Sometimes my life blurs together, and I can no longer distinguish one moment from the next. Past melts into the present, and the future melds into the horizon. I feel amorphous. Definitions cease to exist and I find myself gazing at Time, sitting in front of me with its legs and arms crossed. Time is stubborn these days. I want it to do something. But it still sits there staring at me.
I sit with my arms and legs crossed and ignore the nagging feeling in the back of my mind. It is telling me that I have been stubborn these days. Time wants me to do something. But I still sit here staring at it.
The leaves around me are changing, each color unique, vibrant. I feel dull in comparison, wanting to change with them. I want to dance with the leaves when the wind carries them to the ground. I want to jump in a gigantic leaf pile and smell the fall air. For now I’ll just watch as the colors change.
I want something to change.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Time Traveling in July
“I like puzzles,” Nick said pensively. “But only on Tuesdays…” His voice trailed off and he stared off into the distance. Strolling down the street beside him, Chris, Stephanie and I were unfazed. These random spurts of thought were characteristic of Nick, so we just smiled. It was impossible not to love him.
A tall, freckly, white kid in Falls Church, Nick dressed himself in the baggiest clothing possible. It was an obvious attempt to fit in with the rest of the neighborhood. My house was close to what one would call the “hood”, where Nick and Chris lived. I liked it better than my neighborhood.
His hair completed the image perfectly. I only ever saw it in one style: a gargantuan afro of spiked up hair. I can’t even express how ridiculous it looked. Yet, it fit him in a way.
Stephanie and I turned to each other and exchanged smiles, both on the brink of laughter. Nick was currently giving Chris an in depth explanation of his plan to successfully breed unicorns. The July heat radiated off the asphalt road beneath our feet as we kept walking. Stephanie and I were satisfied with life that July. None of our friends knew that this was our summer. We had fled Fairfax and found perfection in Falls Church. I fled the present for Chris and Nick, friends of my childhood, and brought Stephanie along for the ride. I’d never shown any of my new friends in Fairfax the entire world hidden in Falls Church. This summer, I decided to take Stephanie back in time with me.
For a minute as we walked we fell into silence; the only noise came from our footsteps. Chris, a tall black kid, moved quickly with long strides. Nick was almost as tall, but he moved so easily that he always lagged a little bit behind. Stephanie and I fell somewhere in the middle. We must have been a strange sight, the four of us scattered throughout patches of shade on the suburban road. Anyone passing by would have seen Chris, speedy and towering, followed by two girls who looked a little more than slightly out of place. Nick took up the rear.
Before what we were even aware of what was going on, an ear-splitting cracking noise broke the silence. In one swift motion, with no warning, Chris had pulled a fire cracker from his pocket, lit it with then end of his cigarette, and nonchalantly threw it over his shoulder. Nick ducked in order to protect his sculpture of hair. The following explosion echoed throughout the streets and sent the four of us running.
It was summer. All we could do was run and hope for someone to chase us in hot pursuit. The four of us were only ever aware of life’s thrills and our endless pursuit of them. It was summer and we built ourselves a time machine so it would never end.
This was our summer the July after our junior year. It was our summer until August came and time caught up with us. We released the bonds tying us to the past, knowing we’d be back someday. Maybe when I go home for winter break, Stephanie and I can go back to time traveling. I want to feel the jolt of energy that can only be created by an unexpected firecracker explosion. I want to remember what it feels like to run for my life, with three others running by my side. It was summer, so we ran for our lives. We did everything possible that summer just because we could. We were carefree.
A tall, freckly, white kid in Falls Church, Nick dressed himself in the baggiest clothing possible. It was an obvious attempt to fit in with the rest of the neighborhood. My house was close to what one would call the “hood”, where Nick and Chris lived. I liked it better than my neighborhood.
His hair completed the image perfectly. I only ever saw it in one style: a gargantuan afro of spiked up hair. I can’t even express how ridiculous it looked. Yet, it fit him in a way.
Stephanie and I turned to each other and exchanged smiles, both on the brink of laughter. Nick was currently giving Chris an in depth explanation of his plan to successfully breed unicorns. The July heat radiated off the asphalt road beneath our feet as we kept walking. Stephanie and I were satisfied with life that July. None of our friends knew that this was our summer. We had fled Fairfax and found perfection in Falls Church. I fled the present for Chris and Nick, friends of my childhood, and brought Stephanie along for the ride. I’d never shown any of my new friends in Fairfax the entire world hidden in Falls Church. This summer, I decided to take Stephanie back in time with me.
For a minute as we walked we fell into silence; the only noise came from our footsteps. Chris, a tall black kid, moved quickly with long strides. Nick was almost as tall, but he moved so easily that he always lagged a little bit behind. Stephanie and I fell somewhere in the middle. We must have been a strange sight, the four of us scattered throughout patches of shade on the suburban road. Anyone passing by would have seen Chris, speedy and towering, followed by two girls who looked a little more than slightly out of place. Nick took up the rear.
Before what we were even aware of what was going on, an ear-splitting cracking noise broke the silence. In one swift motion, with no warning, Chris had pulled a fire cracker from his pocket, lit it with then end of his cigarette, and nonchalantly threw it over his shoulder. Nick ducked in order to protect his sculpture of hair. The following explosion echoed throughout the streets and sent the four of us running.
It was summer. All we could do was run and hope for someone to chase us in hot pursuit. The four of us were only ever aware of life’s thrills and our endless pursuit of them. It was summer and we built ourselves a time machine so it would never end.
This was our summer the July after our junior year. It was our summer until August came and time caught up with us. We released the bonds tying us to the past, knowing we’d be back someday. Maybe when I go home for winter break, Stephanie and I can go back to time traveling. I want to feel the jolt of energy that can only be created by an unexpected firecracker explosion. I want to remember what it feels like to run for my life, with three others running by my side. It was summer, so we ran for our lives. We did everything possible that summer just because we could. We were carefree.
The Meaning of Life (as I saw fit to describe it)
Near the house where I grew up in Falls Church, Virginia, is a lake. It’s manmade, but more natural than anything else I’ve seen. It’s hidden in such a way that nobody is aware of its presence until they’re suddenly standing right next to it, silenced by disbelief. Disbelief. Not awe, not wonder, but disbelief. The beauty of the scene in which it resides is truly unbelievable.
But even though it’s an unbelievable beauty, it’s an understandable beauty. It can’t be understood in words, but when you stand by the water’s edge, you understand everything. You understand everything about whatever makes life so beautiful.
But the lake, along with this feeling, is hidden in a way that most people don’t ever find it. You have to earn this body of water’s presence in your life. You have to really be searching for it. Even if totally unaware of the fact that you are, in that moment, searching for something, you have to really be searching for it. Because if you do find it, as anyone seeking it inevitably does, you suddenly just know. You know you’ve found exactly what you’ve been looking for all your life.
When night falls, the water’s surface fills up with reflections of the stars and melts into the sky. It’s an image that taught me what perfection really means. It means a loss of words. It means a desperate, pointless effort to find the right words. But there are no words. Not in this case.
I first encountered the lake when I was fifteen years old. I’d grown up living right next to it and didn’t even know it existed until then. I don’t mind though. I probably wouldn’t have appreciated it as much if I’d found it earlier. It was the right moment for it when I took my first footsteps onto the surrounding path.
The moon was out and the night stood still as I sat near the water’s edge. I wasn’t alone. The boy who’d brought me there was my best friend and first love. I’d met him four years ago, but being fifteen, it felt like we’d always known each other. For now, the night stood still. We felt our entire lives become that single moment of frozen time. He took my hand and as we fled the earth’s rotation, we really had known each other forever.
He quietly led me to a place with a perfect view of the water, a spot practically invisible to anyone walking along the path. I could tell he’d brought me to a place that meant a lot to him, but still had no idea how he’d first found it. Looking back, I know he’d probably been searching for it without ever realizing. He arrived at knowing as he arrived at the spot where we sat now.
We sat in silence for an hour, maybe more, maybe less. It was a comforting kind of silence that allowed us to find each other, both lost in thought. I remember he spoke only once. The sound of his voice created ripples in the silence that I could almost see traveling across the surface of the lake. Maybe it was a trick of the starlight, maybe not. Even so, he said to me:
“There’s only one person besides you who’s sat here and seen exactly what you‘re looking at right now.”
“Who?” I asked, though I already knew. It didn’t matter that I predicted his answer before he gave it. Something in the ground shifted when he said, without removing his gaze from the water, “Just me.”
I didn’t return to the lake for a long time, not until the summer after my senior year in high school. I’d almost forgotten about its existence up until then. Actually, I can’t use the word forgotten to describe the unforgettable. The memory of it was still there, but as life had picked up and I got caught in the whirlwind of life, among other things. I pushed the lake to the back of my mind where it waited patiently.
One summer night shortly after my high school graduation, I went for a run and found myself taking a different route than usual. My feet decided for me. I knew without knowing where I was headed, yet wasn’t completely sure I could find my way back there. But my heart knew the way. It arrived at the water’s edge long before I my feet could bring me there, so I ran as fast as I could so we could reunite. It called my name, impatient for me to witness what it had uncovered from the back of my mind.
Before I knew it, I was there. I was back. Though I’ll probably never risk it, I think I could find that lake with my eyes closed. I did, in a way, that night. And with the lake in front of me, my eyes opened again at I felt a memory brush up against my arm. They had been shut for some time. If anything can cure blindness, it will be the lake. It’s too much of a miracle for any pair of eyes to resist being lost in its depths, even if just for a little while. It’s something that lives in your vision long after you’ve stopped looking, not that It’s easy to stop. But part of finding beauty is learning how to turn away.
After spending the final two years of high school groping around in the dark, my sight returned that summer. I started going back every day, sometimes alone, sometimes bringing my closest friends, because it was something they needed to see. Sometimes I went with the same boy as before. Though we were no longer in love, we both saw the moment we’d first sat there together reflected in the water’s surface. We both saw our childhood reflected in the lake, shining right next to the stars.
The future lay just beneath the surface, obscured by the vibrancy of the past as it often is, but we felt its presence nonetheless. Many days that Summer I sat next to the lake and for hours tried to soak up as much of what it had to offer as my mind and body could take in. I knew that in a couple months I’d be gone at college and my childhood would no longer be a place I could visit all the time. Knowing this, I held onto the lake, forging new memories with my friends, basking in the ones I already held on to.
A couple of weeks ago I went home to Falls Church, just for a weekend. I caught myself unawares while driving back to my house on Friday night, making a spontaneous turn instead of returning on time for curfew. But time ceased to exist as soon as I found myself staring at the lake. I breathed in the surrounding trees for the first time in months.
It felt like I was watching a film reel of every precious memory of summer, of the first time I stood there, of being young. For the first time in months I was immersed in a part of myself, maybe one of the most important parts, a part of me I’ll never be able to physically take with me to school. I was immersed in my innocence once again and it made me completely and utterly aware of the fact that I’m alive.
In a few days I returned to school, leaving my memories of innocence at the lake’s shore once again. It wasn’t a sad goodbye or very difficult at all. I knew, as it faded from my sight in the rearview mirror that it would stay there forever, always welcoming my return.
Some days I think that if I close my eyes and run as fast as I can, even while I’m far from home, I’ll open my eyes and find myself there once again. Maybe I can, just because of that one piece of my soul that’s made the lakeside its home.
But even though it’s an unbelievable beauty, it’s an understandable beauty. It can’t be understood in words, but when you stand by the water’s edge, you understand everything. You understand everything about whatever makes life so beautiful.
But the lake, along with this feeling, is hidden in a way that most people don’t ever find it. You have to earn this body of water’s presence in your life. You have to really be searching for it. Even if totally unaware of the fact that you are, in that moment, searching for something, you have to really be searching for it. Because if you do find it, as anyone seeking it inevitably does, you suddenly just know. You know you’ve found exactly what you’ve been looking for all your life.
When night falls, the water’s surface fills up with reflections of the stars and melts into the sky. It’s an image that taught me what perfection really means. It means a loss of words. It means a desperate, pointless effort to find the right words. But there are no words. Not in this case.
I first encountered the lake when I was fifteen years old. I’d grown up living right next to it and didn’t even know it existed until then. I don’t mind though. I probably wouldn’t have appreciated it as much if I’d found it earlier. It was the right moment for it when I took my first footsteps onto the surrounding path.
The moon was out and the night stood still as I sat near the water’s edge. I wasn’t alone. The boy who’d brought me there was my best friend and first love. I’d met him four years ago, but being fifteen, it felt like we’d always known each other. For now, the night stood still. We felt our entire lives become that single moment of frozen time. He took my hand and as we fled the earth’s rotation, we really had known each other forever.
He quietly led me to a place with a perfect view of the water, a spot practically invisible to anyone walking along the path. I could tell he’d brought me to a place that meant a lot to him, but still had no idea how he’d first found it. Looking back, I know he’d probably been searching for it without ever realizing. He arrived at knowing as he arrived at the spot where we sat now.
We sat in silence for an hour, maybe more, maybe less. It was a comforting kind of silence that allowed us to find each other, both lost in thought. I remember he spoke only once. The sound of his voice created ripples in the silence that I could almost see traveling across the surface of the lake. Maybe it was a trick of the starlight, maybe not. Even so, he said to me:
“There’s only one person besides you who’s sat here and seen exactly what you‘re looking at right now.”
“Who?” I asked, though I already knew. It didn’t matter that I predicted his answer before he gave it. Something in the ground shifted when he said, without removing his gaze from the water, “Just me.”
I didn’t return to the lake for a long time, not until the summer after my senior year in high school. I’d almost forgotten about its existence up until then. Actually, I can’t use the word forgotten to describe the unforgettable. The memory of it was still there, but as life had picked up and I got caught in the whirlwind of life, among other things. I pushed the lake to the back of my mind where it waited patiently.
One summer night shortly after my high school graduation, I went for a run and found myself taking a different route than usual. My feet decided for me. I knew without knowing where I was headed, yet wasn’t completely sure I could find my way back there. But my heart knew the way. It arrived at the water’s edge long before I my feet could bring me there, so I ran as fast as I could so we could reunite. It called my name, impatient for me to witness what it had uncovered from the back of my mind.
Before I knew it, I was there. I was back. Though I’ll probably never risk it, I think I could find that lake with my eyes closed. I did, in a way, that night. And with the lake in front of me, my eyes opened again at I felt a memory brush up against my arm. They had been shut for some time. If anything can cure blindness, it will be the lake. It’s too much of a miracle for any pair of eyes to resist being lost in its depths, even if just for a little while. It’s something that lives in your vision long after you’ve stopped looking, not that It’s easy to stop. But part of finding beauty is learning how to turn away.
After spending the final two years of high school groping around in the dark, my sight returned that summer. I started going back every day, sometimes alone, sometimes bringing my closest friends, because it was something they needed to see. Sometimes I went with the same boy as before. Though we were no longer in love, we both saw the moment we’d first sat there together reflected in the water’s surface. We both saw our childhood reflected in the lake, shining right next to the stars.
The future lay just beneath the surface, obscured by the vibrancy of the past as it often is, but we felt its presence nonetheless. Many days that Summer I sat next to the lake and for hours tried to soak up as much of what it had to offer as my mind and body could take in. I knew that in a couple months I’d be gone at college and my childhood would no longer be a place I could visit all the time. Knowing this, I held onto the lake, forging new memories with my friends, basking in the ones I already held on to.
A couple of weeks ago I went home to Falls Church, just for a weekend. I caught myself unawares while driving back to my house on Friday night, making a spontaneous turn instead of returning on time for curfew. But time ceased to exist as soon as I found myself staring at the lake. I breathed in the surrounding trees for the first time in months.
It felt like I was watching a film reel of every precious memory of summer, of the first time I stood there, of being young. For the first time in months I was immersed in a part of myself, maybe one of the most important parts, a part of me I’ll never be able to physically take with me to school. I was immersed in my innocence once again and it made me completely and utterly aware of the fact that I’m alive.
In a few days I returned to school, leaving my memories of innocence at the lake’s shore once again. It wasn’t a sad goodbye or very difficult at all. I knew, as it faded from my sight in the rearview mirror that it would stay there forever, always welcoming my return.
Some days I think that if I close my eyes and run as fast as I can, even while I’m far from home, I’ll open my eyes and find myself there once again. Maybe I can, just because of that one piece of my soul that’s made the lakeside its home.
"Home is Where the Heart Is"
Do you believe in the old saying: "Home is where the heart is"?
I don’t know whether I’ve said it just a few times or as often as a few hundred. This is the one time I’ve ever given it any thought.
Ever since the summer after my seventh birthday, since my parents divorced, I lost touch with my previous life of having one, consistent, childhood home. I had two separate houses. Two separate rooms. Two separate wardrobes. Two separate beds. Two separate parents. Either or. This or that. I was thrust, struggling and unwilling, literally kicking and screaming, into a new life. I had a new task, never to be completed, of alternating between and balancing two homes. Not to mention two families. Just one extra home, along with the division of an old one, was enough to distract me from the whole purpose of a home. I couldn’t see straight enough to know which way to grow.
Even the names of my pets depended on the day of the week. Monday? It would be time to feed my cat Sophie. What about the third Thursday of the month? I'd reunite with my cat Butter. In quiet rebellion I whispered his name in his ear, hoping he remembered his true identity. My dad had renamed him Bela (after Bartok) when my mom moved out. It felt like I was telling him forgotten secrets about a life that came before this one. Occasionally I sensed, even during the younger years, that none of this went along with the idea of a traditional home. With young and optimistic ideals about life and the world, it just didn't seem fair. It wasn’t fair learning how to balance the newfound instability of a home that should have been my center instead. It’s selfish, but I’m human, and I was adjusting.
This world of confusion became the new viewpoint, the new direction I took when my life changed for the first time, seven years in. It forever compelled me to carry my home with me, no matter where I went. I neither realized it at the time nor came even close to understanding. The only thought in my mind was of the divorce. Only now that I’m older do I see that right next to thought, not quite easy to see at first, is understanding.
But back then my instincts were on fire. I fled from putting trust in associating my childhood home with anything temporary. I couldn’t trust it with places, with houses, or with the ups and downs of falling in love. I stubbornly refused to let myself risk losing the basic comforts of home. I couldn’t leave them anywhere, I decided. So I took them with me.
I had been directed off the path created by a single, united home. With a lack of direction came a lack of tolerance for trying to figure out which, of two, was the place I could call my home. I couldn’t choose, just as I couldn’t choose between my parents. I turned to the only remaining option. I made the choice not to choose.
My childhood home is found in every place where my memories are still alive. It’s found in every memory where my youth is still breathing. My memories, I've found, always have had a kind of immunity to separation that my physical home held onto for a brief seven years.
I don't even know who first said "Home is where the heart is", which implies its place in the realm of clichés. It’s probably heard so often, the actual meaning is overlooked. I've definitely haven’t thought about it before this. I've heard it thousands of times. I've probably said it. I’ve never wondered what it might mean.
Until I was eighteen, I lived eleven years without ever fully experiencing the unity and normalcy of an unbroken family. When I left for college almost three months ago, I was overwhelmed by the recovery of something I hadn't experienced in over a decade. In one day, I gained a new home. Just one. In one day I reached what had for so long been held just out of my grasp. I found the chance to put down my roots somewhere.
Family unity reentered my life in the form of new friends. I live in Fredericksburg, Virginia. That's it. It doesn't seem like a very big deal. I know better, though. There's nothing better than the return of something you thought you’d lost forever. There's nothing better than beginning a sentence with “I live”.
Those two little words give every life’s story a setting, a backdrop, a place in the world of its very own. I came to Fredericksburg and found where I fit in with the world.
But then something really strange happened. I bought a bus ticket home for my friend Stephanie's 19th birthday. She took a year off after high school in order to work and take a moment to breath. It felt, and still feels, not completely right being away at college without her. When I entered her house that day, I saw Stephanie for the first time since I'd left. I felt an unfamiliar sense of nostalgia. The familiar became new to me in how old it felt.
We drove all around the area that once served as our playground in our high school days, our actual childhood. With me at the wheel, Stephanie in the passenger’s seat, loud music, we knew that no time had passed between us. Stephanie and home are one in the same, both protected from the passage of time.
I stepped into the indie movie theater where Stephanie works, remembering the times I almost felt that I lived there. I talked to some younger friends of mine, those still in high school. I realized that I felt envious of the fact that they still lived in the world I left behind just a few months ago. It feels like I left years ago.
I felt the pull of Fredericksburg when I returned to Fairfax. I needed to go back to the one place that stands still and lets me move forward on my own. Even so, there was something I'd never realized about Fairfax, Annandale, and Falls Church, the host cities to my school, mother, and father. And to me, I suppose.
I didn’t see a single place around me where I could restore my home. I stowed it away in my heart, the safest place I could think of at the time. The heart of a child is a pretty good spot to put anything in need of protection, especially if it’s your entire beginning. I needed something whole, now that my previous place of residence was fragmented. I guess my heart caught my eye. It had never been broken. It came pretty close, when my mom first told me about the divorce, but somehow stayed intact.
I knew I could trust my heart not to break, but at the price of realizing it could be broken. So I carefully stored my innocence right next to my home. I knew they’d be safe next to my heart beat.
"Home is where the heart is", as they say.
When I returned to Northern Virginia for the first time, I finally saw the area where I grew up as my home. I heard it in every path in the woods that once echoed with my footsteps. There it was, my home, a bit blurry as I craned my neck from the driver's seat. It took on the form of Woodson High School. I entered the main lobby of Cinema Arts, Stephanie's workplace, one of my favorite safe havens from before.
Home washed over me as I stood once again in my Dad's house, the first house I ever lived in. I met home in my mom's eyes when they lit up as she opened the door. Home welcomed me back to the place where we learned to rebuild and move on. I was home. I was home and that night I got to watch Stephanie open her birthday presents.
I hadn't ever seen how much of my home I kept within myself. Every place I ever loved, every person, every tree, every rock, stream, view of the sun, defined something I could trust with my heart. In losing a single, solitary home, I found where both my heart and home truly belong....everything, everywhere, and everyone.
My heart found the place where it fits perfectly when I came to Fredericksburg, but it has countless other homes. "Home is where the heart is". I'll always have a home, as long there's a place that holds onto a piece of my heart.
It's a heart both separated and united by everywhere it’s found a home.
My heart is where my home is. My home is where my heart is.
Home is where the heart is found safe within everything.
Home is where the heart is whole, never broken.
Home is where the heart is still as innocent as it was in the beginning.
Home is the heart.
Home is your heart.
I don’t know whether I’ve said it just a few times or as often as a few hundred. This is the one time I’ve ever given it any thought.
Ever since the summer after my seventh birthday, since my parents divorced, I lost touch with my previous life of having one, consistent, childhood home. I had two separate houses. Two separate rooms. Two separate wardrobes. Two separate beds. Two separate parents. Either or. This or that. I was thrust, struggling and unwilling, literally kicking and screaming, into a new life. I had a new task, never to be completed, of alternating between and balancing two homes. Not to mention two families. Just one extra home, along with the division of an old one, was enough to distract me from the whole purpose of a home. I couldn’t see straight enough to know which way to grow.
Even the names of my pets depended on the day of the week. Monday? It would be time to feed my cat Sophie. What about the third Thursday of the month? I'd reunite with my cat Butter. In quiet rebellion I whispered his name in his ear, hoping he remembered his true identity. My dad had renamed him Bela (after Bartok) when my mom moved out. It felt like I was telling him forgotten secrets about a life that came before this one. Occasionally I sensed, even during the younger years, that none of this went along with the idea of a traditional home. With young and optimistic ideals about life and the world, it just didn't seem fair. It wasn’t fair learning how to balance the newfound instability of a home that should have been my center instead. It’s selfish, but I’m human, and I was adjusting.
This world of confusion became the new viewpoint, the new direction I took when my life changed for the first time, seven years in. It forever compelled me to carry my home with me, no matter where I went. I neither realized it at the time nor came even close to understanding. The only thought in my mind was of the divorce. Only now that I’m older do I see that right next to thought, not quite easy to see at first, is understanding.
But back then my instincts were on fire. I fled from putting trust in associating my childhood home with anything temporary. I couldn’t trust it with places, with houses, or with the ups and downs of falling in love. I stubbornly refused to let myself risk losing the basic comforts of home. I couldn’t leave them anywhere, I decided. So I took them with me.
I had been directed off the path created by a single, united home. With a lack of direction came a lack of tolerance for trying to figure out which, of two, was the place I could call my home. I couldn’t choose, just as I couldn’t choose between my parents. I turned to the only remaining option. I made the choice not to choose.
My childhood home is found in every place where my memories are still alive. It’s found in every memory where my youth is still breathing. My memories, I've found, always have had a kind of immunity to separation that my physical home held onto for a brief seven years.
I don't even know who first said "Home is where the heart is", which implies its place in the realm of clichés. It’s probably heard so often, the actual meaning is overlooked. I've definitely haven’t thought about it before this. I've heard it thousands of times. I've probably said it. I’ve never wondered what it might mean.
Until I was eighteen, I lived eleven years without ever fully experiencing the unity and normalcy of an unbroken family. When I left for college almost three months ago, I was overwhelmed by the recovery of something I hadn't experienced in over a decade. In one day, I gained a new home. Just one. In one day I reached what had for so long been held just out of my grasp. I found the chance to put down my roots somewhere.
Family unity reentered my life in the form of new friends. I live in Fredericksburg, Virginia. That's it. It doesn't seem like a very big deal. I know better, though. There's nothing better than the return of something you thought you’d lost forever. There's nothing better than beginning a sentence with “I live”.
Those two little words give every life’s story a setting, a backdrop, a place in the world of its very own. I came to Fredericksburg and found where I fit in with the world.
But then something really strange happened. I bought a bus ticket home for my friend Stephanie's 19th birthday. She took a year off after high school in order to work and take a moment to breath. It felt, and still feels, not completely right being away at college without her. When I entered her house that day, I saw Stephanie for the first time since I'd left. I felt an unfamiliar sense of nostalgia. The familiar became new to me in how old it felt.
We drove all around the area that once served as our playground in our high school days, our actual childhood. With me at the wheel, Stephanie in the passenger’s seat, loud music, we knew that no time had passed between us. Stephanie and home are one in the same, both protected from the passage of time.
I stepped into the indie movie theater where Stephanie works, remembering the times I almost felt that I lived there. I talked to some younger friends of mine, those still in high school. I realized that I felt envious of the fact that they still lived in the world I left behind just a few months ago. It feels like I left years ago.
I felt the pull of Fredericksburg when I returned to Fairfax. I needed to go back to the one place that stands still and lets me move forward on my own. Even so, there was something I'd never realized about Fairfax, Annandale, and Falls Church, the host cities to my school, mother, and father. And to me, I suppose.
I didn’t see a single place around me where I could restore my home. I stowed it away in my heart, the safest place I could think of at the time. The heart of a child is a pretty good spot to put anything in need of protection, especially if it’s your entire beginning. I needed something whole, now that my previous place of residence was fragmented. I guess my heart caught my eye. It had never been broken. It came pretty close, when my mom first told me about the divorce, but somehow stayed intact.
I knew I could trust my heart not to break, but at the price of realizing it could be broken. So I carefully stored my innocence right next to my home. I knew they’d be safe next to my heart beat.
"Home is where the heart is", as they say.
When I returned to Northern Virginia for the first time, I finally saw the area where I grew up as my home. I heard it in every path in the woods that once echoed with my footsteps. There it was, my home, a bit blurry as I craned my neck from the driver's seat. It took on the form of Woodson High School. I entered the main lobby of Cinema Arts, Stephanie's workplace, one of my favorite safe havens from before.
Home washed over me as I stood once again in my Dad's house, the first house I ever lived in. I met home in my mom's eyes when they lit up as she opened the door. Home welcomed me back to the place where we learned to rebuild and move on. I was home. I was home and that night I got to watch Stephanie open her birthday presents.
I hadn't ever seen how much of my home I kept within myself. Every place I ever loved, every person, every tree, every rock, stream, view of the sun, defined something I could trust with my heart. In losing a single, solitary home, I found where both my heart and home truly belong....everything, everywhere, and everyone.
My heart found the place where it fits perfectly when I came to Fredericksburg, but it has countless other homes. "Home is where the heart is". I'll always have a home, as long there's a place that holds onto a piece of my heart.
It's a heart both separated and united by everywhere it’s found a home.
My heart is where my home is. My home is where my heart is.
Home is where the heart is found safe within everything.
Home is where the heart is whole, never broken.
Home is where the heart is still as innocent as it was in the beginning.
Home is the heart.
Home is your heart.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
How do we know we're alive?
Sometimes, when I'm least expecting it, I feel a sense for how much I love being alive. I can be doing anything. Anything from washing dishes, to staring out the window, to climbing a tree. I can be having the worst day of my life, and out of nowhere it just hits me. It's such a hard feeling to describe. I'm not sure if I should try, because it's something I've always only...felt. I don't think what I feel is really how much I love being alive. I worded that wrong. I think what I feel is just being alive.
We're all alive every second, but that doesn't mean we feel it all the time. People who eat chocolate every second forget to really appreciate how awesome it is. It's very much the same, in a way, with life. We get so used to being alive that we forget what it really feels like. Or maybe we just forget to notice.
That's true for me at least. I'm not saying I don't love my life, but I think I take it for granted sometimes. Maybe we can only really appreciate something once we've realized its been overlooked all this time.
At the same time, in those amazing moments when I'm filled completely with a sense of life, it's not a realization of how I've forgotten it. It's more like something I've always known is there, and whose constant, unspoken presence I find comfort in. Sometimes I'll turn and make sure it's still there, even though I already know it's never left. It's like the sun. When night falls, the earth turns its back on the day, but the Sun never leaves. It's always there, no matter what. Sometimes we're just not in a place where we can see it.
That feeling I get, the sudden awareness of the fact that I'm alive, feels like the sunrise. It feels like when I'm trying so hard to remember the word for something, something stupid that I know I know, but it stays out of reach. It feels like being on the verge of...anything.
Being alive feels like the split second of silence that comes right before the hardest I've ever laughed. It feels like the times I've been asked questions I don't know the answers to. It feels like always knowing exactly why my best friend is calling me when I haven't reached the phone yet, or even seen who's on the other line. It feels like the deafening quiet that fills my mind when I read the last page of a book, unsure of how I should react. It feels like being so excited to wake up the next morning that I can't fall asleep for hours.
Being alive feels like every time I've told the truth when it was harder than anything else I've ever done. Being alive feels like the first time I heard my favorite song. It feels like those songs that play in the background across so many different stages of being. It feels like breathing in the smell of Fall when it first arrives. It feels like the times when I was seven years old and looked out my bedroom window, only to see a new world created by snow, shocked. It feels like ten years later when the same scene makes me feel seven years old again, finding my old innocence buried beneath new snowflakes.
Being alive feels like I'm breathing and holding my breath at the same time. It feels like I'm floating away but also sitting on the earth below, content to be grounded. Being alive feels like this one feeling I get all the time now, but didn't used to. It feels like being so young, so ignorant, so brand new, but also so old, so wary, and a part of something completely familiar.
But when I feel alive, I'm not actually doing any of those things. I just feel them all at the same time, along with hundreds, thousands of others. When I realize I'm alive, it usually finds me when I'm sitting down or standing still. Or when I've been running long enough that everything around me has frozen in time. It finds me when I've put my surroundings on pause, just to breathe. It finds me when I take a break from moving too fast.
The simplest way I can describe feeling alive is through happiness. I'm pretty sure being alive and being happy are one in the same. When I get caught up in either one, I always feel like I'm grasping for words that I just can't reach. I've learned that if I stop trying so hard and just sit back, immersed in life, immersed in happiness, the right words will come to me in the end. They tell me that everything is going to be alright.
And that's when I feel alive. When my mind is clear of every thought, I'm left with what always lives in the back of my mind. It's not a thought. I have too many thoughts, just like everyone else. But when my mind is clear of every thought, I'm left with the only truth I've ever held onto. I tell myself that everything is going to be alright. And that's when I feel happiness, because I never can come up with a legitimate reason not to. I don't need to think of a reason, not when there's already something I just know to be true. Everything is going to be alright.
That's really all that it means to be alive, at least, that's what it means to me.
We're all alive every second, but that doesn't mean we feel it all the time. People who eat chocolate every second forget to really appreciate how awesome it is. It's very much the same, in a way, with life. We get so used to being alive that we forget what it really feels like. Or maybe we just forget to notice.
That's true for me at least. I'm not saying I don't love my life, but I think I take it for granted sometimes. Maybe we can only really appreciate something once we've realized its been overlooked all this time.
At the same time, in those amazing moments when I'm filled completely with a sense of life, it's not a realization of how I've forgotten it. It's more like something I've always known is there, and whose constant, unspoken presence I find comfort in. Sometimes I'll turn and make sure it's still there, even though I already know it's never left. It's like the sun. When night falls, the earth turns its back on the day, but the Sun never leaves. It's always there, no matter what. Sometimes we're just not in a place where we can see it.
That feeling I get, the sudden awareness of the fact that I'm alive, feels like the sunrise. It feels like when I'm trying so hard to remember the word for something, something stupid that I know I know, but it stays out of reach. It feels like being on the verge of...anything.
Being alive feels like the split second of silence that comes right before the hardest I've ever laughed. It feels like the times I've been asked questions I don't know the answers to. It feels like always knowing exactly why my best friend is calling me when I haven't reached the phone yet, or even seen who's on the other line. It feels like the deafening quiet that fills my mind when I read the last page of a book, unsure of how I should react. It feels like being so excited to wake up the next morning that I can't fall asleep for hours.
Being alive feels like every time I've told the truth when it was harder than anything else I've ever done. Being alive feels like the first time I heard my favorite song. It feels like those songs that play in the background across so many different stages of being. It feels like breathing in the smell of Fall when it first arrives. It feels like the times when I was seven years old and looked out my bedroom window, only to see a new world created by snow, shocked. It feels like ten years later when the same scene makes me feel seven years old again, finding my old innocence buried beneath new snowflakes.
Being alive feels like I'm breathing and holding my breath at the same time. It feels like I'm floating away but also sitting on the earth below, content to be grounded. Being alive feels like this one feeling I get all the time now, but didn't used to. It feels like being so young, so ignorant, so brand new, but also so old, so wary, and a part of something completely familiar.
But when I feel alive, I'm not actually doing any of those things. I just feel them all at the same time, along with hundreds, thousands of others. When I realize I'm alive, it usually finds me when I'm sitting down or standing still. Or when I've been running long enough that everything around me has frozen in time. It finds me when I've put my surroundings on pause, just to breathe. It finds me when I take a break from moving too fast.
The simplest way I can describe feeling alive is through happiness. I'm pretty sure being alive and being happy are one in the same. When I get caught up in either one, I always feel like I'm grasping for words that I just can't reach. I've learned that if I stop trying so hard and just sit back, immersed in life, immersed in happiness, the right words will come to me in the end. They tell me that everything is going to be alright.
And that's when I feel alive. When my mind is clear of every thought, I'm left with what always lives in the back of my mind. It's not a thought. I have too many thoughts, just like everyone else. But when my mind is clear of every thought, I'm left with the only truth I've ever held onto. I tell myself that everything is going to be alright. And that's when I feel happiness, because I never can come up with a legitimate reason not to. I don't need to think of a reason, not when there's already something I just know to be true. Everything is going to be alright.
That's really all that it means to be alive, at least, that's what it means to me.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
The Staircase to Spring's Return
Ever since he woke up to a change in gravity's pull one year ago, he spent his days sitting in the dried out riverbed separating the two towns. It was the hottest July by far, and also the driest. It was the longest July so far. Each day from dawn until dusk, passersby witnessed him sitting against the dusty wall, lost in thought. He was lost in the lingering ghost of currents that once swept through where he sat now. Nobody knew how he had managed to climb down the monumentally high wall with no ladder, no footholds in sight. But he had managed. Somehow, he had managed.
Each day he sat in the same spot, staring for hours on end at the hollow labyrinth of veinlike cracks which spread across the parched surface of the riverbed as far as his eyes could wander. They didn’t have to wander far. He knew this riverbed all too well, for it was where he now spent his days. He could barely make out the other side of the river, over a mile away. It defined the border of the neighboring town, a place he had never once visited over the course of his one hundred years on earth. But one day, one morning, one year ago, he awoke with a start to a jarring shift in gravity's pull.
The unseen force, which held his feet to the ground below him for one hundred years, now drew him toward the town across the river. The world in his mind turned sideways overnight. He needed to retrieve his lost footing. He knew it waited for him on the other side.
One night, after exactly three hundred and sixty-five days of watching the sun and moon travel across the sky, he stood up. With the only item he carried with him, a small garden spade, he dug into the diamond hard shell of the earth beneath his feet.
He dug for hours. He dug away at the bleak, dried up earth which he knew concealed every memory of the past. And sure enough, after five hours of digging, and digging, and digging, a tiny stream of water swelled upward into the deep chasm he had created. And sure enough, for the first time over the course of his one hundred years on earth, tears swelled upward from the deep chasm he had created within himself.
He dug for hours until the pool of forgotten water grew large enough. Then, aided by the mounds of dirt produced by hours of relentless digging, the brick building began. Carefully, painstakingly, he molded brick after brick made simply from dirt and water. With his spade he meticulously made sure the sides of each brick were completely flat, symmetrical, with perfect corners.
He needed them to fit perfectly together, with no flaws. It was just how it needed to be. Once, to break the monotony, he engraved a quote into one the bricks, a saying he heard a lifetime ago.
A year of brick making went by. A year of desperation in its purest form, a year of his silent yearning for gravity’s return, a year of carefully shaping each brick so it might fit in its rightful place. A year had gone by since he first found water at the heart of the riverbed, since he first found tears at the heart of himself.
Sadly, the old man reached a point of exhaustion so terrible that he drifted off to sleep the moment he finished making his final brick. Another year went by as he slept, making up for each tiring, sleepless moment of the year before. Waking up at the year’s end, he realized what had occurred and lay on the ground in anguish as he wept in bitter disappointment.
“What have I done?” he cried out, even though he was quite alone. “I’ve lost so much time, and I’m more tired than I was before I began this ridiculously impossible task. I’ll never reach the other side of the river, but I can feel its pull stronger than ever before.”
But his words were lost to the night as his gaze fell upon the sight in front of him. He found himself speechless.
Before him, ascending for over a mile from the spot where he stood, and ending at the top of the opposite cliff, was a staircase. He knew it belonged to him and felt gravity’s pull emanating from the top step. The strength of it dragged his weary feet up the vast staircase, one step at a time.
As he climbed he looked down in wonder at the bricks he so distantly recalled shaping with such tender care and determination. He didn’t know how they came to form the structure beneath his feet, but he knew not to question it.
He knew this was what needed to be.
Eventually he grew weary while making the seemingly endless ascent. His head heavy, he looked down at his feet. Under his right foot, he noticed, was the brick onto which he had carved a saying he knew from long ago. It came from a time in his life before he spent his days at the bottom of the dry river.
"Spring has returned. The Earth is like a child that knows poems."
The familiar words caressed the worn skin of his bare feet while an indescribable awareness of warmth spread throughout his entire body and cleared his mind. Still standing on the single engraved stair, he turned around and drank in his surroundings. Without realizing it, he’d climbed high enough to see the sycamore trees surrounding the water’s edge. He saw that a thousand shades of green adorned the towering branches. He saw that Spring had indeed returned. For a moment he stood in quiet admiration, for it was many years ago that he had last seen these trees. They banished the illusion of solitude from his mind. He would never be alone in life as long as the trees breathed oxygen into his lungs, giving him the gift of existence
“Spring has returned,” he said to himself and to the trees, and with that he resumed his journey up the stairs, no longer weary, no longer alone.
He reached the top step and his feet took their place on a part of the earth that was new to them, and yet felt so familiar. Gravity shifted back into place as he noticed somebody standing by the river’s edge, illuminated only by the celestial bodies above.
The child, a boy of maybe five or six years old, approached the new arrival, slowly, steadily.
“You’re finally here,” said the boy.
“I know,” the man responded. “You’re the one who built the stairs.”
“I know,” the boy responded.
“Do you know why I came here?” the brick maker asked.
“You live on the North Side of the river,” the builder of the staircase answered slowly, steadily. “You’ve never been able to see the North Star.”
The old man nodded, knowing he had finally found peace, and for the rest of the night the two of them sat at the river’s edge. They gazed up at the North Star until morning arrived.
They gazed up at the rising sun, understanding everything.
Each day he sat in the same spot, staring for hours on end at the hollow labyrinth of veinlike cracks which spread across the parched surface of the riverbed as far as his eyes could wander. They didn’t have to wander far. He knew this riverbed all too well, for it was where he now spent his days. He could barely make out the other side of the river, over a mile away. It defined the border of the neighboring town, a place he had never once visited over the course of his one hundred years on earth. But one day, one morning, one year ago, he awoke with a start to a jarring shift in gravity's pull.
The unseen force, which held his feet to the ground below him for one hundred years, now drew him toward the town across the river. The world in his mind turned sideways overnight. He needed to retrieve his lost footing. He knew it waited for him on the other side.
One night, after exactly three hundred and sixty-five days of watching the sun and moon travel across the sky, he stood up. With the only item he carried with him, a small garden spade, he dug into the diamond hard shell of the earth beneath his feet.
He dug for hours. He dug away at the bleak, dried up earth which he knew concealed every memory of the past. And sure enough, after five hours of digging, and digging, and digging, a tiny stream of water swelled upward into the deep chasm he had created. And sure enough, for the first time over the course of his one hundred years on earth, tears swelled upward from the deep chasm he had created within himself.
He dug for hours until the pool of forgotten water grew large enough. Then, aided by the mounds of dirt produced by hours of relentless digging, the brick building began. Carefully, painstakingly, he molded brick after brick made simply from dirt and water. With his spade he meticulously made sure the sides of each brick were completely flat, symmetrical, with perfect corners.
He needed them to fit perfectly together, with no flaws. It was just how it needed to be. Once, to break the monotony, he engraved a quote into one the bricks, a saying he heard a lifetime ago.
A year of brick making went by. A year of desperation in its purest form, a year of his silent yearning for gravity’s return, a year of carefully shaping each brick so it might fit in its rightful place. A year had gone by since he first found water at the heart of the riverbed, since he first found tears at the heart of himself.
Sadly, the old man reached a point of exhaustion so terrible that he drifted off to sleep the moment he finished making his final brick. Another year went by as he slept, making up for each tiring, sleepless moment of the year before. Waking up at the year’s end, he realized what had occurred and lay on the ground in anguish as he wept in bitter disappointment.
“What have I done?” he cried out, even though he was quite alone. “I’ve lost so much time, and I’m more tired than I was before I began this ridiculously impossible task. I’ll never reach the other side of the river, but I can feel its pull stronger than ever before.”
But his words were lost to the night as his gaze fell upon the sight in front of him. He found himself speechless.
Before him, ascending for over a mile from the spot where he stood, and ending at the top of the opposite cliff, was a staircase. He knew it belonged to him and felt gravity’s pull emanating from the top step. The strength of it dragged his weary feet up the vast staircase, one step at a time.
As he climbed he looked down in wonder at the bricks he so distantly recalled shaping with such tender care and determination. He didn’t know how they came to form the structure beneath his feet, but he knew not to question it.
He knew this was what needed to be.
Eventually he grew weary while making the seemingly endless ascent. His head heavy, he looked down at his feet. Under his right foot, he noticed, was the brick onto which he had carved a saying he knew from long ago. It came from a time in his life before he spent his days at the bottom of the dry river.
"Spring has returned. The Earth is like a child that knows poems."
The familiar words caressed the worn skin of his bare feet while an indescribable awareness of warmth spread throughout his entire body and cleared his mind. Still standing on the single engraved stair, he turned around and drank in his surroundings. Without realizing it, he’d climbed high enough to see the sycamore trees surrounding the water’s edge. He saw that a thousand shades of green adorned the towering branches. He saw that Spring had indeed returned. For a moment he stood in quiet admiration, for it was many years ago that he had last seen these trees. They banished the illusion of solitude from his mind. He would never be alone in life as long as the trees breathed oxygen into his lungs, giving him the gift of existence
“Spring has returned,” he said to himself and to the trees, and with that he resumed his journey up the stairs, no longer weary, no longer alone.
He reached the top step and his feet took their place on a part of the earth that was new to them, and yet felt so familiar. Gravity shifted back into place as he noticed somebody standing by the river’s edge, illuminated only by the celestial bodies above.
The child, a boy of maybe five or six years old, approached the new arrival, slowly, steadily.
“You’re finally here,” said the boy.
“I know,” the man responded. “You’re the one who built the stairs.”
“I know,” the boy responded.
“Do you know why I came here?” the brick maker asked.
“You live on the North Side of the river,” the builder of the staircase answered slowly, steadily. “You’ve never been able to see the North Star.”
The old man nodded, knowing he had finally found peace, and for the rest of the night the two of them sat at the river’s edge. They gazed up at the North Star until morning arrived.
They gazed up at the rising sun, understanding everything.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Hill
There existed a single blade of grass at the top of a hill. The hill wasn’t very tall, but it depended on how one looked at it. From above, as if flying over the hill on the back of a bird, one would not think much of the mound of earth that peered towards the sky. However, from far off in the distance, it made more of an impact on the observer, being the only hill for miles in the middle of an endless sea of sandy plains. The blade of grass was quite lonely at the top of the hill, and the hill was quite lonely in the middle of the plains, but one could only expect such an existence as a lone representation of life.
Sometimes it rained. Sometimes it snowed. Sometimes the sun shone so brightly that the blade of grass attempted to grasp the light, embracing the rays of inspiration that soaked into the earth, becoming everything. Warm breezes often created the illusion that the blade of grass was swaying along to an imaginary melody. When this occurred, the hill responded by emitting a subtle tremor, quaking within its core in order to supply a beat for the grass to follow. With this partnership, the blade of grass and the hill coexisted in harmony for several years.
Spring came along, bringing with it the promise of relief from the harsh reality of winter. The ice, as it melted, revealed the seemingly never ending floor of sand that defined the world in which the blade of grass and the hill lived their lives.
Sometimes it rained. Sometimes it snowed. Sometimes the sun shone so brightly that the blade of grass attempted to grasp the light, embracing the rays of inspiration that soaked into the earth, becoming everything. Warm breezes often created the illusion that the blade of grass was swaying along to an imaginary melody. When this occurred, the hill responded by emitting a subtle tremor, quaking within its core in order to supply a beat for the grass to follow. With this partnership, the blade of grass and the hill coexisted in harmony for several years.
Spring came along, bringing with it the promise of relief from the harsh reality of winter. The ice, as it melted, revealed the seemingly never ending floor of sand that defined the world in which the blade of grass and the hill lived their lives.
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