Reincarnation

Recently I've been spending some time thinking about my past lives. Being in Europe has not cured me of my sentimental heart or tendency to wander, and often get lost, down memory lane. So earlier today when a stray photo of me in my high school uniform led me into a fit of nostalgia for the days of plaid skirts, ballet flats, and daily QT fixes, I found myself untangling details of my past balled up like yarn in the back of my brain. While I lack a belief in the kind of reincarnation presumed by many religions (coming back as a cow? Not a possibility I'm interested in entertaining) I consider myself a prime example of reincarnation as a basic principle. Mainly because I am not the same person that I once was at all. It's probably safe to say that a majority of people live their lives in stages. Like acts in a play the scenery, costuming and even much of the cast changes as we move through the plot of our lives. It's impossible not to evolve as this happens, to grow out of our surroundings and hopefully grow up a little. Maybe it's common to feel as though along the way you are leaving who you used to be behind, shedding it like a snake sheds it's skin. But I can't help but feel that my scene changes have been more dramatic then some. I often find that I have not only grown out of a life, I barely recognize the skin I left behind as my own.

I remember the sullen, brooding, preteen with a grudge against the world only in flashes of deja vu as if I get the sense that I was her once but I can't find a memory with enough clarity to be sure. I know the facts but can't remember the feelings, the only kind of currency I've ever banked on. I long ago outgrew the Abercrombie and Fitch jeans and braces along with my self appointed occupation of being a miserable pain in my parents ass and sometimes it feels like they never really fit me at all.

In high school I had a rebirth prompted by a new cast of bubbly and outgoing characters with a penchant for having a good time. I abandoned my days of social obscurity and adopted a predisposition to skinny jeans, ballet flats and a left side part, when I wasn't testing the elasticity of Xavier's uniform regulations. My vocation was entertainment: and making up for years wasted living vicariously through TV shows. I found my calling as the innocent one my friends wanted to corrupt, but only to the point where I was still occasionally a reliable DD. By the summer after junior year I was well settled into "the best day of my life" and trying to make the most of what I thought high school was supposed to be about. These years were characterized by practically living out of my car, believing that my first hangover was as bad as it was going to get, and an immeasurable amount of laughs, sunsets, inside jokes, and ridiculous adventures. It was a beautiful well lived life but it was one in which I had no idea who i was except young, crazy and stupid.

Then there came the move to San Diego, my first two years of USD. A time of being just as young and crazy and only slightly less stupid. Come to think of it maybe more stupid, but at least I was finally aware of my own recklessness. This life is one that I can not really reflect on because it is the one to which I will return in four month's time. In San Diego I am a student. Although I am sometimes a poor one, being a student pervades every part of this life. Where I live, who I know, what I do everyday all ties back to the fact that I am supposed to be studying and getting a degree.

In Italy I am still a student but that is not my true line of work. I'm a stranger here, a hopeless foreigner and so in every location and every day I am a traveler. The word "travel" stems from the french word Travailer, to work. This is fitting in many senses because while a grand adventure full of delicious food, scenic views and lots of play, traveling is also work. The dictionary interprets work as an "activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result". The physical effort of packing, planning, booking flights and wandering around a strange city with bags and a phrase book in hand are all facets of gallivanting around a place you do not call home. Travel requires the mental effort of quick thinking, adapting with flexibility to your situation, and navigating places without familiar landmarks and people without familiar language. This is the work that I am doing these days as I find myself reincarnated once again in a setting and as a character I could never have envisioned four years ago.

While I know that this life is only temporary and that I will someday take leave of my job as a traveler and return to the life I knew, I can't help wonder if I will then find that I no longer recognize it. A favorite quote of mine by Peter Hulme says "Travel broadens the mind, the knowledge of distant places and people often confers status, but travelers sometimes return as different people or do not come back at all." After my stint in Italy has come to a close will I return to America and find that my old life has held my shape like memory foam? Will I crawl back into the mold of my former self and return to a life that has been ready and waiting for my reappearance? Or will I find as I do when I return to my parent's house or my past life in Arizona that I am a different person, that I have outgrown my life and San Diego and once again been reincarnated unable to recognize the shell of another person I used to be.