As I prepare to leave, I can’t help but feeling lost and homeless and empty. I should be happy, I should be sad. I can’t seem to fit an entire year of memories into two suitcases. I can’t pack up my life here easily.
Why, and how, do we get attached to places? What difference does place make? Of what concern is the angle of the street, or of the light as it comes in the afternoons through the windows? What does it matter that this is the floorplan, with the bedrooms just here, and the windows this way so that, when you sit on this sofa on a cloudy afternoon and you’ve curled up with a cup of tea and a book and are napping and it begins to rain, you feel suddenly surrounded by the rain on all sides, and you put your book down and just watch it slowly come down on the hydrangeas?
The sound of a magpie’s cry will be the same from the back garden of another flat. The wind will simply rustle the leaves of different trees. But I will not be here to watch the pigeons swoop over the Tyne when it is lit up at night, or to watch the cat on the wall through the kitchen sink window.
It’s strange to me, despite my twenty four odd years, despite my own sense of practicality, and intelligence, and reason, the things we can and cannot keep.
visits
since April 2006.
Aw Cassie. You will make me cry.
And what a perfect photo for just before you leave. Nothing flash or showy, just a simple photo that somehow demonstrates how this place has become home.
You’ll be back hon xxxx
Cassandra, as B has said before…
You know immediately when you step off the plane that Newcastle is home and the right place… Perhaps some of the magic of the area has rubbed off on you… some places have it and some places don’t. Newcastle has it! It’s the whole package… the whole experience… and you’ve only just started to explore the place, and the surrounding areas remain to tempt you…
Thanks for all your photos Cassandra, I hope you will be back!
Mike
Don’t be sad Cassandra, we will still be here when you return.
I have only been to one other place whic, when I stepped onto its ground it felt like I had come home, we call that ’stepping on kent ground’. Meaning you have been here before.
I could not move there as it was a small island, Shetland to be precise. You will carry the memories with you wherever you go.
Bon Voyage on another stage in your life.
mrs K
I left Newcastle two years ago, and I had the exact same fealing. I cried and cried, but it was still good to return to where i came from. I have a big map of Newcastle on the wall of my appartment, and I still get the fealing you describe above from time to time. It is both a good fealing and a sad fealing. I love Newcastle and miss it terribly.
I recognise the pain of the traveller. the one who has to return yet wants to stay. There are almost no words to describe the sense of loss yet you have done it so well. Well enough to touch my pain inside of me, touching the places from where I had to leave, yet I found happy times in the place to which I returned. Soon I will be off on my travels again and I know that looking back through your pages of bygone photos will be something I will do, this time from halfway across the world. It ill mean a lot to me so whilst I feel your pain I also thank you for all the photos. I am only sorry I only recently found your site. Thank you. Thank you for now and all the future times when looking through your site will poignantly remind me of the place I call home.
I wish you well and happy days ahead in spite of the whirling pain of leaving a place you came to love.
I know just how you’re feeling Cassandra, I reluctantly left Sandyford many years ago, after living in Newcastle for 8 years, and i still miss it! Good luck for the future.
OMG, Cassandra, you made me cry! I have no words…I know the very feeling you describe, both ways…when I leave Buenos Aires and when I have to leave Newcastle. I don’t know where I want to live, I don’t know where I want to leave either. I’m sure there are a lot of things waiting for you where you are going, and there’ll always be things waiting for you when you come back.
I wish you the best of lucks on this new stage of your life!
All thats the very best for you and yours in the future. Bon voyage MikeM
Have a safe trip beck to the US Cassandra and thanks for all the fab photos- I’m sure you’ll be back though. I came to Newcastle more years ago than I care to remember and can’t imagine living anywhere else in the country. If you get a chance to hit a bookshop before you leave buy yourself a copy of the Stuart Maconie book “Of Pies and Prejudice”. He says it a lot better than I can about how fantastic a place the north of England is.
Thank you for all the lovely photos Cassandra. Please post when you get back home so we can keep in touch.
thanks for all those fabulous pics . take care of yourself.
goodbye and good luck .luv j
A wonderful heart felt post. Thanks for all your post and I look forward to your return.