“I’ve done it before,” I shrug, when asked about the anxieties of leaving home and flying 13 hours to the Emerald Isle. In fact, the commute is shorter than my usual 21 to the United States and a lot shorter than my 48 hours in transit from DC to Johannesburg at the beginning of the summer, thanks to the Icelandic volcano, String of Consonants.
I am not worried about culture shock. Or homesickness. Or how I’ll be treated as Foreigner. I expect the fact that Ireland was a British colony far longer than the United States may make adjustment easier, coming from an old colony myself. Part of my intellectual mission while in Ireland is to uncover and explore post-colonial parallels in the literatures of Ireland and Home.
I am worried about leaving Dublin. I should have been beside myself to come home this summer. The World Cup! The African game-changer! But mostly I missed DC and padded about the house, painfully unemployed, lamenting the horror of being home in two places. That’s so corny, Kylé. I know. Corny and obnoxious. Soccer fever found me eventually – and so did employment at the Los Angeles Times bureau in Johannesburg. I worry, though, that the first month and a half of this summer will repeat itself when I’m back in Washington and taking nostalgic brain trips around my old Dublin haunts.
So that’s my obligatory pre-departure post. Characteristically worrying about the distant and uncontrollable future.
