As I write this I’m sitting in the airport lounge in Sydney waiting for a flight heading for Seattle. It has been an amazing year and with my return I am bringing to a close a chapter of my life that defies simple description or easy summarization. A lot of stuff has shifted (transformed) for me and, while I did not go everywhere or do everything that I had originally planned, I did get what I got and what I got has been profound.
I titled this post with a cliché that I think is rather appropriate. I know that clichés can be tricky things to use as a writer, but this one jumped up at me a few weeks back. It was a real ‘light bulb’ moment and it is a transformation I really want to share.
The way I always understood “wherever you go, there you are” in the past was with the emphasis on the part of you being at some place; the word there being the key to the meaning. That is: you are there. “There” becomes a tangible thing and functions to divide you from it and, in so doing, you are created as something distinct and separate. Your you then becomes something that is created, not by you, but by it.
In the end, place is just place and exists only as it does. What is a mountain to a mountain? What is a sunset to the sun? Mountains are only beautiful because we use language (and agreement) to create them as such.
It is through our language that we create things as we want them to be. So what would life be like if I instead choose that place is not what creates me, but that I create place? And that, wherever I go, there I am.
So if place is just place, what then might be important about different places? The obvious answer might be the common denominator of “I” being what’s different. This is certainly true.
However, what I found truly profound and what really flipped my switch was not that I could create being in some locality, but that there is created by community and the relationships with other people to be found in those different places. What becomes important then is not the I but the we.
So if the physicality of place no longer matters and that I know myself to be someone who can self generate identity, what then is possible?
With this question in mind as I begin this journey to a place called “home,” where exists a community of family and friends, what is possible in the that place?
What is possible is whatever we choose to create.
Wherever you go, there you are.
Learning to Eat
4-September-2010 by David
It has been about 5 days since I landed back in Seattle and reentry is going pretty well so far. My biggest accomplishment was being able to beat my jet lag almost immediately. My flight back was a long and it really kicked my ass! I have had plenty of long trips in the past so maybe I am just getting older … anyway it worked in my favor since I was so damn tired I was able to get 2 nights of solid sleep in back-to-back which has seemed to click me over into my new time zone.
My mad dash down to Portland for one night was great, although taxing in and of itself. I love catching up with my peeps in P-town, they are a great bunch of people and I feel lucky to have them all in my life.
Now that the initial rush of being back has started to slow I’m beginning to experience the oddness of “being back.” I have lived abroad a long time, about 10 years now and so to be “back” for an extending period creates a condition for deep seated memories to be drawn out and for past ways of being to be remembered. I’m sure I will post more on this later, but one of these that has struck first is eating. And, not only eating, but cooking and shopping as well.
I was in the grocery store the other day was totally overwhelmed by the sheer size of the place and the vast array of items to choose from. I also felt like I could not trust any of the food I was purchasing.
While most of the places I have been traveling and living in the last 10 years do have comparable stores, food selections (fresh and processed) and similar shopping experiences, no other country I have been has such a crisis of dietary health as does the United States. In my mind, there is no doubt that our food is slowly killing us and that we as a culture need to seriously examine what it is that we want from our food industry here.
The issue of food in America aside, what I am finding now that I am back is that I feel like I don’t know how to eat … a very disconcerting feeling I assure you!
I will devote further musing about this in the future, but suffice to say that, on a causal level, I think what gives rise to this is the convergence of my current way of being and past ways of being that I am remembering now that I am back on “home” ground. I suspect that this is going to be the dominate theme in my life for the next six to eight months while I am back here in the PNW.
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