Comin back is always weird. I guess that can't be helped and shouldn't be worried about. Comin back is weird, accept it. From the moment I land in San Francisco, I begin to....try to not wig out, I begin adapting. Of course when my first purchase is a bottle of water that costs me 2.50, adapting aint all that easy. 2.50! A price I couldn't dream of paying in Thailand. And then I sit and look around and watch people and try to remember if this is really where I'm from. Am I like these people? And if not, how am I different? Americans. What a lot. My eyes seem to get more critical as time goes on, but as I'm walking around I remember that I've always been critical of....US. Some of my best poems from high school, pieces I'm still using today, are taking shots at the status quo, at this norm, which is good that that's the case, otherwise I might feel like I've become a traitor, like I've jumped ship, like I think I'm better then them now just cuz I've been abroad "Oooooo," but no. That's not the case. I've always taken issue with life here. Something just isn't right, but few seem to see it.
Getting home was cool. Not much different than last time, cept my brother is here, which is a big fuckin difference. But because of that my Dad set up another bedroom for me and of all places...it is my old bedroom. Right now I am sleeping and typing in a room that I haven't slept in since I was twelve. I'm afraid that if I look around and start remembering too much that I might start crying. I know these walls too well. I spent years of my life in this room. The furniture is all gone, it's pretty much empty except for this air-up mattress they put in for me. But there is a nightstand, an old one that has been in our house forever, and on top of that nightstand there stands a lamp. My lamp. I can't remember ever having another lamp next to my bed. Always this one, tall and baby blue. And here it is, still here, still alive, still in existence, still doin what it does in this old room. Of all the places I could end up, why this room? Why am I being taken back THAT FAR. I wonder if the hole I burned in the carpet is still there, I'm scared to look. The past is so full. But we rarely ever encounter it like this, we rarely have the distance needed to gain perspective over the whole of it. But sometimes we get to sit in a room that is devoid of furniture and unadorned with decorations but stuffed full of memories. Your own memories. The ones you made, by hand, by foot, by matches.
If I started writing about everything I can remember happening in this room...I might never make it back to Bangkok. The ghost of myself would hand me a toy and I'd spend years trying to document what life is like in a frozen cocoon.
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