In my view of things, when you are separated from the things that
dictate your culture and your personality in your familiar homely
environment, a layer of your cultural self is removed. Cultural self
could be encased in a TV, inflated by friendships and love ones, or
built by your house or your neighborhood. Basically it is what makes
you you in your familiar environment.
I've been getting these strange moments of electric happiness. It is
something that I never experienced while living in the United States.
This cultural self was long ago removed and I think as a result, some
of my sanity has been removed with it.
The other night I walked home in the pitch dark. When it is pitch
dark near my house, it is absolutely dark. You cannot see where you
are walking. The holes in the road are traps meant to snare the body.
In the case, I continued to step on ground that was lower then I
thought it would be. In this befuddled mockery of dexterity I stopped
in the pouring rain and raised my face and hands to the sky and
laughed for a good long minute. It wasn't a laugh of distress or a
laugh of humor, but rather a laugh of complete childish giddiness.
Just today I was finally able to get iTunes to authorize songs I had
previously downloaded on another computer. I haven't listened to
Fionn Regan since I left the United States and to hear his voice
brought that electric happiness to me. I wake up in the morning to
see the mountain near my house enclosed in fog ... ecstasy. Reading
the Ko'ran ... exuberance. Making a meal that reminds me of home ...
satisfaction. The world has turned and left me electric happiness.
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