15 + 24 points
Mihi by Jain Sycamore
October 8th, 2009 2:08 AM
I am from many places and they own me more than I have ever owned them. I would be foolish to believe that a place belonged to me when it is its own before it is ever someone else's.
And so the story begins and is told, the story of places walked and known, the sharing of secrets with land and self.
Most of my life I think of in terms of the places I have walked, relatively recently has the idea of driven or kayaked become an idea for transportation of both body and mind. So frequently one is mind-absent when using another vehicle for transporting oneself. It is key, in coming to know oneself and the places that want to own you, to be aware of one's self and surroundings. Otherwise, one might be owned by somewhere that one does not want to be owned to.
My first memories are of being walked (for I was too young to walk on my own) by my father down the streets of a town in Eastern Washington State, in the USA. I watched the shadows of leaves play on the pavement passing beneath my father's feet as I rode on his shoulders. I brushed my head and face on the leaves and branches of cherry trees, apple trees, and maples that overshadowed the sidewalks we travelled on. Pointing to clouds in the sky, my father and I would call out the shapes they resembled and later, when I was walking under my own power, we talked of what their scientific names were and what weather might follow their appearances.
There was a park, a public park, in the town in which I was born and spent my first young years, where sycamores were trained and grew huge with low-hung branches. Wide as sidewalks, the branches were home to squirrels and birds as well as playing temporary sanctuary to students who would sit in the crooks where branches met trunk and study or work on homework. I would be lifted up to walk along these strange pathways, feeling between worlds as I looked down and saw the patterns on the grass from shelled nuts discarded by squirrels, dropped leaves from the trees, and the mottled bark of my footpath. This public park came to own me in ways I am only now beginning to uncover. Those shadows and discards and paths and leaves forever marked me. I find myself looking for that parks's twin decades later, checking up on it in pictures from its admirers and the people it is owning more recently.
My sycamore owned heart is here:
Latitude: 46.0656922
Longitude: -118.3166304
My family and I left that town, those trees, that park, and moved on to a city in Western Washington State. And while we spent some years there, it never resonated for me in that time. Too busy missing the sycamores, I failed to notice if the city wanted me in any way or wanted to show me its mysteries and seduce me to follow its life.
We moved to Europe after those years that felt like exile to me and I found myself in a very new place, being seduced in new ways by a town I had never suspected would long for me: Leiden.
It took me awhile to warm to it. I missed the town of exile for its predictability and I still longed for the sycamores. I nearly dodged the seduction, too. If not for tragedy weakening me, I fear I would have lost out on its pleasure. But instead, I was weakened, my heart open for something to fill it in the new absence and I fell face-first in love with the town that had been knocking on my door to be let in. A new and dear friend showed me its lakes by kayak. I took my bicycle and pedalled madly away from the house of heartache to explore the town's winding streets, its outlying areas, the parks and refuges that brought me solace and comfort. Again and again, I found myself cycling out to and pausing to gaze out over a lake between Leiden and Wassenaar, the cloud patterns that mirrored themselves in the water, the beauty of reflected sunsets, the heartache of watching alone. In reality, that whole bike path route came to own me, a place I drew comfort from, the green expanses that came up to whisper at the edges of the trail, those many sunsets and cloud shows, the parks that were easy to flee to from the beginning of my own section of the path that began in Oegstgeest and would pause in Wassenaar. But the images of that lake at sunset and at night still echo in my dreams and so it becomes marked here:
52°9'38"N 4°26'15"E
as the place that owns me abroad. (Although more specifically the view of that location from the bikepath South of it.)
In my attempts to pinpoint a third place that has laid claim to me, I have failed, at least geographically. I lived some years on an island in the Puget Sound but after I moved away from it, it no longer felt as a home to me. Similarly towards a city in that area, it didn't stick once I left, despite being the place I had lived the longest continuously (although different houses, same area). Where I am now is temporary (a few years at most) and where I hope to land someday I have not seen yet, so I am not of wherever that is yet.
However, there is a something that is always with me, that I carry with me forever in my mind and which chases the darknesses away and brightens the good times. (And yes, sometimes rejoices in the dark and cries in the light as well.) And that thing, which has helped me define myself for some many years now, is a saying: "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch" or "TANSTAAFL". I follow its promised intricacies whenever I find myself thinking that anyone is getting something for free and I find that no one does. It helps me to remember and rejoice in all the trades I've ever done, all the prices I have paid, all the work that I have accomplished to the ends I set myself. And that is a very good and beautiful thing to me. It shows up in many places, usually a bit more complexly, for example:
The first law of thermodynamics: (You can't get something from nothing.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_law_of_thermodynamics
(Wiki page on TANSTAAFL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TANSTAAFL)
My apologies go to those who are looking for "documentation" that inherently includes pictures. The places (and path) that have called to me are very distant from me currently (places, physically distant) and the path that has called me would take a very long time indeed to make clear to anyone not understanding it from its most basic principle. Instead, as documentation I offer the stories told and the locations mapped via longitude and latitude readings, as well as the example of physics following the TANSTAAFL principle.
And so the story begins and is told, the story of places walked and known, the sharing of secrets with land and self.
Most of my life I think of in terms of the places I have walked, relatively recently has the idea of driven or kayaked become an idea for transportation of both body and mind. So frequently one is mind-absent when using another vehicle for transporting oneself. It is key, in coming to know oneself and the places that want to own you, to be aware of one's self and surroundings. Otherwise, one might be owned by somewhere that one does not want to be owned to.
My first memories are of being walked (for I was too young to walk on my own) by my father down the streets of a town in Eastern Washington State, in the USA. I watched the shadows of leaves play on the pavement passing beneath my father's feet as I rode on his shoulders. I brushed my head and face on the leaves and branches of cherry trees, apple trees, and maples that overshadowed the sidewalks we travelled on. Pointing to clouds in the sky, my father and I would call out the shapes they resembled and later, when I was walking under my own power, we talked of what their scientific names were and what weather might follow their appearances.
There was a park, a public park, in the town in which I was born and spent my first young years, where sycamores were trained and grew huge with low-hung branches. Wide as sidewalks, the branches were home to squirrels and birds as well as playing temporary sanctuary to students who would sit in the crooks where branches met trunk and study or work on homework. I would be lifted up to walk along these strange pathways, feeling between worlds as I looked down and saw the patterns on the grass from shelled nuts discarded by squirrels, dropped leaves from the trees, and the mottled bark of my footpath. This public park came to own me in ways I am only now beginning to uncover. Those shadows and discards and paths and leaves forever marked me. I find myself looking for that parks's twin decades later, checking up on it in pictures from its admirers and the people it is owning more recently.
My sycamore owned heart is here:
Latitude: 46.0656922
Longitude: -118.3166304
My family and I left that town, those trees, that park, and moved on to a city in Western Washington State. And while we spent some years there, it never resonated for me in that time. Too busy missing the sycamores, I failed to notice if the city wanted me in any way or wanted to show me its mysteries and seduce me to follow its life.
We moved to Europe after those years that felt like exile to me and I found myself in a very new place, being seduced in new ways by a town I had never suspected would long for me: Leiden.
It took me awhile to warm to it. I missed the town of exile for its predictability and I still longed for the sycamores. I nearly dodged the seduction, too. If not for tragedy weakening me, I fear I would have lost out on its pleasure. But instead, I was weakened, my heart open for something to fill it in the new absence and I fell face-first in love with the town that had been knocking on my door to be let in. A new and dear friend showed me its lakes by kayak. I took my bicycle and pedalled madly away from the house of heartache to explore the town's winding streets, its outlying areas, the parks and refuges that brought me solace and comfort. Again and again, I found myself cycling out to and pausing to gaze out over a lake between Leiden and Wassenaar, the cloud patterns that mirrored themselves in the water, the beauty of reflected sunsets, the heartache of watching alone. In reality, that whole bike path route came to own me, a place I drew comfort from, the green expanses that came up to whisper at the edges of the trail, those many sunsets and cloud shows, the parks that were easy to flee to from the beginning of my own section of the path that began in Oegstgeest and would pause in Wassenaar. But the images of that lake at sunset and at night still echo in my dreams and so it becomes marked here:
52°9'38"N 4°26'15"E
as the place that owns me abroad. (Although more specifically the view of that location from the bikepath South of it.)
In my attempts to pinpoint a third place that has laid claim to me, I have failed, at least geographically. I lived some years on an island in the Puget Sound but after I moved away from it, it no longer felt as a home to me. Similarly towards a city in that area, it didn't stick once I left, despite being the place I had lived the longest continuously (although different houses, same area). Where I am now is temporary (a few years at most) and where I hope to land someday I have not seen yet, so I am not of wherever that is yet.
However, there is a something that is always with me, that I carry with me forever in my mind and which chases the darknesses away and brightens the good times. (And yes, sometimes rejoices in the dark and cries in the light as well.) And that thing, which has helped me define myself for some many years now, is a saying: "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch" or "TANSTAAFL". I follow its promised intricacies whenever I find myself thinking that anyone is getting something for free and I find that no one does. It helps me to remember and rejoice in all the trades I've ever done, all the prices I have paid, all the work that I have accomplished to the ends I set myself. And that is a very good and beautiful thing to me. It shows up in many places, usually a bit more complexly, for example:
The first law of thermodynamics: (You can't get something from nothing.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_law_of_thermodynamics
(Wiki page on TANSTAAFL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TANSTAAFL)
My apologies go to those who are looking for "documentation" that inherently includes pictures. The places (and path) that have called to me are very distant from me currently (places, physically distant) and the path that has called me would take a very long time indeed to make clear to anyone not understanding it from its most basic principle. Instead, as documentation I offer the stories told and the locations mapped via longitude and latitude readings, as well as the example of physics following the TANSTAAFL principle.
*fires up google earth and takes a look*