more scheming

Too busy to record all the craziness of today... just have to note for later that I visited Marc today in Leuven and he's a crazy genius... my first draft of one of the English pages of the Beiaardschool site is up... and taking the opportunity to chat with Jo for an extended period of time proved far more productive than I ever imagined possible. He knows Dr. Boulpaep, he knew Susan Woodson (quite well!!!), and he thinks it's possible to start up a master's degree program in carillon in conjunction with the Antwerpen Conservatorium. Say what?! If I could stay in Belgium another year earning my master's degree from there, perhaps living on a pittance from the Ministry of the Flemish Community, but just as long as I have enough to get by...why, I would sign my firstborn away for the opportunity. Yes, yes, yes, I'm always talking about how I left my heart in San Fran (Berkeley, really) and how I am determined to return... but frankly, it's going to be years before I can return (since living anywhere near my parents even now would drive me insane), and there is no place in the world of all the places I've travelled to that I'd love to stay in more right now than this crazy country in which you never know what's going on or what's possible until you search every corner for it... and then it turns out to be more than you could have ever hoped for. Maybe Jo's idea won't work out and something else will... but I have found everything I needed here, and it was nothing--precisely that, nothing--an empty space in which to build a new life in a different land and to reinvent myself. As I waited for my plane to start boarding in JFK last month, I was realizing that I had become exactly the person I had wanted to be at this stage in my life. Paradoxically, part of being that person is being ready to reinvent myself (without compromising myself). And although I had no clue how much I needed to do that, I know now because I'm doing it...

I'm so inarticulate and overwhelmed with fears and hopes and joy and sheer incredulity at the life I'm living. Sometimes I laugh at myself for being so like an infant here, in awe of everything and overwhelmed by every sight, sound, touch, taste... so innocently carefree and grateful for every moment... but now I wonder if it isn't because in a way I've been reborn.