Eagle i: Back amongst you

John Moulton / Eagle i contributor

Local food stand and gathering place.

John Moulton / Eagle i contributor

A fisherman ply's his trade.

John Moulton / Eagle i contributor

View from the Hotel, with strange wooded animal.

John Moulton / Eagle i contributor

Nary a soul as far as you can see.

John Moulton is an artist and creative designer who is spending several weeks in Sri Lanka. His job in the textile industry was eliminated when his Miami-based company closed and sold its equipment to a company in Sri Lanka. Moulton will be working for a company there training its workers and he’s writing about those experiences for Marco Eagle readers.

For the most part I spend my life in the shallow part of the pool. Only reluctantly do I venture into that blue water that is the unfamiliar deep end of life. I seek the easiest path to my goals. Paths that are wide, smooth, and well traveled by my feet. I do not endeavor to complicate my life with added difficulties; as a consequence, my life becomes routine, and comfortable. I use this routine as an asylum from which possible changes to my life can be foreseen and dealt with at arm’s length. But some dangers lurk unforeseen, and many grow gradually in a sloth-like manner to become part of the routine.

I was well aware of the possibility of losing my livelihood, layoffs, cutbacks, and supply problems had become commonplace. I traveled 100 miles a day to a job destined to leave this continent. I applied the “Caruso Rule” and decided to stay at it as long as it would pay me. If you don’t remember, David Caruso was the red headed, up-and-coming actor, first seen nationally on “NYPD Blue.” He had received some offers from movie studios and decided to ditch the TV show after one season. The movie career went nowhere but the TV show went on for many seasons without him. Now he stars on “CSI Miami” and you can bet he’ll ride that elephant into the graveyard.

I too rode the textile elephant to the bone yard. It just so happened that the graveyard was in Sri Lanka. The sad fact is that I would travel there again if the money was right, and I procured round trip business class tickets. The people were friendly, the food was spicy, and the sunsets were special. I owned the beach in Sri Lanka. Looking down the palm rimmed tidewater; the waves rode ashore and crashed on barren sand. I would look over a picturesque shore devoid of humans until the sea mist obscured my vision. Unfortunately it is there that the infatuation grinds to a halt.

Upon my return to America at O’Hare Airport in Chicago, I did not fall to the ground and kiss my native soil. It was nice enough to stand among familiar strangeness. In a far off and different dominion everything is abnormal; the people, the cars, the houses, the customs (they still arrange marriages). You rarely see the subtle differences that separate people as individuals. Those subliminal signals that we all exude. My signals were loud and clear, this guy’s not from here was tattooed across my forehead. Blending into the local scenery was not a possibility for my blue eyes, white skin, and 6’4” frame. The one time I wore a Sarong (a type of native long Kilt) out of the room, the normal doting friendliness shown by the hotel staff, turned to polite avoidance. I thought I might have offended them in some way and inquired about it. They smilingly assured me that I had not. I wear the Sarong at my home now and my wife looks at me strangely, so I politely avoid her stare.

One of the true pleasures of returning home is the embrace of your loved one. When I left for this trip my wife Ricki had downloaded Skype onto the computer. Each day I would converse twice with my betrothed, once in the morning (her night), and once in the evening (her morning). She would be the touchstone that meant I was truly home. After 50 hours of uncomfortable lethargy on the flight home, my wife meets me at Miami International Airport; we meld for the first time in two months. Still facing a two-hour drive in the pitch black, across a swamp, I knew I was home. Normality had returned to my soul, I had been too long away from the person and people I love.

I bring home with me no pearls of wisdom, nor cautionary tales of Third World travel. I went to do a job, and I accomplished all that I was contracted to accomplish. At times it was like pulling an Ox across China, but in the end it felt gratifying to know I was up to the task. I found that I was a writer, and how difficult writing is. Extracting the right expression to explain a feeling or scene in words is a vexing, taxing, exhilarating experience that repeats itself during ever sentence you construct. Sharing my experience with you readers has been the true Diamond that I found on this pebble beach so far from home. I’m home now amongst you, so if you pass a stranger who exudes an out of place happiness to be home and is wearing a long skirt just politely avert your eyes.