We Shall Not Cease from Exploration

This is one of those years of tiny, big moments. It's the year where two years of labour and questioning evolved at last into one moment of standing on stage and receiving my Master's degree. All I heard in that moment was the fierce beating of my heart, pounding ecstatically against my ribs: I've no idea what was actually said. (Though that might be also the result of two years of school-related sleep deprivation...)

This is a year that will quietly watch me slip into the next age marker and I find myself reflecting often on who I am now and how I want to grow myself for the next five years. I look at pictures of a five year old me, an eleven year old me, and I wonder who that I was then is still now, and what of who I am now would I have wanted to be at that age if I could only have known to want it. Which makes me wonder how I will look back on this age, and on this age I am slipping into.

Today is the anniversary of when my family left my first home, my beautiful island in the Caribbean, so I am extra pensive and lost to nostalgia, to thinking about home and place and belonging.

When I ride in the cabs and talk with drivers who are from Ethiopia, Uganda, and elsewhere, they reminisce to me of home, spell out for me the language of land written on their hearts, and I see the place stamped on their being. Then I ask how long they have been in the States now, and each time--each and every time!--it is longer than I have lived here in this country. And they have been gone from their homes that long (longer yet if they were refugees at some point), and yet it is to them still the compass which guides them through their life.

I think, if they can have their homeland still affect them so, is it so strange that my own heart is often still awash in longing for the otherness I know? For my other worlds? Even though in every place I go, that longing persists because I have lived and loved in too many?

What is the limit of the human heart?

I have become very adept at making home wherever I am, at building place and setting down roots whilst still carrying with me the places and people I love, while still holding onto the many different and opposing things that have made me the strange person who I am--and I am enormously proud of this accomplishment. I think, in a life full of fracture, finding a way to some sort of wholeness is a pretty satisfying thing to accomplish, and probably explains why I have cared so much more in my life about who I am as a person than what I am doing or going to do. Being a person is a lot of hard work, and I cherish my beingness.

But what now? And how now?

Maybe that will be the next five years of learning for me.

I returned not half a month ago yet from a trip to Iceland. What a beautiful country. I don't even have the vocabulary yet to adequately talk about it, though I have begun to read Icelandic literature in hopes of discovering and growing that ability.

Going there, I hoped most to be able to step outside myself a little, to step into a place I do not know at all, have never been. To bathe in the strange newness of it all and so, being outside of my world, gain rest and better my vision. I wanted to celebrate what I have achieved (the degree) and reward myself. Wanted to dance with the Northern Lights and experience their magic for the first time, to ride on the back of the wind. I wanted so badly to find something that looks like the edge of the world and stand trembling on the brink of it full of wonder at life and the stark beauty of it all, raging and silent in a single breath, luminescent as the glaciers and black as the sand, rock, and night encompassing it all.

And the thing that I love most about experiences like that; it isn't the going there and then , eventually, turning back and returning to the place you were before. It's that you don't return to the place you were before.

I will always, forever, be homesick for something. My heart beats the song of saudade; an eternal song of melancholic loss for the other.

But that doesn't mean that I do not nor cannot love the new, the next, or the present. And I do, enormously and passionately.

But when you go enter a neverland or stand at the edge of any world, there is always a door. Though I did turn and drive back the way I had come, though the next day I got on a plane and flew back to my present home which I adore, that next portal has been crossed and I passed into a new place, a new world to explore which will become a part of the fabric of my being. I didn't even fully realise it then, but now, when I find myself reading new books since my return, writing new things and thinking in language I have not before, I know.

Know that for the first time, I have come to love and appreciate change as much as I have always hated and feared it. Many of us carry wounds and split hearts and live in between worlds with that continual ache for the otherness of home, but as T.S. Elliot said, "the end of all our explorations will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." Which in the end, means that the place and we ourselves are as new; reborn and more full.

Isn't the evolution of our being a wondrous thing?

A Brief Grief Journal

October has been such an exquisitely difficult month. I have felt the pain of loss keenly, reaching me from many different areas of my life. It has taken great effort to put energy into anything other than simply sitting and allowing myself to feel my way through sadness and pain to the other side of grief. Certainly I am not there yet, but I know I'm closer and that is good enough for now.

In the midst of hurt, though, I find myself thinking how fortunate I am to have things in my life that can hurt me. To have people you love so much that the loss of them is unspeakable agony--the kind that cramps your whole body up, the kind that makes you bend down over and curl up fetally, the kind that just turns you into a leaky sieve so that you start crying even in a happy moment. Funny how closely tied pain and hurt are to happiness and joy.

I think that while allowing oneself to experience grief is both good and necessary, giving yourself up to drown in it is not good. Wallowing is easy. Stasis is easy. After all, as I mentioned earlier, so much energy is spent just experiencing so much feeling at all, how do you have energy to do anything else? To move forward? And if there is one thing that I would look back at my life and say, it is that you cannot expect anyone else to pick you up when you are down. You have to choose to get up. For me, that means doing things even when I don't feel like doing them--especially things that give energy.

I derive energy from creativity, so I have taken on the project (BIG project) of painting one of the rooms in my house. Colours, primer, moving pianos and stacks of books and clothes and pictures and stuff stuff stuff. Painting. Creating. Repetitive motion.

I do derive energy from people. So don't cancel your parties, don't isolate yourself from others even when you don't feel like seeing anyone. Keep living and being and watching those around you live and be and remember how beautiful it is to love people, to love at all. If you are lonely, invite someone else who is alone. If you are hungry, make something and share it with someone, even if you don't see them, even if you are simply sending it to them.

Take conscious note of all the things you find beautiful. I was in Buffalo visiting one of my dear friends. I didn't feel social--I just felt sad. But I let myself let go and move outside of the sadness and enjoy something happy (and tasty!! mmm, Thai food.) And then, I went with her to visit an Nepali family she has gotten to know. It was so incredibly perfect, sitting on a couch somewhere in Buffalo talking about loss and exile and experiencing someone else's pain that you understand and drinking chai and knowing that life is beautiful anyway.

I've eaten sushi, picked pumpkins, receivedhugs, scheduled out things to keep doing til i'm finally starting to think a bit more spontaneously again.

Nearly a week ago now, I went to a fundraiser up there. What fun! Going on stage at Shea's--one of the biggest stages in the whole of the States! And going backstage and in the stars' dressing rooms, and underneath the stage where the trap doors are. I still have yet to shake my desire to go straight back into serious theatre. It's come in handy, though, with lots of costume parties the rest of this week. Snow White and Marilyn Monroe!

During the big "Frankenstorm" that just came around, I had a sleepover and pumpkin-carving and movie-night with another friend. Storms are one experience I hate to have alone, and it was so much fun to have a sleepover in response to my facebook post "now accepting applications for storm-sleepover-buddies" (or something like that) and to revel in good company.

What I know is that I hope November is a better month. No new losses to stagger under. No horrid storms, no deaths nor dying. To come out of this sleepwalking and back into smiles and quick laughter that just bubbles out again. To not have to work so hard at living and remembering the beautiful. Please, November--be restorative.

Thoughts from a Sunday Drive

Yesterday afternoon, I drove back to NY from South Jersey--about a 6.5 hour drive, really. Beautiful drive. Music playing; my brother buried in his book and I in my thoughts. Sometimes it frightens me--for the last few months the hills of NY have risen up to welcome me back. They roll in waves of home at me and swallow me up. I'm still not fond of their particular shade of green (except when the shadows hit them just right and they turn a beautiful blue-green and purple instead), but on this drive even that did not matter. Those hills were lit up in tongues of flame: it was like driving through fire, all burning glory and golden auburn bronzed beauty.

I am proud that I can feel at home in this place now; proud of the hard work I put into making a strange and foreign land become a home and a haven. Proud that I made a place to come back to--that I find myself thinking in my head one day I will return to. Where the whales go to die.

But who knows--I could say that of many places already, so I suppose there are many other places I may yet come to say that of.

I think of the way I have home in the people I love, so that I can go to a strange place and find it feels like home to me. Over a year ago, I spent 6 days traversing the West Coast--California, Oregon, and Washington all. (Yes, it was a whirlwind!!) And I had hardly a single set plan going there except the times of my flights and the airports themselves. But it was fabulous. It was home every single breath because of the people, because of the wonder, because of the space to be whole self.

This month has been a month of grieving and of loss, and I know that the experience of both for myself will continue on for some time more. But still I love the choice to smile anyways. The choice to live largely, to be bigger than oneself and to exist outside of the limits of immediate feeling. Time travel is unfortunately not an option (to me, anyways...), but what we do with the time we have? How much we can fill it with. Minutes are confined, but moments--aren't those forever? They stretch on and on in their own expanse somehow.

Nearly a month ago (how has time gone by so?!), I traveled out to Indiana to visit some dear friends. And it was wonderful. I jumped the midnight train, arrived around 8:30 a.m., changed at their flat and then went and volunteer worked all day alongside my friend in a kindergarten classroom (where she works). Never done that before... Then I saw my first highschool football game. Which also happened to be a homecoming game and the homecoming court was crowned. Then that weekend I also saw my first band competition, which was really fun! And of course, hours walking and talking and full of tasty foods and drinks and new people and dear dear people I already know. I think I like to have at least one new experience every day, though I do prefer them more happy than grievous.

Live as big as you can just for the breath-taking beauty of life which is bigger than you, and then live a little bit bigger than that.

An Inadequate Post.

I have coming up a trip I never wished to take; on Thursday I will travel to my grandmother's funeral. I cannot believe she is really gone, cannot believe that I speak of her in the past tense now. I loved my grandmother. Loved. Loved her so much.

I've never grown up around my extended family. Where my grandmother was concerned, however, this fact never mattered. She called every year on my birthday. She visited "all the time" when I lived as a child on the island. Who knows how often that really was? What mattered is that it felt like always. Since before I could even spell, we wrote letters back and forth, long missives in which I narrated all the exciting adventures of my life and she responded in kind. Thoughts, wisdom, and lots of love. When she visited, she picked me up at school, took us kids to the beach, went out for ice-cream, and played with us. She knew every boy I ever loved growing up, even when I wished she didn't!

My grandmother taught me things. She taught me to ride a bike, to learn my times-table in mathematics, to make beds beautifully (which mattered a lot in a family where hospitality happened all the time and it was fun to pretend you were a maid at a hotel!).

She taught me to love fiercely, even as she loved fiercely. I don't know anyone who loved more fiercely than she. In the last decade, I've done a lot she couldn't understand. Why would I ever want to go to some of the places I have visited or studied or worked in? Why would I sleep there or eat that or try this? How could I love it? But no matter how much my lifestyle and passions confused her, she always loved me firmly and supported me. She wanted to hear about everything. She kept a notebook with every single one of my blog-posts printed off, and maps tracking where I was or had been. She loved me no matter what.

And she invested so much! Hours over breakfasts when I was in the area--breakfasts at my favourite restaurants or else a special breakfast favourite she made for me at her house. We would talk long into the night and she would fall asleep in the big double bed in the special blue room with me, holding my hand. I think sometimes I fell asleep in the middle of a prayer. She even put up with my kicking in the bed!

She nurtured my creative spirit. Every piece of I-don't-even-know-what that I made from trash, she kept, and told me she kept. Beautiful. So interesting. Do you have more? What have you made lately?
All my drawings and paintings on her fridge, and she would write me--"so-and-so from church commented on your beautiful picture today."

She told me long stories about family history and connected me to a world of people which space and time kept me from. I learnt about genealogy and family loyalty and the price of loyalty from her. I learnt about hard work and sacrifice and so many other things from talking with her in a pick-up truck at farmers markets or in her beautiful garden or biking on back roads. So much, I cannot possibly write it out here in brief tonight.

She was strong, and I hope she passed along her strength to me.

I loved my grandmother, and I hope that I can carry not only the memory of her into the future, but that I can grow the beautiful pieces of her that live on in me long after today and yesterday and this coming Thursday.