I am drinking proper English tea. If I’m not going to be able to visit The Island this spring, I will at least drink tea. It was a Christmas gift from Miriam’s former Russian teacher in Florida. That and some damn good spicy Ukranian liquor.
You know how you mean to read all kinds of stuff in a certain (short) amount of time, but then when you don’t, you end up reading certain sections at the perfect time to relate to what is going on in your life? Or do you just always relate what you’re reading to what’s going on in your life?
Anyway, I was reading Eggers (a book I don’t really recommend) last night and this jumped out at me:
Half of us are talking about moving. Flagg has already left for New York, for grad school, and I’m vaguely thinking about moving, too. But what I really want is to just swim around in a warm baby pool of these friends, jump in their dry leaf pile–to rub them all over myself, without words and clothes.
This is exactly what Florida was like this Christmas. For better or worse, we have moved geographically from the first community we experienced as a family, and the short return visit was a bittersweet reminder of the glorious troubles and terrible glories of that community’s daily life. And after we said our hushed hellos and before we said our hurried goodbyes, I once again picked the same people, like a north magnet picking a south one, the people with whom I have a positive E feedback loop, and I couldn’t quite find the words to describe how I felt to them…But what I really wanted was to just jump in their dry leaf pile.
I had the most amazing sushi dinner of my life the night before we left…no sushi dinner will ever compare, I am afraid, and neither will the company. Not until our next time together, that is.