Leralara

I wonder if anyone else has experienced a memory trigger in an ordinary, everyday sound — for me, it’s the the familiar tick, tick, tick, tick of my turn signal— my blinker becomes a portal to distant lands The ticking blinker of a thousand taxi rides to and from airports all around the world.

It’s as if the sound, which has remained a strange constant no matter where I’ve been nor the time of the journey, the in between moments preceding larger ones— meeting a new team, or a photographer— before castings and after but always the time passing with it — tick, tick, tick, tick. It spikes my adrenaline and for a fraction of a moment I’m filled with wanderlust— anticipation of new things, new people and new cultures to absorb.

We often associate smell with memory, but for me, the calm and measured blinker ticking away is a means of transport, heralding the reemergence of my globe- traveling, twenty-something self. The one who travelled so much, so far, for so long, she grew weary of the experience. After years of travel only familiarity seemed unfamiliar—the idea of “home” more like an eccentric idea. Quaint.

The constant imprinting of various cultures left their mark on me, now a forty something woman. An always-at-home, perpetual traveler, who feels more foreign domestically than abroad, or at least equally isolated in each place.

The things I’ve learned, what are they worth if not told? Yet can find no conversation during which to speak about them. My experiences, when told, seem outlandish. Extra.

Working with various international teams, in countries from which none originated, had a homogenizing effect. I learned how to be comfortable in any location, except home.

I found it easier to make friends abroad, as a known foreigner, because it was obvious I wasn’t the same, my otherness preceded any introduction— at home my “otherness” was a sneaky shock, a betrayal of sorts. I still don’t understand it, I’m not sure what “it” is, but it has always been part of me, long before I travelled. I suspect it will never leave me and perhaps my “otherness” has become an odd shelter— a home within myself.