there and back again

posted by Hatty

So much of my story, of who I am, is about a search for home. I think about it a lot actually: this idea of place and displacement, of journey and destination.

Came across this journal entry dated March 8, 2011. Life has changed greatly again since seven months ago, but the words still ring true to me today:

I wonder if I can find it now, my New York University application: Pick a piece of artwork that has influenced you deeply and describe how it speaks to who you are and what you want.
Lucky me, it was high time for my musical exploration. New bands almost every week. Discovery of the “classics” like the Petshop Boys, Joy Division, Velvet Underground and the rock gods. Synth pop, instrumental grunge, Brit Invasion, Cuban jazz, swing. I’m back in high school.
Memories are difficult to grasp. They’re mostly from the newspaper clippings about some Getty exhibits and snapshots of small town Glendale gracing my bedroom wall. I walked a lot then, immersed in my barely functioning CD player – proudly decked with mixed stuff found on Napster and LimeWire of pre-iTunes, pre-piracy crackdown days. I believed life was supposed to be glamorous, far far from that daily existence confined in the skin of an awkward antsy teenage girl.
“Mañana” was the piece I chose. An instrumental tune by Willie and Lobo, it blew me away. Something ancient, I wrote. The strings sing, I can almost hear a woman moaning. But there are no words. It paints dust and sunset, a promise of tomorrow. Or is it hopelessness? I still hear it.
I want to believe I mentioned something about Jack Kerouac. There’s a scene in On The Road where Sal talks about his Mexican girlfriend and her brother’s family. They live from today to today. Mañana, they would say. We will find work mañana. We will settle everything mañana. Tomorrow. It will all work out come tomorrow. Laziness? Yes. Romantic? Yes.
Mañana was what I dreamed of. College seemed far away enough. Freshmen dorm life, classes, majors; none of them meant anything really. What I did understand, looked forward to, hoped and wished for, was that vague notion of life larger than life. Between now and the unseen where the last drop of sunset is swallowed by time, where the seamen fix their gaze as they sail across the seven seas, where mañana is. No one word is all-encompassing enough to name this kind of longing for the shiny thing just beyond the horizon.
Maybe I wrote all these, maybe not. Maybe NYU would’ve turned out horrible. Maybe it would’ve been awesome. There’s no regret.

Newspaper clippings have found their wall space on Google Reader. Snapshots of hometown glory are snapshots of different continents my feet have tread. The girl is quite happy in not-so-small-town Oakland with a man-made lake as beautiful as any lake will get. My half-hearted attempt at collage and doodling have transferred to pen and paper. Seven years later, a whole bunch of college essays later, and another three dozens of rejected cover letters later, I’m finally here. Mañana is here.