Timelessness

Ramana asks me, “So, how many days left?”

This question really got me. I didn’t have an answer. I could have had an answer. But I really was not counting.

I think I really like being here for the time being. Right now, that time is timeless in my head.

I answered, “7 more months.” Something about this counting had me undone – a dimension of my life that I had joyfully ignored is back. Time. Not so much fun.

It’s not that I like Italy too much and do not want to return home. It’s just that being here made me own time, so much that I didn’t care.

Back home.

In a strange way, Venice has become home now. Not that I feel entirely settled here in any which way, but just the familiarity and the my comfort in the city makes me feel that I came home in the morning when the flight landed.

I wrote this when I got back from my trip to Paris and London. It was lying in my drafts all this while but still sticks true.

All the drama about missing home is slowing fading away and as much as I hate the lack of mobility in Venice (the boat timings still drive me mad) I like it. My university in an island in the Venetian sea, my balcony overlooking Lido and its warm summery houses and beaches, small daisies decorate every road I walk, magnolias bloom and daffodils wither. This island is sort of a black hole of loneliness or a condensed joy machine. Either way, it is becoming home. At least for now.