leading me now.

Because I'm kind of obsessed with it right now. You're welcome.

                                          

I need to go on a hike, run until I can barely breathe. Climb a mountain, a la Sound of Music. A really excellent dance party. Actually, a concert would be perfect--you know, the kind where everybody's dancing like their life depends upon it, and screaming the words to songs that are never more true than in that moment, and everybody's sweating, but nobody cares, because seriously, isn't that what you came for? I want to go to a farmer's market and then cook something spectacular. I need to do something besides sit here and study. I've got this restless feeling in my bones, and I want an adventure.

I'm blaming it on the fall air, and this deliciously moody weather that's just perfect for things like bonfires and guitar music and hoodies and motorcycles. I've never ridden a motorcycle, but I feel like now would be a great time to do so. Anyways, what's important here is that now is not a great time to study for biochem, nutrient metabolism, or food micro. It's not even a good time to do multiple lab write-ups, even if they really aren't that bad.

I just want to have an adventure. 

planting rye.

“Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be.” 
-Holden Caulfield, The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)

Holden Caulfield may be an angsty teenager with the mouth of a sailor, but behind that entirely relateable and rather endearing facade of youthful apathy and vehemence, he's got this dream, this crazy dream. Goodness, I love that about Holden. I love it. 

I wish more people would just own up to wanting to be the freaking catcher in the rye. Admit that they've got some crazy dream, but heck. They want to do it anyways. I wish they'd do it. 

Anyways, the first month of the last year of my undergrad is just about over, so it's about time I figure out what it is I'd really like to be. Some people tell me to be the Catcher in the Rye, and others figuratively pat me on the head and say, "Darling, there are no little kids to catch. Look, there isn't even a field of rye."

Darling, please. I'm good at planting rye.

back.

I kind of dropped off the face of the blogosphere for a while.

But no worries, I made it back to the good ol' USA on the morning of August 9th. 

...that moment when I finally stepped off the airplane onto the walkway, and all of a sudden it was real and I wasn't in Africa anymore. I put a little makeup on for the first time in a long time in the JFK airport bathroom by the baggage claim and wore jeans (jeans, real skinny jeans!), and I waltzed out of that airport and into New York City and ate a whole NY bagel with cream cheese (not low fat, the regular cream cheese please, sir, and thank you). I checked into a hostel with the cleanest, whitest sheets and took a shower with hot water, no bugs, and an unclogged drain. You're probably wondering why I'm talking about all these inane things, and I guess the truth is that I don't know why either.

People always ask me to tell them about Africa, and I never have the words.

I don't know what to say, so I say stupid, easy things. The things that people expect to hear. I mean, everybody wants to hear about how I went days without showering, right? That's gross and exciting.

And kind of completely irrelevant. Or I feel like it should be.

I've been looking at the white space that used to exist where this sentence is for a while now, and I realized it's because I don't know what to say next. I feel like I should talk about what was relevant from my experience.  Africa seems to be a continent of superlatives, and I suppose so was my experience from the way I talk about it. Like Dickens put it,

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way--in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

I had a lot of time in Africa to grow. Faith. Change. Risk. Faith. Patience. Love. Faith. Fear. Possibility. Frustration. Faith. Creativity and Growth and Fear and Vulnerability and Faith. I saw it everywhere and I read it everywhere and I talked it everywhere. I tried (am trying) to live it too. 

I changed, but I changed the way I hope I would change regardless of where I get to go in the world. Maybe I just changed with time. Maybe Africa catalyzed that change and faith and me. Maybe it didn't. Regardless, it's a place that holds a thousand wonderful memories and three months of breaths and heartbeats.

Africa didn't change my life in the sense that I wouldn't be the person I am today if I hadn't gone. I am. I made a conscious decision to be who I was in Africa and I still make those choices today. But experiences don't need to turn your life 180 degrees to be worth it. They don't have to figuratively send you veering off a cliff, or mandate that you do a u-turn in the middle of the highway, or even suggest a turn onto that one forgotten road that nobody uses anymore. Sometimes, they can just be changing. And so you keep on driving on the same road you always planned to drive, and it just feels righter than ever, and maybe you even grow a few inches in the driver's seat. Not life-changing or anything. Just changing. It's good. 

Somehow all of this feels internalized and solid in the depths of my chest.

But I don't have anything left to vocalize. I don't know what to say. So I look at you, and I say

Why yes, hot showers with water pressure are miraculous. It's great having cheese as its own food group again. I guess I don't wear a lot of makeup anymore. Khaki capris can be cute, right? Right? A little bit? No? Fine.