The Stranger in the Familiar Land
Overlooking the tree-lined streets and calm, blue waters of my childhood.
Despite only having left Canada 4 years ago and having been back a few times since, I hadn’t spent much time in Burlington since I moved away 15 years ago (originally to Toronto, and then to London). I had spent a few days, and the occasional overnight, but mostly had focused my Canada life on Toronto.
On this trip I spent 7 days and nights in Burlington, the longest I had been there in a very long time.
It was all so familiar, but at the same time, very different.
I ended up feeling like a tourist in the town I grew up in. A stranger in a familiar land.
Not just familiar because I knew it from my past, but also familiar in the sense "of my family." In the place where my family lives, but much changed since I lived here. New places, new configurations, new structures. All change. Same place, but different. I am local, and I am the foreigner.
“You could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you.” - Heraclitus of Ephesus, c. 535.– c. 475 BCE.