Signs

'Coming Home' is, quite frankly, an over-rated concept. The cinnamon-spiced warm milk of a feeling is something that is the product of bad books and really bad movies! All in all, homecomings are bizarre! Take mine, for instance: my friends have completely different agendas now, some work, some study while they work, others can't return and yet others don't want to... I came home to a brother who is now taller than I am and is a quintessential sixteen year old, read: blithe, apathetic and a wee bit self-centred. Actually, more than a wee bit: a whole lot! The only constants in this world of wildly changing variables are my parents. This isn't really helping, though, because I have changed too! What I once considered charming, even (and I hate this expression) sweet, now seems cloying and fetter-like! Change and its many signs, that was the theme that this sine curve of a week subscribed to.

Diary.

While inventorying my wardrobe and organising my beloved books, I came across an old diary that I had maintained. It was dated back to that transition year between 17 and 18. There amongst a mess of Stephen King paperbacks (reject pile) and Beloved Classics That Improve The Mind (flaunt pile), I began to peruse a life left behind...
Amusedly, I read the first entry: 'Dear Diary, Oh how I abhor that appelation! But really, what else can I go by? Dear Kitty? Oh please!' As I ventured into deeper water, my amusement began to turn rancourous. I most certainly could not have been this...this...creature! He was a hateful snob who had something mean to say about everyone! It embarrasses me to say that I had written some pretty dreadful things about people I was now on excellent terms with! O God, O God! The number of times the term 'fugly bitch' appeared in the text is inveterately frightening! The text was also cringe inducingly loquacious. Sample this: 'I cannot help but abominate that abomination!' Heavens above!
There is no easier way to say this: My old diary is clearly the Burn Book from 'Mean Girls'. I don't even want delve into what that makes me...Strangely enough, in true sine curve fashion, my amusement that had became rancourous now gave way to an odd sense of tranquility. I had turned out alright! That document was proof of that fact! The acrimony and spite had dulled away, or, maybe, had been exhausted in My Year Abroad-Part Une (no, we never talk about that!). Despite this realisation, the diary still haunts me! It sits in my bed-side drawer and I can hear its pages rustle and shift, like the tell-tale heart. And, God knows, this is, in a sense, my tell-tale heart! A part of me wants to dispose of it-murder it ritualistically, sacrifice it to the flames and another part of me wants to hold onto it as a memento of residual angst, a ticket stub from a stomach-turning roller-coaster ride, a reminder that I will never be THAT again. I know not what to do....Advice would be welcome.

Afternoon Tea.
Another day, and I forget which one, I had lunch with an old child-hood friend. I do not use the term 'old' loosely! Her family had relocated to another country when she was seven and I was 10. See what I mean? She was here on that bewildering crusade we all know and love: The Great College Hunt. As I sat across from her, me sipping my jasmine tea and she a macchiato, this line from Henry James' 'The Portrait of a Lady' popped into my head: Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea. I cannot come up with a better sentence to describe the perfection of the moment. In the spirit of the sinuous nature of the week, the moment was that joyous point of inflection that followed the minimum point the initial awkwardness and led to the maximum point of an unconstrained tete-a-tete. For a moment I envied her fresh-faced, wide-eyed demeanour. At one point, I think, I was seeing an anime version of the girl who was gasping and laughing at the stories of my foreign homestead. I suddenly felt more avuncular and less friend-like! My brother and his companions, 16-year-old boys all, have done a great job of making me feel ancient and wise. Intelligent, I may be; wise, I most certainly am not! I'd rather not speak of the 'ancient' bit! This avuncular thought synapsed with my old diary that pulsated with my teen angst which, in turn, led me to wonder about how much she had changed! It was indeed like gazing upon the portrait of a lady! This girl, who used to glide through the corridors of her old house like one possessed, singing Bollywood numbers in a piercing falsetto, had bloomed into a marvellous young woman who had an air of quiet maturity about her. She obviously did not sweat the small stuff and her in-control manner probably made every contretemps shrink back. She was ready for the world, and I, sage as I am, can only wish her all the luck in the world!

Luncheon.

Charles Ryder astounds me. I did lunch with him this very day and it was exactly the kind of thing my somnambulatory existence required. Conversation was slick, creamy but had bite, much like the roux he deftly prepared: wildly different topics flowed into each other with ease akin to the delectable apéritifs that made their way down our parched throats, quirks like the caffeine of the man's mean cappuccino...oh, it was a delight! Ah, but this week is a circuitous bastard and within the swirls of a fudge-covered Baskin Robbins creation lay a dark, dark core. I have compared Charles Ryder to glamourous Gaveston, and as true as this is now, it wasn't always so. We spoke, this evening, of high-school where Ryder was a poorly understood outcast (and understandably so: Gucci and biochemistry seldom go hand in hand, but that's Charles for you!) and Mrs. Manson Mingott who had taken it upon herself to make a project out of him: it was a very public secret, sadly. But Mrs. Manson Mingott, like her namesake, wielded enormous power and influence over our microcosm. I love her! But I also love the way Charles Ryder held his own against her well-meaning yet unwarranted involvement.
"I didn't want to be pitied! I cannot imagine anything worse!" quoth he, as reminisced about those malingering conversations held in the class-room where Mrs. Manson Mingott held court. A tale of woe, repression and yearning studded with facetious jabs of humour (often self-deprecating) made for a sobering experience; thoughts of those tempestuous years when the line between appearance and reality had condensed and all but disappeared, took me back to that spiteful diary which, now, appears as a chronicle of what lay beyond that ornate mask of perfection and a smothering, cannibalistic quietude.

It appears to me now that coming home is not a return to the fold. No. It has more to do with touching base and taking stock. While I inventoried my wardrobe and organised my books, I also sifted through the baggage left behind by those particularly violent years and made note of what had changed, what had disappeared and what had appeared in place...

Until the next time,
GossipGuy!