..circumnavigate.with.me..

I am being bombarded by little familiarities calling me ‘home’ to San Diego. The other night I was waiting for my appetizer (though the dish of deep fried scorpion did anything other than ‘tize’ my appetite) at an outdoor café in the heart of Saigon, when my nose captured the neighboring Aussie woman’s perfume. The smell rocketed me into the imagined presence of my Aunt Teresa: familiarity so powerful that I scanned my surroundings twice to ensure that my aunt was not in the very same restaurant. It wasn’t until the Aussie woman paid her bill and left the restaurant that memories of countless summers with my aunt in California dissipated in the humid Vietnamese night.

Just a day before this memory laden meal, I was romping on the sand of Vietnamese beach, reenacting my carefree days as a child in San Diego. While the white sand and warm water were much different than that which lines the coast of Southern California, the character of the waves was quite similar. In my playful dodging, ducking, and diving through the powerful surges of water, I was pounded after trying to regain my stable footing in the sand. Once, just like a thousand other times that my mother references, I’m nearly pulled out to sea by the rush of the undertow. Just as cocky as I was in my youth about the power of the current and its potential to put me in harm.

Once these two daydreams were inspired, my subconscious began amplifying other observances to connect with SD days and nights. It appears no matter how hard I will the end of the trip to remain aloof, the final port of call is calling me home.