![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolorosa_12At some point yesterday, I realised I was carrying water bottles from Finland, Sweden and Norway.* That summed up, I think, the rather surreal experiences of the past week, which took me from a Welsh-Australian wedding in Anglesey to a Celtic conference in Helsinki, and everywhere in between.
So, things kicked off with the wedding of my friends K and P in Anglesey. To get there, I had to fly to Manchester and then take a train to Bangor, where I was met by Matthias and our friend B. B was an absolutely fabulous host, as were his family, with whom we were staying. It was quite late by the time I arrived, but they fed me wine and absolutely exquisite cheese, so I was very happy.
The next day - Saturday - was the wedding. B's dad was the minister, and the wedding took place in P's family's chapel in Anglesey. It was bilingual, in Welsh and English, although I don't think everything was directly translated, just seamlessly interwoven. It was an absolutely beautiful ceremony, managing to incorporate a collection of quotes from Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins and Watchmen, a series of englynion that P had written for K, and wedding vows that made me cry. It was all very much about the happy, perfect series of accidents that brought a woman from Western Australia and a man from North Wales together, and being that I am in an international relationship of my own, it resonated. The cake was decorated like the board game Carcassonne, with a big city symbolising Australia, a smaller one symbolising Anglesey, and Bangor in the middle with the two cake toppers together.
All too soon, it was time to board a plane for Helsinki. A (different) friend B very kindly drove me to Manchester airport, so my travel time was much reduced. I got to Helsinki quite late and fell deliriously into bed in our hostel, which, thankfully, was quite close to the conference venue.
The first day of the conference was opened by the keynote paper from my supervisor and finished off with a reception in the (quite beautiful) Irish embassy. I went home quite soon after that, as I had to present my own paper the next day. I was quite nervous to give it, as it was on a very popular text that a lot of people have studied, but all the questions were helpful (aside from one which showed that the person had clearly missed the point), and my supervisor later told me that people had said to her that it was good. One of the conference organisers wrote her PhD thesis on that text, and she told me she agreed with me completely, as well as pointing me towards some more useful references. I'm not sure if I'll publish the paper in the proceedings or elsewhere, but I certainly want to try and publish it, if the reaction I got is anything to go by.
At the end of the second day, we had the conference dinner and ended up in a bar. A Norwegian academic who was there kept trying to make everyone sing, and in the end we had a bit of a multilingual sing-along that lasted hours. We had songs in Welsh, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Finnish, Russian, Norwegian, French and English. I was even persuaded to sing some of 'Waltzing Matilda', much to my horror.
We didn't leave until 1am, so I was utterly exhausted on the final day of the conference, but tried to follow what was going on as best as I could. After that, I said goodbye to everyone and met up with my friend Alex for a bit of a pub-crawl. We actually spent quite a while outdoors, enjoying the nighttime sunshine and playing music on his mobile phone like a pair of teenagers (in our defense, everyone around us was doing the same, and our music was vastly superior). I only ended up getting an hour or two of sleep before having to catch a bus to the airport, so I was an absolute wreck yesterday, but it was worth it.
The whole trip was oddly life-defining. Helsinki is the furthest north I've ever been, and probably the furthest you can get from Australia. P and K's wedding had already got me thinking about the strange series of events that mean one ends up wherever one ends up, and there is nothing stranger than the array of coincidences that got me from Canberra/Sydney to Cambridge, from a rather static, circumscribed existence to my current jetsetting lifestyle, 'unbounded in an unbounded world' (as one of the pieces of secondary literature described the main character in the text I discussed). It got me thinking about the people around me (who may not physically be in the same location), the things I carry, the person I am and the person I want to be. I am remarkably zen about the whole thing. Where I am is where I want to be, who I am is who I want to be, in these places and with those people.
The quote that I've used in the title of this post is a translation of one from Buile Shuibne, the text I discussed at the conference, and it's resonated with me ever since I first encountered it. If I were the tattooing type, it would be my tattoo. It goes together in my mind with the notion of going beyond Selidor**, something which I first associated with exile and alienation, but has come to mean something quite different. I now believe that you have to move beyond everything you know*** in order to let go of the things that hurt you, and in order to discover where you want to be.
Also, this trip seems to have given me a taste for salty liquorice. In both sweet and alcoholic (which is apparently called salmiakki) form.
____________
* I ended up only keeping the Norwegian one, as it had the best design.
** That's not my blog, but the quote explains what Selidor is and means.
*** This movement doesn't need to be physical.
So, things kicked off with the wedding of my friends K and P in Anglesey. To get there, I had to fly to Manchester and then take a train to Bangor, where I was met by Matthias and our friend B. B was an absolutely fabulous host, as were his family, with whom we were staying. It was quite late by the time I arrived, but they fed me wine and absolutely exquisite cheese, so I was very happy.
The next day - Saturday - was the wedding. B's dad was the minister, and the wedding took place in P's family's chapel in Anglesey. It was bilingual, in Welsh and English, although I don't think everything was directly translated, just seamlessly interwoven. It was an absolutely beautiful ceremony, managing to incorporate a collection of quotes from Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins and Watchmen, a series of englynion that P had written for K, and wedding vows that made me cry. It was all very much about the happy, perfect series of accidents that brought a woman from Western Australia and a man from North Wales together, and being that I am in an international relationship of my own, it resonated. The cake was decorated like the board game Carcassonne, with a big city symbolising Australia, a smaller one symbolising Anglesey, and Bangor in the middle with the two cake toppers together.
All too soon, it was time to board a plane for Helsinki. A (different) friend B very kindly drove me to Manchester airport, so my travel time was much reduced. I got to Helsinki quite late and fell deliriously into bed in our hostel, which, thankfully, was quite close to the conference venue.
The first day of the conference was opened by the keynote paper from my supervisor and finished off with a reception in the (quite beautiful) Irish embassy. I went home quite soon after that, as I had to present my own paper the next day. I was quite nervous to give it, as it was on a very popular text that a lot of people have studied, but all the questions were helpful (aside from one which showed that the person had clearly missed the point), and my supervisor later told me that people had said to her that it was good. One of the conference organisers wrote her PhD thesis on that text, and she told me she agreed with me completely, as well as pointing me towards some more useful references. I'm not sure if I'll publish the paper in the proceedings or elsewhere, but I certainly want to try and publish it, if the reaction I got is anything to go by.
At the end of the second day, we had the conference dinner and ended up in a bar. A Norwegian academic who was there kept trying to make everyone sing, and in the end we had a bit of a multilingual sing-along that lasted hours. We had songs in Welsh, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Finnish, Russian, Norwegian, French and English. I was even persuaded to sing some of 'Waltzing Matilda', much to my horror.
We didn't leave until 1am, so I was utterly exhausted on the final day of the conference, but tried to follow what was going on as best as I could. After that, I said goodbye to everyone and met up with my friend Alex for a bit of a pub-crawl. We actually spent quite a while outdoors, enjoying the nighttime sunshine and playing music on his mobile phone like a pair of teenagers (in our defense, everyone around us was doing the same, and our music was vastly superior). I only ended up getting an hour or two of sleep before having to catch a bus to the airport, so I was an absolute wreck yesterday, but it was worth it.
The whole trip was oddly life-defining. Helsinki is the furthest north I've ever been, and probably the furthest you can get from Australia. P and K's wedding had already got me thinking about the strange series of events that mean one ends up wherever one ends up, and there is nothing stranger than the array of coincidences that got me from Canberra/Sydney to Cambridge, from a rather static, circumscribed existence to my current jetsetting lifestyle, 'unbounded in an unbounded world' (as one of the pieces of secondary literature described the main character in the text I discussed). It got me thinking about the people around me (who may not physically be in the same location), the things I carry, the person I am and the person I want to be. I am remarkably zen about the whole thing. Where I am is where I want to be, who I am is who I want to be, in these places and with those people.
The quote that I've used in the title of this post is a translation of one from Buile Shuibne, the text I discussed at the conference, and it's resonated with me ever since I first encountered it. If I were the tattooing type, it would be my tattoo. It goes together in my mind with the notion of going beyond Selidor**, something which I first associated with exile and alienation, but has come to mean something quite different. I now believe that you have to move beyond everything you know*** in order to let go of the things that hurt you, and in order to discover where you want to be.
Also, this trip seems to have given me a taste for salty liquorice. In both sweet and alcoholic (which is apparently called salmiakki) form.
____________
* I ended up only keeping the Norwegian one, as it had the best design.
** That's not my blog, but the quote explains what Selidor is and means.
*** This movement doesn't need to be physical.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-06-18 05:25 pm (UTC)Anyway your post and <a href = "http://rachelhills.tumblr.com/post/24888519192/swinging-london-town-an-expats-lament>this post</a> made me want to write my own post about getting away and being somewhere else. It's different for me, because unlike both of you I'm still in the very early stages of expat-ism, and also because I came here for no particular reason and finally because I'm leaving and giving up on this. I think perhaps that one reason why yours work and hers work is because you have this intangible something to lead you through it. You have your desire to study, she has her desire to write in an environment that is exciting and different and new. You both have a raison d'etre for being where you are. Unlike me, I'm just here. So I've got to keep going and figure out if I need to just go and be somewhere else and try this slightly meandering, groundless existence, or if I actually need to find something that grounds me. I do love those moments of clarity though. When things just... make sense.
no subject
Date: 2012-06-19 11:14 am (UTC)Oh wow, that Rachel Hills post articulates the feeling of being an (Australian) expat so well. It's so true that in Australia, you usually walk into an event knowing at least two-thirds of the room, and the other third normally knows your younger sister. Although Cambridge is a very small community, at least the student portion of it, too. I sometimes think my whole life has been a sort of quest to be remembered and known. Not in the sense of being famous, but being surrounded by people who value and understand me, who are happy when I walk into a room. That, to me, is the essence of belonging.
I've often wondered if you are searching for the wrong thing. You seem to me to be happiest when you're just discovering a new place, when you're travelling. And after you stay in the same place for a while, regret sets in and you start to feel dissatisfied. I wonder if, instead of looking for a reason to call a place home, you looked for a reason to keep moving. (Of course, it's more expensive to travel, so it would have to be a well-paying reason.)