Today I was on the train coming home from school and I looked out the window to see a brick building. This probably doesn't seem like that much of an event to most of you. But let me go into a little bit more detail.
There's a city (that's what we cowtown-inhabitants call it, at any rate) near my cowtown in the States. Jamestown used to be a pretty prosperous little town. The furniture manufacturing capital. Lots of Swedish immigrants. Robert H. Jackson grew up just outside the city. In Jamestown, there are a lot of very large red brick buildings. There's a specific one that I drove by almost every week of my life. The road we drove on was a bridge so you just saw the roof and the upper row of windows. All of them are broken, and in some places, the roof has fallen in. The bricks are that dark, orange-red that matches almost perfectly with the "Brick Red" (I wonder why) crayon in that crayon box you've got shoved in the corner (don't deny it). But the thing about Jamestown is that it's a pretty safe bet that at least one out of every five buildings you pass will have at least some portion of it built out of brick.
It's a city that's got that gritty, old industry feel. If you know where to look, and how to look at it, you can find beauty in every broken window, in every crumbling wall, in every dirty underpass. It's saturated in an exhausted, greasy feeling that tells of hard work and determination. It's old.
And it's funny, because whenever I'm in Jamestown, I kind of want to be back home. But seeing that building, I thought for a split second I was in Jamestown. It was so...familiar, seeing a single brick building take so long to go past my window. In that split second, I was back where I've spent so much time throughout my short nineteen years. All of a sudden, I was back in the car with my mom, talking about banal things, with the news on the radio. We were on the way to Burger King for breakfast after dropping my dad off at work, with the long trip to my grandparents' house ahead of us that night. We were on our way to Johnny's to get some hot dogs before grocery shopping. I was walking to my dad's work after a day at the Human Rights Camp, talking and walking with my new friends from the county. I was...home. In that split second, everything changed.
And then, in the next split second, I realized that the only trains that go through Jamestown are freights on the overpass right before Tim Horton's. I realized that the music blasting through my earbuds was German pop music. And I realized that I wasn't in Jamestown, but it didn't matter - I was at home. Taking the train after school. Ipod in, looking out the window, waiting to see the landmark that says I should go to the door now. Walking from the train station, trying (and failing) not to trip on the uneven cobbled sidewalks. Knowing what was going to come that evening, knowing what to expect. Happy to be on the way to my warm house, my wonderful host mom, our three dogs and four cats.
I'm an exchange student, and I'm on my third home in less than six months. Ich bin so stolz auf mich.
Nice post :)
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