A Wistful Wanderlust

And so being young and dipped in folly I fell in love with melancholy. ~Poe

The brisk autumn winds have brought with them the stirrings.  I once thought it was the tug of a notion called wanderlust, but I am in the process of a profound realization to the contrary.  Even though I returned from England a month ago and have already booked my tickets to both Paris at the end of the month and the US for Christmas, a certain discontentment lingers.  I’ve been to Rio and Rome, Venice and Vizille this year.  Nothing has touched the need.

Whenever I felt this before, I was ensconced in a rural town with nowhere to escape, looped in the monotony of classes and in commutes without a soundtrack.  It was easy then, to say I needed to travel.  But it’s not travel that I need, it’s a new life.  I’ve always had France to look forward to, the idea of living in a new place and settling, for a moment at least, as a promise.  I could plan my days and imagine the immense joy boulangeries would bring.

This has become mundane.  Often, I forget I am in France, until I see a tricolor fighting the breeze.  My life is here.  It is time to move on.  Ten months in the country and I am already planning my departure.  

Now, I have Brazil stretched before me.  I life of warmer weather where I will have a golden dog to walk through the park and… and what?  I am fearful that, once there, the same desires will return.  That I will grow tired of the catupiry cheese and the need to go, without knowing where will resurface.  A need to leave and stay away etched so deeply inside me, no contentment will be possible until I can once again pack an entire life into a single suitcase and step through security.  What if this is more than wanderlust and a sign of a greater discontentment with life, no matter where I may be?

Mixed in with this though, is the sheer delight I experience in a single moment that could happen anywhere.  Wandering around the dreary streets in the biting cold, I find a shop and laugh with the store owner.  Looking for a certain store and finally finding it steps from where I started, I discuss marshmallow fluff with the woman behind the counter.  On Tuesdays I go to the market, where the merchant sells me my celery and kiwis, explaining various fruits and trying on their English names for size.  

Walking through the hallways where I teach, students approach, croaking a “hi” before babbling about aunts in Chicago and vacations in Miami.  My little ones crawl into my lap during story time.  Even as I type, Eva is curled in the duvet with me, stealing body heat.

I am blissful here, yet melancholy.   I try to breathe in all the lives I can.  I taste the lives of those around me, as I invent their histories.  I endure my life of bus timetables and endless coffee cups.  I embellish the future of another world made of sheer content and green coconuts with straws.