On Going Home

I feel like Dorothy at the end of The Wizard of Oz. This is a poor example, literarily shallow, over-used and therefore cliched.  But even so–or perhaps because of this–it is how I feel.  For a while now, I’ve missed home, even though I’ve only been here for a little over a week.  But today, more than missing home, I feel I am done being here.  I have gained so much, learned more than I’d anticipated about more than I’d anticipated–I am glad I came.  And I am glad I am going home.

There are two more days full of mainly readings and social events, but my brain is full.  Try taking a picture with a full memory card; it simply won’t let you.  That is how my head is functioning right now.  I realized at last night’s evening reading that I wasn’t even paying attention.  And that’s when I decided, despite the Gala Reception and Barn Dance I’ll miss–events of the sort that, though I see their place, are not why I came here–I have gleaned all that shall be gleaned from this experience, and I’m ready to go home.  And start planning my next one.  Whatever that will be.  I’m open for suggestions.

At yesterday’s lecture, ‘The Romance of Elsewhere and the Bonds of Home’, Lynn Freed spoke about travelling.  In travel, she said, some search for themselves, some for anonymity–but most people find both.  Because it is only in the contrast between the two that the other can exist.  I don’t know if I found neither or both, but I am quite sure that when I wake up and Auntie Em and Uncle Henry are there, I will be just as changed as cliched Dorothy, and her little dog, too.