It’s been good to be home for the holidays, though it has taken some getting used to. Over the past couple years I feel like I’ve been on a sort of cruise that’s moved steadily along without the snags and swells and rapids associated with the usual turmoil of holiday cycles. It could just be that my status as a semi-ignorant outsider in Japan insulated me from the hubbub over there, and then being more or less nomadic kept me from participating in the yearly pit stops and their rituals. But now that I’m here it’s been kind of fun re-integrating, though I’d really forgotten how absorbing the slow grind to a halt before the New Year can be. It’s hard to really place my finger on what that means, but I guess it’s that sense of density that each day gets to where people more and more say, “Oh, we’ll get to that after the holidays,” or “Things will slow down after the holidays,” or “I’ll do such and such once I catch my breath after the holidays.” As though returning to work after a break is when relaxation can really begin.
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Life has been really moving lately. Before, back when I’d first arrived back home and was settling in, I felt like someone standing in the middle of a river. Everything washed around me. But now it’s more like I’m in a boat and it’s cruising right along. Work has been going really well; the restaurant opening was good and business is getting better every day. In fact, I’m even beginning to think about things like new furniture – like heavy things that I can’t ditch at a moment’s notice.
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My face healed up pretty nicely. There was a gory rut under my eye for a few days, and it got to looking sort of cool. But it has faded and now I don’t even have a good souvenir. Along with that, work has been picking up. The bistro’s grand opening was last Friday. The weekend came and went like a shock troop circus leaving a wake of waffle crumb rubble. But the word on the street is Mission Accomplished.
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At 9:45 am I pulled my car into the parking lot that services Findlay Market. I was early, so I sat with the windows down listening to NPR and watching people line up at a produce giveaway just outside the St. John shelter. An old man, held together and animated puppet-like, ambled by and stooped to fish a cigarette butt out of the gutter. Then it began to rain. A drizzly pat-pat that was more threat than real aggression. It was my first day of work.
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Coming back from Europe I had a huge number of expectations. I’d developed a life course — a kind of loose itinerary for a voyage that would turn my next few years into a bout of intense adventure and glory, culminating in a foundation of skills and experience that would prepare me for even greater world-conquering. I guess it was life on the road, living without a single thought of work or bills or long term relationships; you might say I’d been drinking sea water off the side of our little raft. I had big notions all right. After Europe I was going to move to Chicago, get back into the restaurant game to make money while I studied Chinese. Then, half a year later, I’d buy a one way ticket for China and spent several years there studying language and food — China being both an economic and culinary power house. After that I would go to France and continue my education, finally ending back in the US in my early thirties as an accomplished linguist and gastronome.
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