Home

As I waited for the lift on my way up to work tonight, I glanced back down the hallway and out to the street. The evening light lit the blowing palm leaves and a soft breeze blew past. I was suddenly struck at how comfortable this place has become – momentarily indistinguishable from memories of home. Moments like that are becoming more and more frequent and each time it leaves me with an odd feeling that I try to shake – as if these two worlds that I once thought irreconcilably different are slowing melding into one. The gaudy signboards on all the shops, which I used to find so annoyingly hideous, have slowly found their similar counterparts in my memory and have ceased to be foreign. Instead they have been given a nice nestling place in the box in my mind where I hold acceptable signboards - Blending into my understanding of the way things work. Not only have things become familiar – it’s more than that – they have begun to earn an irreplaceable place in my range of ‘the acceptable’ to the point that I have moments like those – moments were I forget that it’s not the same, nor that it isn’t what I’ve always known. It’s becoming comfortable – mine even. I find this intriguing and at the same time a little disconcerting. What affect will this have on my return? Will the incorporation of this place into myself somehow lessen my love and awe for the place where I grew? Somehow making it no longer enough? Or will it only serve to enhance? I am uncertain of the outcome, but somehow I fear I am on the verge of finding out.