My apologies, faithful readers. I got too caught up in the beginning to remember the end. I’ve been meaning to write an epilogue for weeks. Now I am.
I just re-read my last blog entry from Tanzania. It seems like a letter from another lifetime, a postcard from the past. But that’s why we write, isn’t it? To document our failures, celebrate our struggles, and preserve somehow the bliss of ignorance and agony of education...and sometimes, just to fucking write. Because the right words, the right feeling, the right writing, can make us cry or make us fly. Well, actually, I don’t know about you. They make me cry, and fly, and die, and then they do it again.
I’m sitting in my new house, in the middle of my new life. It’s 11:32pm, and there’s a light bulb shining the shadows away, an outlet to plug my computer into, and a tumbler holding a single finger of Jameson. America ain’t so bad, as it turns out. People ask me how it’s been re-adjusting. I’ve talked to volunteers who have had a rough time making the change. Of course, none of them had a fiancee to come back to, and I’m pretty sure that none of them have the family and friends I do, more’s the pity.
But it has not been without problems, this return. I have no job, little money, and am still a kid with a theater degree who wants to change the world. I don’t really mind though...because change it I shall. I’m currently spending four days a week volunteering for the Obama campaign (the subject of my new blog, please tune in!), and learning the difference between the flashy ideals that inspire a nation and the fluorescent realities that win an election in 2012. It’s the glacial, unsexy kind of change, the “slow boring of hard boards” style change. For someone who’s always been a little more in love with style than substance, it’s a welcome classroom; a useful place to adjust to America while doing some work of noble note.
Of course, it is weird to have had these two seemingly separate lives, that only occasionally bled into one another. I realized things, I forgot things, but in the end, I learned all the old lessons: that life is short, the world is large, and sunsets are beautiful. I learned that failure teaches better than success, but you get bought fewer drinks for it. I learned that all cultures drink. I learned that that Africans are different from Americans, but no more so than men are different from women and I’m different from Vicky. I can only hope that the trajectory of humanity leads us closer together, because there’s some pretty cool characters on the other side of the world. I learned to say goodbyes that will last lifetimes and got to say hellos that seemed to last for days, under the cool glow of JFK’s night-lights. I learned that sometimes people are entitled to have their faith repaid. At the end of the day, I didn’t win, but then again, I didn’t lose. I made it back, and while I certainly cannot promise that I will never leave again, Dorothy was right. There is no place like home.
This will not be one of my Balzac-esque blog posts. In fact, this is the end. The end of a blog that was an outlet, a confidante, and above all else, a pleasure. Nothing gave me greater joy than when Mom or Kelsey told me that somebody had read my blog. I’m not sure I can communicate how much it meant to me, how much it still means. I would have stopped writing long, long ago, if not for all of you. There is no greater feeling than to realize that you are loved, and fool that I am, I didn’t realize how much all of you meant to me until I left you. If you’ve read one word of one blog entry, you’ve made me happier than you’ll ever know. If you’ve stuck with me through all of the over-long, under-edited schmaltz, than the next round is on me, and the one after that. This was the most remarkable adventure I’ve ever been on, and this has been my chronicle.
Thanks for reading.
Waldron, out.
