friends I know best will not be around. The time zone difference would make it deep night for them, when they should be sleeping.
I have learned over the past day that I will need to find a job offer and then a PPS number, in order to take work in Ireland. I should go to Intereo for the number after I have an offer, with my passport, and a proof of address, and a letter of offer. I might open a bank account once I have a proof of address or student ID card.
I have rediscovered that in Ireland, candy tastes better. I remembered thinking this, but the substance of it does not really ring clear until the difference between flavours is in one's mouth again. I bought a couple of sticks of red licorice twist from a convenience store at the near edge of town, where I stopped to look around and speak to the lady behind the counter and ask if I might leave my CV there, once I've prepared one. Yes. And I did not eat the licorice for some time, but carried it in my bag and carried on my way. But it is so full of flavour, like red soda and some kind of delicious fruit. By comparison, a lot of candy from Canada tastes of almost nothing but stale sugar. I might well wind up stopping by Hegarty's to buy a small amount of candy fairly often. The open sweet bins behind the counter are delightfully nostalgic to me of the penny and dime candies at the gas station back in Killaloe. My Killaloe, the little village of my childhood.
My mind wanders to all manner of fantasy over you, my Dear Memory. I imagine meeting, over and over. I imagine singing to you. I imagine lying next to you, on grass under a tree, or in bed to sleep. I imagine asking you demurely a vast array of happy little invitations. I wonder that I ever felt muted in my feelings toward you. I have felt giddy and romantic and happy and suspenseful, and surprisingly little worried.
Typing up my notes here, I had the opportunity to now process the little feelings of loss at the property I have left behind. Feel a pang of anxiety over the accounts my old laptop may have still been signed in to. A little twinge of sadness over my old beloved D&D books, kept with me for 12 years, and the faceless rabbit doll, and a computer game that meant a lot to me as a very young child, and which I wonder to myself whether it can be found online. What is done is done, however, and I would not reverse it, though I do feel the loss. An the serpent sheds its skin it is cleaner and shinier, but also more naked and perhaps vulnerable for a time in softer scales not yet grown thick with scars.
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