not much time

well, a team just arrived and i will be pretty busy working with them. i'm also trying to close out my time here. i've said many of my goodbyes and have a few more loose ends to tie up before i say the last.

this is a very surreal time for me. i'm not sure what to make of it or how to express the state i'm in. that is partly because i don't really understand it. i haven't had the time to sit and try to either. when i get the chance, which might not be for a week or two, i'll write some overall reflections.

it has been very challenging to keep this blog going while i've been here. i can get really busy and tired, which doesn't help me to think coherently. i hope that returning home will allow me to really take in all the things i've encountered, all the things i've been too unaware of while here. just getting seperated from something helps you to see it better.

this one time i was in a piano factory (this is probably the best story beginning i've got). i was a kid and we were taking a tour, something i was not overly excited about at that tender age. it was the mid-eighties and my father was wearing one of 12 standard issued dad uniforms for the time. he was wearing simple white sneakers, very high white socks, short shorts -which revealed much man thigh-, and a red polo shirt with horizontal white stripes.

another man on the tour was wearing the same outfit. it is important to remember that there were only 12 outfits for men of that age to wear in the 80's so it should be no surprise that they were wearing the same clothes.

as all kids do when they tire, i began to fling myself onto my dad's leg for support. this was a tactic i used much when i was tired. perhaps the frequency of my personal use of this technique caused me to become over confident and made me think i didn't even need to look up to verify the man's identity.

you see, i had flung myself onto the similarly dressed man. i did it several times. each time had the same result. i would back off a little, look up, see the man was not my dad and seperate myself from him. it felt awful, like i was cheating on my dad or something, metaphorical adultery.

but while i was connected to the man, i had no idea anything was off. it was when i made a little space that i was able to see the mistake i had made. when i was right and the man was my dad, i still had to make a little space to confirm it was him.

it's a bit of a stretch, but right now i kind of feel like i'm hugging somebody that could or could not be my dad. but i'm in too far to know who the person is and all i see is socks, short shorts and a red horizontally striped polo shirt. i'm looking forward to pushing back a little and being able to see what i've been hugging over here.

i feel like that makes no sense at all. so i'll stop writing after trying to simplify it a little. basically, my mind is everywhere but no place at all. that didn't simplify it at all, did it?