Navy Blue

Sometimes I think time is passing by without me really getting a good grip of the happenings around me...I feel like I need to hold on to every precious second that makes me feel elated about something, or sad or well..generally evokes intense emotions that I want to hold on to. Just to feel like I'm living. Like now is happening, its real, in a way that I can't get it back. Like the laughter that rolls off while listening to crappy karaoke in the campus pub, or the frantic run to catch a bus towards an awaiting adventure, or the biting pain of having skin bruised by a thorny scrub, or the joy of staring up at a starry night sky, knowing that I'm going home to friends .... all those moments of elation, the twinges of jealousy, the agony of partings, the pride of accomplishments...they fill me up and I don't want to let go of them. Just not too soon.

And so a year has passed. Since the time I first came to Victoria, completely uninitiated and open to possibilities. Since the time I looked at everything around me and wondered if I would ever fit in here like a hand in a glove.  A year from then, and now here feels like home. The sun, the sidewalk, the trails, the coffee, the lab, the buses...everything that I have grown to know and recognize with a degree of familiarity and trust that only a home could have. 

How can I describe it....a feeling of of exhilaration, wonderment, hope perhaps? A sense of tranquillity and at the same time a stirring, like a beam of light shining on the suspended imagination of my everyday being. How do I start to talk about what beautiful things I saw through my tired eyes , what delicate aromas filled the breeze that blew through my unkempt hair, how I heard the prettiest sounds that can break a silence. I try to talk about them, but can I hold those feelings that filled my veins for split seconds, hold them in the cup of my hand and pour them into the well of thoughts for other kindred souls to discover? Or should I just keep them hidden in a corner, cover them with a shadow, revel inwards with the ghost of a longing, a secret not revealed? Are they even of consequence to anyone but me? But I have to hurry, before I drop those tiny pearls, and they spill out of my hands and disappear into the depths of the orange twilight outside. I can tell you that one