Yesterday was my Harvard commencement, which blessly turned out to be much less borting than I expected due to nice weather and general cheerfulness and playfulness of the graduates and honorary attendees. The talk weren't so corny either, but filled with humor and perceptive insight. Although I think the Bill Gates' speech was kind of stereotypically naive and thus boring, but kudos to the four senior orators who were just amazing especially Josh Patashnik; Bill Clinton also didn't disappoint me. I was impressed. The whole ceremony probably didn't mean much to me in the first place as the anticipated attendees--my parents--were missing out from this ceremony.
Anyway, this whole senior week thing went pretty fast. A lot of dinners and good times with old friends, new friends, and people with whom I get to know, live, and appreciate my college and dormitory life. In variegated ways, they taught me about America, other countries and cultures, art, science and basically how to live and appreciate a good and meaningful life among many available opportunities, and to see the world in rejuvenating light. Things I have been absorbing over the span of four years at Harvard seem to come back to my mind and manifest themselves tirelessly....then....
I woke up again oly to realize I was already in the airplane, heading for Japan--my vacation on the way home. Riding on a train inbound from Narita felt, I admit to say, quite abstract this time. A familiar breeze of the urban and vibrant Japan was refreshing as always, but strangely I felt a formidable chill running under my skin. Remembering how much I used to miss Kyoto when I had just got back from studying abroad four months ago, how much I bitched- mentally, about American social conditions, and having to find consolidation in my lovely American friends to recover from it, I was like a flashback of my Japan experience was becoming real and alive again but there's something wrong about it. Maybe that's because the Tokyoites in the train don't look happy living persons--I always notice some sternness or restraints in their face---or perhaps because whenever I land my but in a corner somewhere or pick up my cellphone, I felt compelled to look for sign or the complexion of people around me to check whether I have made some violations (of manner, of tacit rules, of invisible lines--or whatever this diminutive elements that a Japanese hold important so as to preserve social order. It could have been my overconsciousness after all, but this has effectively made me claustrophobic nearly to the point of suffocation. Well, I'm talking psychological here, not physical--of course, claustophobic people may generally find hard time in Japan.
The epiphany has taught me that everything in the past appeared to me as if in it has happened in a flash, either that be 4.5 months in Kyoto or 3 years and a half at Harvard. How did it so happened that I felt dearly missing Harvard--my major home in the past four years--while I simultaneously was approaching the place I believed 5 months ago to have accepted it as another (to be exact, 3rd) home? But somehow it did.
Perhaps a place in reality is not quite exactly as what you imagine of when you are far away from it. Should I call that the "dark side of nostalgia" ? I have to see if that is coming when I actually get to Kyoto....in a few days from now.
Labels: travel, vacation, writing
