Empty space
on REM Zoe Lara (in India) (India), 09/Dec/2009 21:22, 34 days ago
Term has roared past. A week or so before the city hall lit the twinkly lights that are now shining over shoppers in cornmarket street, I stopped on the cobbles to watch some firefighters throwing sticks of lit petroleum into the air. They juggled them and threw them behind their heads and caught them in front of their twisting bodies; they played with several balls of fire without ever staring directly at any one. I didn't stay long enough to see whether they singed their hair, or clothers, or bare shoulders - I had somewhere to run to; and I didn't stop to think of or to envy the children in the front row with open eyes and lots of time.At risk of glamorising what is more mundane, I have felt this term a lot like them: juggling lots of balls, always a moment from disaster, but never really having time to stop and contemplate what's about to fall. Whenever I tried to explain to friends or family why I had become so busy, I always forgot something: I was trying to take and international law class and write my thesis, but also to manage about 14 hours/week of part time work to fund my degree, the expansion of Project Pacific, my Vanuatu program that has increased its stakeholders, brushing up with an advanced French course and applying for jobs for beyond 2010. Fabian left in a slow-but-built-up rupture part way through fourth week, and is now about to start work for Google in their European HQ in Hamburg. I ran through it all at barely-catching-up-pace; and now it's finally the end of formal term and that sad, slow daily plod to an empty library to try to make reparations for what I missed in the rush. Half my day today I plodded through 72-page Supreme Court judgements progressively clawing back rights of accused terrorists, the other half I tutored, and the rest I spend staring sadly out the window, wondering where Fab is, and what an earth is going to happen this time next year. I'm so excited about Christmas, but I also have a sad sense that it's a foregone conclusion - two and a half days with my family, and the rest buried in books.I have some pretty candle-lights in my bedroom and I'm sure I'll stare into the flame before I go to sleep, trying to make out an angel in the glow. As much as sometimes I see a flicker of wings dancing from orange to red, it's never more than instantaneous - and I know that for anything more permanent, I can only really rescue myself. At some point in the next week I must try to clear my head and make some difficult decisions.