Change of mind

A couple of weeks ago, I was again on my way from the Shida campus to Taipei, and I had just began the short and narrow part of Ting Choud Rd that goes along the field sports in campus. I had just walked by the small temple on the right-hand side of the road, when I looked at the facades of the buildings that line that side of the street, which are in fact the back side of the buildings that face Roosevelt Rd. It was a very beautiful day, with a sky almost completely blue, a dazzling Sun, but a nice temperature. And I thought that, even if they did not seem nice to me, they will be never be, those buildings have become part of a familiar cityscape, and I might even begin to feel a little bit of fondness for them.

Then I remembered the first impression that those same builidings, or some very similar ones, had on me the first day I arrived to Taipei, after that long trip, or when I started looking for an apartment under an almost constantly cloudy and/or rainy sky. In those moments when it can be said that your roots are exposed to the elements, when you still do not know where you will finally find a refuge —or as you might think in moments of doubt, if you ever find it—, when everything is new and different and there is no one around with whom to share some thoughts or someone who can give you some encouraging words, those buildings may seem, maybe only for a fleeting moment, like half- hideous and half-hateful symbols of everything you will never like. One is still probably comparing too much what is already known and what is in front of your eyes, which appears complicated and difficult to understand.

Change to some months later, completely settled, or as much as one can be, with a more or less reduced group of acquaintances, places that have become familiar and a whole new series of habits, and most of the negative undertones have vanished and all is simply another part of a land that is discovered little by little. It is a step more in the progressive change of impressions, as a result of daily experiences, the collection of memories, that shape the place where you are spending a substantial part of your life into another home to add to the list, maybe too short, you have been making as the years go by.

All of this is communicated to your mood. Everything feels very raw at the beginning. You discover new things every day, you are in the middle of many unknown situations, little details, small routines are transformed into very important almost vital matters. With time, all begins to blur, to soften. You find your place and become used to everything. It is then that, one somehow longs, maybe for years, for those primordial days when everything was new, when you were stepping on unknown ground and you felt as a brand new blackboard ready for lines to be written on it. But it is too difficult to stay in that state, unless you pack your bags again and move to the next place, which is something I do not plan on doing any time soon.