the missing peace

I can't seem to find it.

Reading my past posts (stuck in the good, for instance) I sound like a person completely at peace with everything that's about to happen. Frankly, I sound high. Perhaps with the impending departure looming nearer and nearer I've finally lost my balance and my grip and won't regain it until I'm settled in Chiang Mai for my 90-day stay. That doesn't seem so long, does it? I've already devised an indirect way to measure how close I am to coming home (how backwards is that! I'm already looking forward to returning, and I haven't even left yet); rather than marking a calendar or counting down days, my plan is merely to look at, not too hard, but briefly, not long enough to count, but perhaps to guesstimate, how many malaria pills I have left. My prescription mandates one every day, starting two days before and continuing for two weeks after. So as the numbers start dwindling I'll know, deep deep deep, fundamentally, without even really 'knowing,' that I will be home then ("stems and bones and stone walls too/could keep me from you/skein of skin is all too few/to keep me from you"). I'll feel it (or perhaps by that time I'll simply be be delirious from Japanese encephalitis; either way). I hope my people will feel it, like a force. The force of our reunion, the force of our symbiotic love together once again.

In other news, onto my drug of choice: music. Most of the time when I first hear a song, even a song that ends up being a great love of mine, I don't immediately like it. Or it's just okay. In any case, I feel nowhere near about it at first the way I ultimately do - like my life would be missing a chunk had I not heard it. I'm having that experience today with a song that, although I was fond of it upon an initial listening due almost solely to its subject matter, I didn't really appreciate its depth, or the creativity and complexity of its lyrics, and, hence, its message. Or maybe it just resonates more with me because I feel this way about my person today:

"there you are right in front of me
a brand new day
sunrise over sea
no longer my cup half empty
cause there you are"

Because sometimes it's easier to give up than to try and fail. After all, we might lose it anyway. I'm fighting that urge. It's going to hurt! Lately I'm drowning in constant fear of everything I have going away. Last time I left for so long, I didn't have that much to lose, I was afraid of the unknown, yes, but I wasn't afraid to squander that which was left at home. There was so little to shed, and not much worry about losing it. Now there's everything.

I know I need to shake it, shake it out, and let it fall away from me, but it's clinging, it's embedded. I just can't concentrate on work until I unravel it, until I divorce it from my being and dissect it. What are you? And where are you hiding?

I suppose my challenge is to make room in my heart and mind and soul for this new experience, for the infiltrating of my self with unfamiliar people and smells and sights and thoughts, without pushing out what I know to be true from my prior life, from my baseline life. Without replacing or painting over them. As an aside, what would I ever do without youtube?

I'm just having a hard time with it today.