and then

In less than twenty-four hours I will be in an airport, perhaps waiting in a queue, waiting to check in for a flight that will take me 17,000 kms to Romania. This past over-a-week has been the feelground for a confluence of emotions nostalgiques, all previously-tied memories that have been opened up by the possibility of their reexperiencing. These emotions have been shadows, grass blade ticklings on a farm scale - I have felt the wind move them as it moved through me. This is a wind that will carry me in a plane to visit again the land I was born in, the streets I frequented as a child, the asphalts and gaps I stepped in as a boy.

It feels as if now the memories are soluble in the present, and remnants are revived. I do not want to have expectations as to what I will see, hear, smell, taste, touch, feel, in the Romania of April 2012. Having spent about nine and a half years away from the land I called acasa, the prospect of going back is enticing and tempting to the mind, bringing to attention all these things that I have forgotten. 

But I know I am not going back as a child. I am not really going 'back', just... going. It is not a trip through memory lanes, though I feel at times it will definitely feel like that. I do not want to reexperience, to reimmerse myself in the nostalgic memories as I once did, partly because I want to leave the memories as they are, protect them, and partly because I know the memories for what they are, appearances, once-is-now-gone. Instead, I want to live and be there as the place is now, as the people are, as I am, and then