call it home

get back, get back, get back to where you once belonged.

where you once belonged? i think i always belonged everywhere. consider it my current and future address. hard to find? maybe. the only way to live? definitely.

in a week, i will be back in california. we're gonna talk about california, not the states, not amriika, as they say here. when people ask where im from, i never say anything but california.

in 1 week, i will have to remind myself to wear a seatbelt again. ill get to flush toilet paper in a toilet, ill get to lose miserably as usual to my siblings at guitar hero, ill get to eat nachos and cheezits and maybe even have a starbucks if i feel like it. ill get to wear tank tops and shorts, and flip flops every day. ill get to skateboard everywhere again, unless i feel like driving (someone else's car, haha). ill get to annoy my parents by sleeping til 12, ill get to work out and go running and ill get to look at all the clothes i forgot about and then just decide to wear a swimsuit instead. ill get to call a soda a soda and not a "beebsee" (pepsi, get it? why do they all drink that here?), ill get to play a piano whenever i feel like it, and do nothing if i feel like it. ill get to drink tap water with ice, smell garlic in the morning all the way from gilroy, and there will be such a thing in my universe as a non-smoking area. ill get to eat obnoxious amounts of avocados and go to coffee with people who may or may not really want to see me, but ive dragged them out anyway. there will be roads with lanes, which people can at least choose to use if they wish, ill get to walk places and not take a taxi everywhere, and my talent for telling whether the car behind me is honking because its a taxi wondering WHY ON EARTH ANYONE WOULD BE WALKING WHEN THEY COULD BE SITTING or whether its a random car full of men who are going to throw phone numbers at me will no longer be a useful skill. i wont buy phone cards, and maybe if i ask nice someone else will make me a dinner that's something i recognize. ill get to eat chinese food and listen to the music i missed and complain about the radio thats still playing everything its been playing since i was in 11th grade. phone calls wont cost an arm and a leg, or maybe they will because i have a tendency to make the impossible happen when it comes to phone bill numbers. and ill have the internet without having to go to a cafe and buy a drink, and my hair color will be almost normal, and people wont stare at me on the street any more than they stare at anyone else. well maybe thats not true, but we can dream, cant we? ill get to live like a normal person who lives in their country, not a foreigner who is exhaustingly fascinating to everyone on the street/in the room/ in the building.

there are things i will miss, millions of things. shirts like "redundant... don't ask me to do a damn thing" and "yes... i... do." and "ok! i would like that!" (... what does that even mean?). and everyone i meet wont be named ahmed, and it wont be normal for me to offer everyone i see tea or turkish coffee, and no one will understand me when i say hiloo ktir, and ill have to speak effing english all the time. god im sick of that language. and i wont be able to get "juice" meaning actually just a fruit put in a blender and then into a cup. and ill miss mint lemonade, and taxi drivers who love my bad arabic, and everywhere i look wont be white stone buildings. and ill miss stupidly constructed and subsequently half-demolished sidewalks with giant trees in the middle of them making them completely irrelevant in the first place. and ill miss asking for directions and having someone take my hand and pull me wherever they think i need to go, go all the way there with me, and when they find they've misunderstood me, go with me to find someone else who will join our posse of me simply trying to find some cafe. and ill miss yalla bye, and argileh (god), and oppressively hot jordanian sun, and the call to prayer how will i live without you? and that smile that i get when i realize that the beatles really are universal- it doesnt matter where i am when they grace my ipod with their presence, it's always, always good.

we had a talk yesterday (after i left the ER haha) at school, some sort of re-orientation to america thing. and it was all really obvious, and i really dont think ill have a problem with it. i mean, if anything, i think too much, i process too fast- the states will not be a shock for me, i dont think. and i have a different feeling than i did when leaving dc, or paris... i think im ready to go home for a while. not a long while, mind you. i need to be here, i need morocco, and i need beirut, and i need to go back to palestine and syria and everywhere i love here. but i've been thinking about it, and i really think, this time, that im ready to go. i dont think ive felt like i wanted to go home all year, really, not for a long time. but its been a long time, a long way in my head and on the ground, and its time.

now that she's back in the atmosphere, with drops of jupiter in her hair.

ladies and gentlemen, she may just be coming down soon. and i dont know what ill do, really, coming "back" will be just as big an adventure as it ever was to leave. my spiderwebs link me now, pull me back here. i have long, long ties. and there will be winds i cant refuse, that will bring my heart back, if nothing else. honking cars and girls in hijab and pepsi and tea and boys on the street who say "nice", and ill hear in my head "hello i love you welcome to jordan". and everything makes you smile. everything makes me smile.

living here does that to you. everything is mish mushkila, no problem. everything is just the way it is. and traffic makes me smile, and bad english makes me smile, and people spitting on me makes me smile. living in jordan is like riding a camel; you just have to relax your hips into it and ride it out, let it do its thing.

its perfect for me; thats how i live anyway. but it will be nice, for a little while, to live somewhere thats not a rollercoaster, where i know how im getting to school regardless of the weather, and there are no doomstairs to climb, and i know what im eating at least half the time.





and they will see us waving from such great heights, and they've stopped a long time ago telling me to come down now. maybe thats why i feel like its time, i dont know. and its unexpected, and its strange and pretty, but i really, really, really do.


Sugarcane in the easy mornin'
Weathervanes my one and lonely

The ink is running toward the page
It's chasin' off the days
Look back at boat feet
And that winding knee
I missed your skin when you were east
You clicked your heels and wished for me

Through playful lips made of yarn
That fragile Capricorn
Unraveled words like moths upon old scarves
I know the world's a broken bone
But melt your headaches, call it home