voluptuous and glamorous alienation

 This quote from Heroines by Kate Zambreno stuck out to me. As she writes about these modernist marriages that keep criss-crossing the Atlantic Ocean, she remarks

We too desire the transatlantic so desperately. There is always this hope that one of these moves will be back there, to a more voluptuous and glamorous alienation. 

As I  pass by the halfway mark of my year living in Germany, this quote really caught me. I've struggled a lot with the ideas and imaginations I had for this year--of being adventurous, embracing the new, traveling across Europe every weekend. The reality has been less on the side of glamorous. But I love Zambreno's description here: "voluptuous and glamorous alienation." There's always something a bit glamorous about living in a different country, but perhaps part of the draw of such an experience is also the alienation. I had been feeling let down by my own alienation: the hesitancy with which I've grasped a new language, the surprise at missing the rituals and familiarity of my previous life. But maybe there's something to embrace in the voluptuousness of an experience. I've also been feeling existentially itchy like the inexplicable and invisible growing pains of childhood. Growth while its happening is a voluptuous and glamorous alienation and that's okay because one day I'll look back and be able to see what was emerging out of its shell.