I've been home for a week now and haven't felt much like writing. No, scratch that, I've had the urge to write but my thoughts have been jumbled and jetlagged and startlingly un-cohesive. I thought I was having an early mid-life crisis, but my friend Shona correctly diagnosed that I've basically got the post-vacation blues. You know, that soul-sucking ennui that happens after you come home from a really great trip and discover that absolutely nothing of interest has happened while you were away. The sameness of everything hits you like a ton of bricks and you think the only thing you have to look forward to in life is the next time you can get back to Europe.
(Of course, everything about this version of the blues is entirely exaggerated and somewhat unfounded -- I've noted before that my vita is awfully, awfully dolce.)
I've basically been dealing with the whole thing by eating. I never thought I was an emotional eater but it would appear that I am. The appetite I've had this past week has been ridiculous. Granted, I am coming off a week of holiday eating, in Germany no less, and it's hard to go from having 24/7 access to delicious coffee and cake, wine and beer, sausage and zanderfilet, to a more regular diet. You get used to starting your day with a crusty roll spread so thick with sweet butter it might as well be cheese, accompanied by a perfectly cooked soft boiled egg with a rich, orangey-yellow yolk, and then a container of the most deliciously creamy yoghurt, drizzled with honey or apricot jam. And then stopping for a perfect cup of coffee an hour later (God Bless Tchibo!) and a piece of cake. Followed by a full lunch (perhaps a personal-sized terrine of thick potato soup. sharp with lovage and bits of garlicky sausage) a couple of hours after that, complete with delicious cold beer. And more coffee and cake around 4pm. And then, later, a snack of open faced sandwiches, or a yummy currywurst (grilled sausage, lavishly draped in sweet ketchup with lashings of curry powder over top -- try it before you disdain it) and more cold beer. Undsoweiter, undsoweiter.
So I guess it's no big surprise that all I thought about this week was food. Food and art*, but mainly food. And no matter what I ate, I was never satisfied because whatever I cooked or bought to eat wasn't the right thing. Like my brain was too jumbled to correctly identify the dish that would make me happy and so decided to find it through trial and error. Of course, it might just be that the dish that would make me happy either doesn't exist or only exists back in Berlin, and the only result of all this trial and error will be me rapidly regaining all that weight I worked so hard to take off between January and May.
Therefore, the week of wallowing is over. Time to rejoin real life and get over it. Tomorrow, I'll go back to my usual routine of circuit training 3 times a week, eating small balanced meals 5-6 times a day, getting RID of all this avoirdupois I've been lugging around since university. Saturday, I'll go back to the print studio and get back into the swing of things there. And in a couple of weeks, my night course in the Department of English and Cultural Studies will start and I'll get to see if I can still write an academic paper or not. The summer is full of promise and the blues will surely pass soon.
Kara
*And most of the thoughts about art have been about how much I don't like Joseph Beuys. But that's a whole other rant.
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