Between Worlds

Being between worlds is creepy. Home but not home; among my things, but my things still in boxes; a few weeks to relax, but a plane ticket and passport ready for action. Andrew's back in Barcelona, in the desolate city that Barcelona becomes in late August; most people are still on vacation, so the streets, metro, and even his office are empty. He said it's cooler now, and rainy, which is much different from the Barcelona we left two weeks ago. He's alone in our apartment, and the whole image--of the empty city and the apartment, which, like any other home, always feels a bit ghostlike when it's been closed up for a length of time--makes me shudder a little.

We're between seasons, and there's a nervy first-day-of-school feeling in the air, even though, for me, the only school starting up again will be my Spanish classes when I return to Spain. And we're between stages in our Barcelona life, Andrew's work and my travel-craziness winding down, with our normal life soon to be on its way back. Job interviews, new trips, and the next round of visitors will mark this fall; all of that's to come. Right now we're between things, finishing things up, making tentative new plans. It's not wasted time by any means. But I feel like I, at least, have stepped outside of my regular life and disappeared for a while, here in the Pennsylvania mountains, quiet and dark, a place so familiar that it's somehow unsettling to actually be back.