I am currently sitting in my grandparents' house in Los Angeles. Tasha's by my side reading some Capote. My whole being is full with California sunshine.
Two weeks ago I returned home to sun and Savannah and my family and Touch the Earth camp as usual. To my dad's super strong cups of black coffee every morning, to drives to Davis for Leelye, to book shopping with Stella, to driving with windows down and music blasting. Also to an ailing Oakland, to teen deaths three blocks from my house (friends of friends), to more budget cuts than ever, to burning trees and an instable city job. The Bay air feels glorious on my skin, but also too stagnant. My mind is itching to return to New York, to resume my world roaming, but it never fails to amaze me how quickly my heart resettles. Despite my new roots on fresh coasts, I am and will always be a Bay baby. Right now, I am home.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Thursday, July 2, 2009
On home and wanderlust
I am heartsick because there are people at home who I feel I need to be with right now. It is so so hard to know that people are going through it and I am not able to be there. I feel so helpless. I know that love transcends large bodies of water and national borders, but is my faith in these relationships and my feelings for these people enough? My absence will be clear in their memories of these hardships. And in mine.
Two days before I left New York for HIA, I met up with my good friend to say goodbye for the summer.
"You don't know how to stay in one place," he told me as he hugged me.
"I guess you're right," I replied, thinking about the constant motion I live in.
I've gotten this before, from multiple people. Jenna tells me I spin too fast in my life. Jason thinks I don't know how to stay in one place. Zina thinks I may never learn how to truly slow myself down and resync to the pace of Town life.
As if this comment wasn't enough to send me spiraling through thoughts of home and love and lack, he followed up immediately with a question I didn't anticipate.
"What are you looking for?"
I stared at him for a while, wondering if he realized that his question was too intense for the sidewalk outside my NYU office job, too involved for the five minute coffee break I had before returning to FileMakerPro.
My response came quickly and naturally, and the conversation hasn't left me since.
"I don't know. I just know that I haven't found it yet."
As I travel from Teaneck to Berlin, from Oakland to Kazakhstan, as I settle in to my new nest in Brooklyn with Ashley and Chris, the world will keep running, I will keep looking, and maybe, maybe one day, I will find it--whatever it is-- and be able to slow down. 'Til then, I am content to continue wanderlusting, traveling, soaking up all the world has to offer me... and, very necessarily, periodically returning to Oakland and to the souls that make it my home.
Two days before I left New York for HIA, I met up with my good friend to say goodbye for the summer.
"You don't know how to stay in one place," he told me as he hugged me.
"I guess you're right," I replied, thinking about the constant motion I live in.
I've gotten this before, from multiple people. Jenna tells me I spin too fast in my life. Jason thinks I don't know how to stay in one place. Zina thinks I may never learn how to truly slow myself down and resync to the pace of Town life.
As if this comment wasn't enough to send me spiraling through thoughts of home and love and lack, he followed up immediately with a question I didn't anticipate.
"What are you looking for?"
I stared at him for a while, wondering if he realized that his question was too intense for the sidewalk outside my NYU office job, too involved for the five minute coffee break I had before returning to FileMakerPro.
My response came quickly and naturally, and the conversation hasn't left me since.
"I don't know. I just know that I haven't found it yet."
As I travel from Teaneck to Berlin, from Oakland to Kazakhstan, as I settle in to my new nest in Brooklyn with Ashley and Chris, the world will keep running, I will keep looking, and maybe, maybe one day, I will find it--whatever it is-- and be able to slow down. 'Til then, I am content to continue wanderlusting, traveling, soaking up all the world has to offer me... and, very necessarily, periodically returning to Oakland and to the souls that make it my home.
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