On August 1st, I started my new job, and I could use your help, if you're interested.
After five years of living in thirteen countries, I'm saying goodbye to the Media Specialist position at THINK Global School. I'm 90% energized to move forward and 10% nostalgic for the sweetest job on the planet.
Featured photo courtesy of Liisa Toomus
Together, we ignore the folk music that fills every conversation gap and develop our bitter coffee breath. Turtle-Neck nudges the stool where my feet rest and quickly apologies with a wave. I crack a full smile, eager to be acknowledged, quick to prove I’m open to chatter myself, though we exchange none. The Daydreamer folds his paper and stands to deliver 1 KM to the bar for his espresso before walking out the door. He waits a beat before turning right, then walks straight towards his car. I notice the others don’t question his departure. He backtracks to the edge of the patio and turns left to saunter by the rest of the shops on the ground floor, hands in pockets–breaking for oxygen, I imagine. The patio door swings open again, and the newest member lifts a cheek onto a stool, pulling his Marlboros from a pocket as first order of business.
I continue to mull over my initial impressions of this city as they compare to my pre-conceptions without extensive research. How do I explain the feeling of dropping into a new city whose energy I don't know? What are the true risks to safety? Where's the highest concentration of lively people, impressive food, and gorgeous architecture? What does life feel like in this city, and how ever-present is the memory of its recent war?
I keep erasing the opening sentence of this blog because I don't know who I'm addressing. You, my audience, are unknown to me, but I know I have something to tell you. I know it's time to update you on what has changed since I last applied the necessary time and effort on Nomadderwhere this summer, and now is as good a time as any, here in the Air France lounge at Washington Dulles airport. I have three more hours until my plane departs for Vermont.
Each streak garnered the same reaction. The crowd grew, feed still with fingers pointing to the sky. And then a streak became a band, a dim bow across the sky above that slowly grew in intensity. We were babies bouncing under a green headband in the sky.
I had heavenly expectations of the highland air. I thought it would be uncommonly sweet, a cold drink of water for my lungs. Instead, the air I invited in smelled like fresh biology, life and death but more of the former. Somewhere nearby, there was undoubtedly a cow sweating, a rooster breathing heavily, an earthworm realizing it could now slither back underground. From a 1st floor window, I sucked up all that biology in a moment of wonder and discovery, in the specialness of a start.
When one has access to the world’s biggest showcase of artistic performances, one’s brain explodes as the prospect of selecting a few to attend. After many careful reviews of the 440-page catalogue, I landed on a visit to the Picasso/Lee Miller exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery, a couple walks through St. Andrews Square and George Street, some free comedy in the wee hours of night in Old Town, and stayed close to the Edinburgh Book Festival, also the largest fest of its kind in the world.
It was the Book Fest that slapped some perspective into this dream world of creative indulgence.