It occurs to me that the simple hand gesture, the wave, is the perfect gesture. Is it goodbye, or hello? Much like the Hawaiian phrase “Aloha,” the act of sticking our hand up in the air to greet or send off a friend is one that relinquishes interpretation in certain situations. Occasionally it is appropriate for both.
Tomorrow I leave for China. The past month has been saturated with goodbyes and the next month will bring in many hellos. Transitions are an odd time in a person’s life. Here I have just spent the past two years in Wyoming, completing a master’s degree and meeting some of the most wonderful people I’ve ever encountered. Now I must move on to another adventure.
A friend recently asked me to think about the differences I’ve noticed between when I was 20 and the person I am now, when I’ll soon be 26. A lot can happen in five years. You learn, you grow, you fall in love, your heart breaks, you start feeling the tug of your biological clock. I’ve learned to ignore the impulse to self-protect. I’ve embraced the good and the bad in the past two years and wound up loving all of it.
I’ve often said that I don’t want to miss out on anything. China was an opportunity for me to drag myself out of my comfort zone. It is uncomfortable already, leaving the small town I’ve grown so attached to over the past two years. But, especially, to leave behind the people I have so easily come to love.
Staying in Wyoming (apart from finding a job) would have been easy. Safe. I carved out a small niche and it started to feel like home. I had a life all my own and was satisfied with many aspects of that existence. I took from certain people a vision of what I might hope to become later on in my future. I thank them for that.
Pushing me in the direction of the bigger picture were two men in particular. One, a dear friend and a great writer whom I expect to always be in love with. The other, a talented poet and mentor, now lost to us. Craig Arnold was extremely instrumental in guiding me toward not only poetic maturity, but in life’s great lessons as well. It was Craig’s hope that I would travel and experience things outside academia before returning to it again. Under the inspiration of these two men, I now prepare for great changes.
So, you ask me what this blog will entail. For the next year I will be teaching Shakespeare and English in Hangzhou, China. I reserved this little space for recording whatever comes my way in that time. I hope to put forth something that would live up to Craig’s expectations, something he would have liked.
