Reverse Culture Shock

Home State.

Yesterday I was in Portugal. The day before, Switzerland. The week before that, India.

Now in Ohio, back now for only a few hours and yet, it feels far from home. When I first traveled to India, in 2013, I was warned of reverse culture shock. I happened to meet some new people the day after I returned from that trip and remember feeling fully embroiled by the pretentiousness of it all. My time away from the states had only been a few weeks, but the separation left me feeling like wrinkled fingertips after a long bath: I was soured and transitions back into a world of pop culture, easy comforts and superficial conversations was nearly too much to bear. Being “home” was like the moment a bare light bulb gets switched on in the middle of the night– wincing with no place to avert your eyes.

The truth was, everything was exactly as it had always been, there was no pretentiousness– it was me that had changed.

Now here I am, going through another round of feeling out of place, questioning why it is I continue to return to this place where the familiar feels so foreign. This experience is always temporary (out of my system within a couple of weeks), but it’s a productive time for introspection and evaluation. After returning from Thailand last summer, I spent a month driving across the United States, filling notebooks with thoughts and poems that make up my current work-in-progress, Between These Things. I am raw during this period and look at life through a different filter.

I’ll be back on the road again soon, making my way down to Texas to teach an alternative processing workshop. Making art with friends will be the perfect medicine through this transition.