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Approaching Stockholm

I'm home in Cape Town. I once read someone's account of the disruption of place that modern travel creates. Often within short periods of time you can be transported from one city to another on the other side of the world without the necessary time to process both your leaving and arriving. I feel this acutely. It feels like one minute I was in green, silent, warm Uppsala, the next I'm in the bustle and hustle of Cape Town, no longer on my bike, but in my car instead. But there is also a very strange familiarity about everything. Yes I do fit in, yes it all feels, smells and tastes of something I know very intimately. Yet, part of me is also in that other place I just left and I find myself opening draws, cupboards expecting to find the things that should be inhabiting that space, except in Uppsala. Before returning to Cape Town, I read the beautifully captured experiences of the notion of Home, by Salman Rushdie. This in-between world of the immigrate at home and a stranger at the same time, in both their country of origin and their new host country.

But I settle and each day brings a new discomfort and new soothing, calm as I accept my 'new' surroundings.

I feel the sharpness of being all alone again in my home, and the togetherness, familiar sounds and accents of all the talking and catching-up with friends and family. I worry that the deep feelings of surety and contentment I experienced in Uppsala will be withered away as I have to start doing the things, that set me on the sabbatical path in the first place. Already I've had shaky starts that have left my mind racing ahead and unable to stop until the early hours of the morning. But all things settle and I now know I have a good foundation, a solid layer to offset the doubts and conflicting thoughts. Sure they will come, but I also know they will leave again - given time, they always leave, pass along.