Home » Like a bum home from the Keys…
Like a bum home from the Keys…
Yeah its been a minute.
I return to this blog a bit like a drifter coming home from the Florida keys after a binge. I mean, you feel guilty for being gone so long, but you have to come back sometime. Its easier to just slip in the back door and crash on the couch. The you are there at the table for breakfast like nothing happened.
What have I been doing? God, don’t ask. But its been very busy, daily meditation with some teaching thrown in, playing in a world folk band, raising four kids and all that. Is that any excuse? Of course not, Rachel has been doing the same (except you have to throw in writing a book) and manages to keep her blog up. No, its just that I am a binger, I like heroic moments, daily events just feels…ho hum. This despite the fact that I live in what is arguably the least ho hum location this side of the Mississippi.
But I just had to come back. You see, soon I will need all the narcissistic catharsis I can get. you’ll see, lots of angst and bold declarations of faith snuggled in next to moments of aching vulnerability. I’m talking about A class shameless introspective blogging with photos to boot. I will need it all and more, all your fawning comments and astute observation. You see, I am returning to the Americas.
What is it about and me that requires some massive change to spark a single blog post? I love transition, I feed off it somehow. It draws out the longing, the melancholy and the joy of the worlds between worlds. It illuminates the impermanence of things with a bright and unwavering light. Times of transition and change are when i wake up and notice life. But to be honest, this time I am actually a bit afraid. I am going to one of the most foreign places I know, the Americas.
As ungracious as it is, the truth about my feelings about America is all in these images flashing in my brain. Images of strip malls, mass consumption and waste, grotesquely obese people with hot dogs in their hands, plastic things sold in plastic bags, hordes of relentless suvs, everything adding to the overhanging insipid pall of the status quo.
Images of things which my judgment flies out towards with untamed unmitigated ferocity every time I think of them. These things I fear, just a bit. Somehow I fear getting trapped there, quite unreasonably I should add. The problems over waste and consumption are evident everywhere, in my so called enlightened hippy life too. certainly my harsh judgement is way out of line. Yet some that few places have such power over me to erode my convictions and suppress wonder as thoroughly as the USA.
But then all I have to do is think about the faces of my friends, in an out burgers calling to me on the side of the road, the clouds sailing over the hills of San Francisco, clean water emerging miraculously from the end of faucet, the voice of my father, fat plump burritos, people driving in lanes, lakes in Canada, NPR on car stereo, and a thousand other things I haven’t even thought of in two years. And yes consumption, all the wonderful things there are waiting to be consumed. moderation is the key, except with in and out burgers of course.
No, America and Canada will hold plenty of wonder for me. The wonder of law and order. You don’t know what that’s like until you live somewhere where justice is purchased universally by bribes alone. The wonder of sanitation, which is lost on you until you live somewhere with raw sewage never more than a stones throw away, mostly closer. Where pigs and cows and monkeys all live with you all around, until you just accept them as completely normal parts of your community. Yes there is a strange attraction in all of those things too. But it will be pure wonder to be without them.
So I will be blogging about that journey no doubt. The return home after too years, with one extra kid, 30 pounds lighter, and having experienced a thick slab of life in a very short time. I want to sit around fires and tell my stories. I want to hear about the lives and goings on of all my dear friends, to eat with them. i ant to catch up with my family. I want to squeeze the cheeks of children who have grown tall and spindly, who have learned all kinda off-beat and interesting things to say. I want to take pictures of everyone and post them. In the its all of you I am coming home for, my beloved familia.
In the end it will probably turn out to be another spasm of writing followed by some months of eerie silence. But then you are used to that by now arent you.
and now for something completely different
March 8th, 2010 at 9:30 pm
Thanks.
March 8th, 2010 at 10:28 pm
Awww. can’t wait to share food with you and have you pinch my kiddos’ cheeks.
March 10th, 2010 at 5:08 am
Thanks for this spasm of writing. My friend follows your blog and posted a link. How beautiful your life is. I, an American, am envious of your pigs and monkeys. I spend my days with them as well, but they wear suits here in America. I look forward to following your writting and continuing to be inspired by your photography. And here is to moderation, except In ‘n Out.
March 14th, 2010 at 7:12 pm
I, too, am returning to the Americas this summer, after an absence of two years. I am already thrilled about and terrified of the six weeks I’ll spend there. Reverse culture shock is so much more brutal. Plus, it’s MY country, I have to care. No one will let me change Russia, so I’m much safer here.
I love the energy and emotion of the hula hoop picture.
March 20th, 2010 at 3:23 am
Images of strip malls, mass consumption and waste, grotesquely obese people with hot dogs in their hands, plastic things sold in plastic bags, hordes of relentless suvs, everything adding to the overhanging insipid pall of the status quo.
EXACTLY. It’s making me sick. It makes me bored to death. How do people do this? Doesn’t anyone get angry that we are being raped of an interesting cultural heritage everyday? If this is progress, let’s degress.
March 29th, 2010 at 9:42 pm
Love the photos of the kids. You can sense their energy and the action.
How lovely for you to get to spend time with your family after being gone for so long. I would love to hear about your “culture” shock coming back to North America after two years. My youngest (18) is planning on leaving for South America for at least a year following high school graduation. I admire people who can make that leap of faith into the unknown.