Song of Longing

When I was young, I tried living abroad for longer periods. France, Florida, Texas, and Hawaii in the US. Also back packing through Austria and Asia. It was always an enjoyment and memories from these longer trips are still, two decades later, vivid in my memory. At one point I even contemplated moving to France. I love the French language and culture so it was a strong temptation.  But I remained in Sweden. What would have happened in my life if I had taken that decision? I’ll never know.

But. I think the choice I made back then boiled down to the old Sanskrit saying I learnt in school many years before this: Tat tvam asi. I was told it basically meant something like “Know thyself”. It is a difficult challenge to have when you are young to make important decisions in life about where to live and what to do with your life. And yet we must. As for me, taking this decision of not migrating to France, it boiled down to a decision based on previous experiences from longer stays abroad. To put it simply: I would be homesick. I had had previous experience of this and I relied on this gut feeling taking this decision.

When I was young, I was a foreign exchange student in Texas and I think it was the time where I mostly pondered on this feeling about being homesick. I remember my analysis then landed in the conclusion that my home sickness, off course, mostly was due to missing familly and friends. But there is another spice. It is also about all the small things in the surrounding environment. I am a quite sensitive person and I think the unfamiliar environment subconsciously accumulated and become overwhelming after a few months. It could be small things. Like there is a yellow line on the road instead of all white, or that small towns in Texas don’t have many sidewalks, or that houses have no fences separating the lawn from the road, or … Well, the list went on. It’s funny, but maybe there is a bit of Sheldon from the The Big Bang Theory also in me, reacting poorly to changes. And yet I do still long for it.

The one question in all this that still evades me is whether these feelings would have subsided if I had stayed for many years? A lifetime even? Would I feel like I belonged in this new country or would I still have felt like a stranger. I do not know.

Many years later I saw a long poem by a friend, Heather, that moved me a lot. It was on the topic of home sickness and I felt I could relate to it. She posted the poem on her Facebook wall and I read and reread it several times. I became fascinated by this lovely poem, not only because of the beautiful colors it portrayed, but also since it awoke this long-forgotten question of mine: how would it have been to live abroad all these years? For me, this was in the beginning of my musical endeavor of creating music and finding melodies that worked for my voice. So, I asked Heather if I could make an attempt to portray her poem in a song. She said yes. And there it was. The song is complete and will be published eventually. But meanwhile, here is Heathers beautiful poem that I, with her permission, end this post with:

Nessa.
Your house.
With the sun filtering in to wake me.
Your tiles both cold and warm under bare feet.
Bare feet without them freezing…
Your dogs following me around adoringly knowing
I will sneak them coconut oil and other treats.
Your cat giving me her worst bitchy stare.
You getting charmingly defensive that she is not a bitch,
really. She is just the queen.

Your hospitality that makes me, us,
feel like the most loved and welcome people in the world.
You don’t do hospitality the traditional way.
It’s hand painted individual welcome cards in oils
with carefully and lovingly chosen gifts collected over the past year,
rather than a cooked meal. But who cares? (I only want Jonnys cooking anyway).

I want Colin to burst in with his huge smile.
Mommy with her endless scarves and bags.
Big Safra to waft in with her hippi aura and camera.

I want to hear you say, the way you always do,
that we need to go to Blouberg,
because you know I haven’t landed in Cape Town
Until I have felt the rocks in Blouberg almost cutting into my feet.
Until I’ve felt the warm wind almost push me off the rocks.
Until the sound of the roaring Atlantic
becomes part of my bloodstream again.
Then I’m home again. In Cape Town.

The place my heart settles.
Where I can breathe a little freer.
Where December is just December,
not a collective Christmas story that I don’t feel remotely a part of.
The country that I love so passionately and deeply,
but also tears my heart apart and scares me.
Somehow the sky is higher there.

But you know what?
I would give thanks just to sit and drink tea (or whisky)
with you, anywhere, right now.
I’ll even go wild for you and dump the rooibos
– make it black tea.
(Daddy would say Im a MIF)

Daddy.
So strange to be as close to him in Sweden
as I would be in Cape Town.

Life Neeesa.
It’s a mixed bag.
So much to be thankful for.
But every now and then,
self-indulgence takes over.
And right now, tonight,
that is ok.