tree and clouds
One of the most interesting conversations I have had as of late was with Ariel, a friend of a friend, in her little house on stilts above a small river in the woods here on Kauai. We talked about home and our propensity to leave it and how so many transplants on Kauai are “freedom freaks” or some such terminology. The thing about Ariel is she always challenges me, no matter what I say, she brings my words back to me. She is a reflector. She doesn’t seem to have an agenda and well, I have learned something about myself the last two times I have talked with her.
Home is a notion I have thought a lot about and still do, as I find myself living in a new place, creating a new home, the place I come at night, rise in the morning, make coffee, say my prayers. I like to keep it fresh, and when I think about some of my friends from high school, college and latter days, who have stayed close to home, close to family, close to what is familiar, two things come up for me. One is a feeling of not enough and the other is of course the deep content of having a place in the world. I don’t think I want anything more than a place in the world, it is just that I am still searching for mine.
How is it that some people can tolerate the “same old same old” feeling about life, not just tolerate, but make peace with it? Others, like myself, are explorers, traveling the world (if they can afford it) or wishing they could travel the world (most) or just on the road making peace with the family they once had. There is a nagging fear that they are right and I am wrong, that there really is nothing more to get to in all my transplantation. And yet, what more can I do? Even when we come home it is not the same. Everyday, it is not the same, and that is the belief I harbor and take to the extreme swinging from one end of the globe to the other.
where he sat
The point is, the point of the aforementioned conversation is that it is possible that my desire to travel, to not stay home, to be new to a place, is in part due to a message that home is not to be valued. People grow old at home, like the man I passed everyday on my way to work in Beirut last year. There he sat, same spot, same plastic chair, same bit of sea to be a part of. The American way has been to move, and in so doing we stay young, see new things, discover ourselves new. If this is true, the interesting part of this message, at least to me, is the possible hidden agenda of exploitation. Could it be that powerful minds have taken this core issue, things always change, and twisted it to their advantage, so we need to move and keep moving so that we are not attached to our home and someone else can build a shopping mall where you once had an orchard or woods to play in, that sort of thing?
I’m not sure what is more painful, or more wonderful, sitting in a plastic chair by the sea, tabish (prayer beads) in hand, and thanking God for another day, or having an opportunity to make a new home for yourself.
That was the gist of the discussion, as we sat on her plywood floor in a screened-in house listening to the sounds of the jungle around us and the mewing of the kittens that had adopted her. Groundless. I was groundless. I had brought myself to a place of the edge and I left shaken and anxious to get back to my light green interior, solid doors and sturdy floor.
my current home
