Coming home after an absence, there is always a period of adjustment. Typically coupled with the hope that once one finds an equilibrium, it will feel the same as it did before, with some expansion as a result of the experience. But what happens when home no longer feels like home?

Before I left for Europe, I gave up my job, my apartment and most of my stuff to second hand stores with the expectation that I had no idea what I would encounter, so it seemed silly to hang on to things. And now that I’m back, just in time for my dad’s birthday, Soundwave and some good visiting with those I haven’t seen in a good long while, I look forward to these things. At the same time, I’m not sure where I fit here anymore. Granted, I left people (okay, person) behind in Europe that I do hope to be reunited with sometime soon. So certainly, that has some pull. But I believe I’m only now realizing what I might have already known subconciously when I went.

I’m not sure if this is home anymore. I know that I should give it time, I’ve only been here for a couple of hours(1 of which was spent being held up by customs because apparently it’s unusual for a canadian girl to go cruising around europe for 3 months on her own without any kind of plan)  and it could be that I’ll find an equilibrium. It could be that I’ll move to the Kootenays and find some peace there, especially since all the stuff I didn’t give away is stored there. But I seem to have come to an impasse. I’m not sure that I want to be here, but even if I am there (somewhere else) I don’t have any idea what I will do with myself.

For me this is just one thing on my mind that signifies what may be the end of a particular era, that era being the canadian dweller. One of my closest friends has died recently, at the ripe old age of 14. Auberon was very old, his eyesight and mobility not what they used to be, so in many ways it was likely a respite. But I am sad nonetheless, that I was not here to see him off. But he sleeps well and contentedly in those elysian fields reserved for dogs and fairies in the afterlife. As he was most certainly both.

I know it was actually Titania who said this, but as the fairy king’s consort, she seems fitting to sing it of him as well.

‘Come, now a roundel and a fairy song;
Then, for the third part of a minute, hence;
Some to kill cankers in the musk-rose buds,
Some war with rere-mice for their leathern wings,
To make my small elves coats, and some keep back
The clamorous owl that nightly hoots and wonders
At our quaint spirits. Sing me now asleep;
Then to your offices and let me rest.

The Fairies sing

You spotted snakes with double tongue,
Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen;
Newts and blind-worms, do no wrong,
Come not near our fairy king.
Philomel, with melody
Sing in our sweet lullaby;
Lulla, lulla, lullaby, lulla, lulla, lullaby:
Never harm,
Nor spell nor charm,
Come our lovely lord nigh;
So, good night, with lullaby.’

flo