Standing on Sand

"Nothing is built on stone; all is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone." Jorges Luis Borges

I'm back in Alabama. And as you can imagine, life is a confusing whirlwind as I attempt to reattach patches of memories, of places and moments that help to remind me who i was once here, the girl whose footsteps I can only pretend to follow again. Derrida once talked about the eyes being the only organ that never aged. The only parts of you that are exactly the same when you are older as they were when you were five. --And so it seems fitting that I am connected now to these shadows of my past through the images I see. Gas stations with new names, empty strip malls, and back roads that lead to different places--I am back in Alabama.

Culture shock or re-shock I guess is majorly affecting me. I feel as though I truly do have two selves-the chilean me and the US me. And they seem so distant these selves, as if they barely know eachother. They dress differently, eat differently, and speak differently. They love differently. Who am I now? A person in-between worlds??? I can't readjust fully when I know I'm returning in two weeks--not that I even think I want to readjust fully.

As you can imagine, here--part of me longs to be there--just as part of me longed to be here when I was there.

There are things yet to be done in Chile. Things to be finished--to be experienced. Times to be lived.

I know I should be updating about all that I have been doing here while I've been home, and I will. I plan to post a plethora of embarrassing family and cross-country adventures photos, but for now, I'm just reflecting.

Living in the in-between, I see myself more clearly. The parts of me I wish were one whole person, the ways a place brings out different strengths. . . and leaves me wishing. . . I was a bit more whole sometimes.

But then again. . . Aren't we always in the making?? As much as we are in the present-we are always in motion.

And as a new friend recently told me, "There are few things in life that can't be reversed."

No matter where I go, maybe it should comfort me to know that my eyes never change.-Ageless reminders of the me that is unchangeable.

So, as I question every thing, time, and one around me. . . I remind myself that I am just standing on sand--

standing on sand and trying to build as if the sand were stone.

una aurora,
Mere