Everything is incomplete

Everything is incomplete. For everyone I try to work for. I made myself data for an experiment. The research question was simple: Is it possible to have two lives in one lifetime (or the little left of it)? My answer is a resounding affirmative – Yes. Except you will feel completely inadequate in finishing whatever you start. I constantly live with a date in mind. And there is never enough time to do what I promised myself I will do for those around me, and if they are reading this, I apologize for my incompetence. But for me that date is final. On this day one life will end and another will begin. The interruption cruelly defined by the jet lag. Without the lag - the complete violence to mind and body - I would not be able to transition from one life to the other. The jet lag is the wormhole of our times. But as the day of the transfer appears, I realize that everything is incomplete. I live with these dates, and I imagine some goals by the date, but then goals depend on other people. These are people who have a stable life in one place. Unless they take some time to understand people like me, it is very difficult to see  what people like me experience. Every day in my life is a count down. That is the thrill – the joy. As the rain comes down and the passing cars honk, I look around me and I say “5 days,” then when the deer walks across the lawn, and the snow envelopes the yard on the pre-Christmas winter storm, I say, “45 days.” To me it is always the days. And there are never enough days. Five days is never enough. And the 45 days dwindle to 5 days and it is never enough. For everyone around me, the ones whose lives I am tied to, there is no “end date.” And naturally the World around me does not know of my end dates. I angst over the lack of time, because my time is linked to space, but most of the people - those who respect me, who love me, hold strong affections for me - time goes on uninterrupted by the jet lag or a radical shift in space. I appear and I disappear, with the promise to appear again. In this life of mine, there is no question as uplifting and steeped in affection than a loved one asking, “tumi aabar kobey aashbe (when will you be back again)?” I belong in both places through those words, sometimes spoken out, sometimes unspoken through action, makes the day counting and jet lag worth it. The ones who ask that question, I know, are the ones who matter. The ones who look forward to that date, and actually remember it, are the ones who matter. It is for those people that I live. Once the question is no longer asked and once the date is no longer remembered is when you know you have become redundant and fallen through the cracks of space and time. But, in this strange duality, I never seem to get things done the way I want to do them. Because there is always this deadline. Those I work with do not have that artificial deadline. So I become annoying, troubling people with continuous messages and calls as I sense my deadline inching up on me, and I lament the wasted time. I torment the people only because I want to do the right thing, and I need the opportunity to do so, within the limited times I have in my two Worlds. Two parallel systems, two lives, each rich with experience and in the company of people who make my life worthwhile. It is always the precious moment of the last phone call before I leave, and I hear “You will be back soon,” is all I need to know that there is some purpose for me in both the Worlds separated by a jet lag. When I am back there, I will complete what I left incomplete. I promise. I live the Double Vision of the Foreigners, “I live all of my years in a single minute.”